Evidence of meeting #117 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was material.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Before that they were not...? Access Copyright said its aggregate revenue went down after 2013, from $40 million to somewhat below $10 million in 2017. Is that attributed to the complexity? Might one thing be the complexity in the way we are providing material?
Ms. Marshall, you're trying to jump in. Any of you can answer that question.
Provost and Vice-President, University of Calgary
I'd love to answer that question. There is no question that Access Copyright revenue would have gone down, because a number of groups opted out of the collective. They were no longer paying their fees, so of course their revenue was going to go down.
Provost and Vice-President, University of Calgary
Well, here's the choice you have as an administrator of a university: you can choose to belong to that collective and recognize that on multiple occasions you pay twice, or you can choose to manage it your own way and clear copyright in a different way. It's not that we are not clearing copyright. We're just deciding to do it in a different way. We're deciding to purchase licences in a different way.
There's no question there's a tie to a decision where people decided to opt out of a collective. With the number of universities that opted out of its licences, I'm surprised, to be honest, that Access Copyright has been able to survive as long as they have.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
I'm over my time by 45 seconds. I thank the chair for his indulgence.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
That's okay. We enjoyed the answer.
We're going to move to you, Mr. Jeneroux. You have five minutes.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
That's perfect. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for being here. Ms. Marshall and Mr. Ramsankar, you are both from Alberta. I appreciate seeing you both again.
Not to leave you out, Ms. Andrew, coming as you do from the big city of Toronto—
Policy Analyst, Canadian School Boards Association
I actually live in Brantford.
Conservative
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
I'm living in Ottawa.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
You're living in Ottawa? My goodness.
I want to quickly ask you this, Ms. Marshall. Do you have any relationship at all with Access Copyright now?
Conservative
Provost and Vice-President, University of Calgary
We opted out of their licences. We have gone back on occasion to ask for a transactional licence for something that is in their repertoire. They have used an all-or-none approach: if you're not in the licence, in the collective, you're not allowed to do a transactional licence.
Interestingly, that has resulted in our going to different copyright collectives, such as the American Creative Commons, to purchase transactional licences.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
When was the last time you contacted Access Copyright?
Provost and Vice-President, University of Calgary
It would have been probably in 2013-14. Once we opted out in December 2012, we went back on occasion. As we opted out, we were surprised by what we found out, which was how many licences we had paid for twice because we weren't sure that the licence was included in the repertoire we had purchased.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
That's interesting.
Mr. Ramsankar, I want to question you a bit. We heard from Ms. Marshall about the potential for retroactive payments that could happen if the York decision maintains this where it is right now. It was against the fair-dealing guidelines and is now under appeal, as we know, but there is the potential that it will stay the same.
Your website directs visitors who have questions about copyright to the fair-dealing guidelines that were produced by one of our previous witnesses, the Council of Ministers of Education for Canada. I think you brought the booklet with you. I take from this that your CTF is obviously endorsing the guidelines, even though they were essentially thrown out in the York decision. Again, that's under appeal. If that decision remains the same, does the CTF have any plans or considerations in place to continue to pay for that copyrighted material?
President, Canadian Teachers' Federation
At this point the York decision is in the courts and it's viewed as an outlier, so to make speculation or to try to suggest decisions that we would be going with at this point, I think, would be premature. On that basis, it is too soon to be able to say that we would go in one direction or the other.
York was an outlier and right now the courts are dealing with it.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Okay.
We've had it addressed by Ms. Marshall and Mr. Ramsankar.
I'll give you the opportunity, if you wish, Ms. Andrew, to comment on any plans if the York decision is maintained. Are there any plans in place for your organization to make retroactive payments?
Policy Analyst, Canadian School Boards Association
I'm going to repeat the sentiment that Mark has put forward. At this point we do not have any plan in place. All of those decisions will be made once a final decision on the court case has been determined. Again, we do believe it's an outlier, and that previous court cases found in favour of users, so we're hopeful.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
You're very effective with your time. Thank you very much.
We're going to move to Mr. Graham.
You have five minutes.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
I'll start with Ms. Marshall.
You mentioned today that 90% of your spending in 2017-18 was on digital material. Can you compare that to five years ago or 10 years ago? Obviously 20 years ago there wasn't very much. Can you give us a sense of that timeline?
Provost and Vice-President, University of Calgary
This is a really important question, because there have been many stories that tie the loss of revenue to authors to fair dealing. In fact, I would tie that loss of revenue to the digital revolution.
We actually have a digital library. We do not have books in our library or very many books in our library.
Our digital library opened in 2011, and I think at that time we were probably close to 30% digital and we're now up to 90% in terms of costs in a year.