Yes. No problem.
In a letter from its ministers, the Government of Canada stated that an “effective copyright system should foster a market and an environment in which all users have access to content … for the purposes of information, entertainment, education and cultural heritage”. Wikimedia Canada is proud to see the Government of Canada's efforts for open government. For a government to be considered open, it must promote all means that make information accessible to its citizens. Wikimedia is one such means.
It would be wise to take advantage of the exceptional referencing of Wikimedia projects in search engines. Good quality and reliable information should always be among the first research results to which citizens have access.
Contributors to Wikimedia projects are very enthusiastic about accessing quality content from the Canadian government to improve articles in the free encyclopedia. To date, there is a major barrier to the use of this content. Indeed, it is protected by default by crown copyright, which prohibits its use in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
In order to address this problem of knowledge dissemination, it is our view that the Copyright Act, specifically section 12, which governs crown copyright, should be revised to make government and agency data free for use. Therefore, we propose that the Canadian government replace crown copyright with placement into the public domain of all its works or, at a minimum, grant a licence allowing their reuse without having to request permission, including for commercial purposes. This proposal is entirely consistent with the vision of Canada's open government. Ultimately, this would allow Canadian content to be reused and, as a result, more widely disseminated and accessible for the benefit of all citizens.
Let's take a simple example. In the United States, where the work of federal employees is automatically placed in the public domain, government produced photographs are used to illustrate Wikipedia articles and are subsequently reused by journalists for whom Wikipedia is often the first reference.
Currently, many encyclopaedic articles on topics of interest to Canadians are illustrated with photographs from the U.S. government, as they are in the public domain, or with poor quality photographs. If the Government of Canada adopted a policy similar to that of the United States, the government's official photographs would be placed in the public domain and could be used on Wikipedia to illustrate the articles concerned.
Let's take a slightly more complex example, which involves all of the Canadian government's data collected by its researchers across the country. Making this data accessible to all would allow the reuse of data sets for new research and collaborations, both in Canada and internationally. We can think of weather data, for example. If these data were made compatible with those in the Wikidata database, researchers and citizens around the world would have access to them. In addition, the Government of Canada and its citizens could benefit from the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation offers free cloud hosting to maintain this data. In addition, they could be integrated with other data for further research and better results.
Such provisions would not change the protection of classified documents and other confidential information that must remain secret or not be disclosed to the public, since this information is already protected by other laws and regulations and these would apply.
I would like to thank the committee for inviting Wikimedia Canada to participate in the Copyright Act review process. We remain available to participate in efforts to make government more open and accessible.
I would be pleased to answer all your questions.
Thank you very much.