Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Cynthia Andrew. I appear before you this afternoon representing the Canadian School Boards Association, whose members are the provincial school board associations, which represent just over 250 school boards across Canada and serve slightly less than four million elementary and secondary school students across Canada.
I am an employee of one of those provincial associations, the Ontario Public School Boards' Association. I am the key staff person for school boards both in Ontario and within CSBA on all matters relating to copyright. I am pleased to appear before you this afternoon to speak about copyright and school boards.
Copyright law affects all of Canada's school boards and is reflected in policies and practices in school board administration and in classrooms across the country. As a result, CSBA has been attentive to and active in issues related to copyright reform since the 1990s.
CSBA works closely with other national educational organizations on copyright-related policy development. That is why you will notice that many of our supporting materials are the same as those materials you have already seen from other witnesses who have come before you on this issue, for example, the fair dealing guidelines and the “Copyright Matters!” booklet.
CSBA recognizes the importance of copyright awareness in the K-to-12 education community, and we do our part, along with our provincial affiliates and our education partners, to impart the need to foster greater understanding and compliance within our schools and our classrooms. CSBA provides advice to local school boards through its provincial association members.
The provincial ministries and departments of education can exercise greater authority, making certain policy requirements of school boards. You heard from them earlier this week, I know, through the CMEC Copyright Consortium. CSBA works co-operatively with the CMAC Copyright Consortium and other national educational partners to ensure that consistent information about copyright compliance and copyright rights and responsibilities is consistently shared through our provincial school board associations with all of the school boards and their employees.
This decision to educate school board employees consistently across Canada was made late in 2012 and was only partially a result of the amendments to the Copyright Act that passed earlier that year. Significantly, the decision was also a result of the 2012 Supreme Court decision that found it was fair for teachers to copy short excerpts of copyright-protected works for their students. It is that Supreme Court decision that prompted national education associations to establish the fair dealing guidelines.
CSBA supports the fair dealing guidelines. It supported the establishment of them and worked with its provincial affiliates to ensure that directives from their respective provincial ministries were implemented effectively. CSBA believes that the fair dealing guidelines provide school boards and their employees with clear copyright policy guidance, ensuring that educators are aware of their rights and their responsibilities under the Canadian copyright law. The fair dealing guidelines ensure consistent application of the Supreme Court's decision across the country. The guidelines are aligned with copyright law around the world so that our teachers and our students are on a level playing field with those from other countries.
CSBA further believes that fair dealing for education purposes is good public policy that supports student learning and ensures effective use of taxpayer dollars. The Copyright Act balances rights between copyright owners and copyright users, and the fair dealing provision in the act is an important right for Canadian educators. Fair dealing for the purpose of education allows teachers to access a wide range of diverse learning materials and thereby enriches students' learning experiences.
The Supreme Court decision and the fair dealing guidelines have established a stability that CSBA supports and wishes to see maintained. Teachers are now certain when they're selecting materials for their lesson planning and when seeking those supplemental materials necessary for teaching individuals who may be more challenged with the lessons.
CSBA is aware that publishers and Access Copyright have been vocal in their claims that fair dealing has caused them economic hardship. To date, they have not been able to present sufficient evidence to support this claim beyond anecdotal examples. The other gap that is evident from the testimony to date is the degree to which the success or decline of publishers and Access Copyright reflects what is fair remuneration to creators. Will restoring tariffs and increasing tariff payments help those writers and those creators?
CSBA does empathize with the challenges currently facing the educational publishing industry. The industry is struggling to stay current with advancing technology and new perspectives about teaching and learning. Textbooks, once the primary learning resource available to educators, are now just one in a series of choices that school boards and teachers have available when preparing classes for their students. School boards spend their learning-resource dollars on digital-content repositories, subscription-based databases, online libraries, provincially developed or locally developed electronic resources, apps, and, of course, the Internet. Again, the true value of the educational use of fair dealing is that educators now have the flexibility to adapt their materials to the specific needs of each class, or even each individual student, in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.
While CSBA as an organization is not directly involved in any of the legal or quasi-legal actions that have occurred around copying in schools, some of our member school boards, those in Ontario, are directly involved. Other provinces' school boards are indirectly involved as their ministry is involved. While CSBA itself might not be directly involved in these matters, we certainly have an ongoing interest in ensuring that the Copyright Act continues to balance the rights of both creators and the educational users.
The fair dealing provisions in the act provide balance in both rights and responsibilities. Proceedings of the Supreme Court and other courts, which are playing themselves out today, are providing the definitions and the clarity around fair dealing. There is a new normal in K-12 school communities, which educators are adapting to, which publishers are adapting to, and which teachers and students are benefiting from, that is about access to enriched learning material. CSBA asks MPs to not be tempted to apply legislative amendments to what is already a fair and balanced approach to copyright in our schools.
Thank you.