Industry Committee on Oct. 15th, 2018

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you to our witnesses.

I'm still stuck on emotes. I'm thinking of copyrighting for question period the facepalm, rolling eyes and righteous indignation. I think I could make a lot of money with those copyrights if I could.

I'm concerned about the timelines the committee has with regard to us issuing a report, it getting to the minister, the minister getting back to us, and then a potential suggested change of legislation, as you've mentioned, which would require another process, and then it would have to go to the Senate.

Maybe quickly with the minute you have left, can you tell us if there is anything in between to be done? For example, the Copyright Board has been one of those things. What's low-hanging fruit to get at right away, that wouldn't take a year plus, something that we could get done?

[Robin Sokoloski]

I think something that could easily be done is the harmonization of statutory damages. As I mentioned in my presentation, currently other collectives such as Access Copyright can only collect the tariff. There are already other collective organizations, such as Re:Sound and SOCAN, that have the ability to collect three to 10 times more. I think that could be a quick change.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

On that note, I want to extend a gracious thank you to the panel for coming in.

Thank you very much for your presentations.

They were great. They have given us lots of stuff to think about as we've been going through this for the last year.

We're going to suspend for a quick two minutes. Then when we come back, we'll stay public and we'll go through your motion.

We'll suspend for a quick two minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I have a couple of housekeeping pieces. This Wednesday there will be a room change. We'll be in room 430.

Second, I need a motion that the deadline for the receipt of briefs in relation to the statutory review of the Copyright Act be December 10, 2018.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Excellent.

Mr. Albas, the floor is yours.

[Dan Albas]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just again, for the people who are watching this, the motion is specific. It says:

That to assist in the review of the Copyright Act, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology requests Ministers Freeland and Bains, alongside officials, to come before the committee and explain the impacts of the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on the intellectual property and copyright regimes in Canada.

This is an opportunity for the government to discuss its negotiations. Obviously, this does directly impact much of the work because it commits the country to certain legislative changes at some point, so it certainly should be factored in with our discussions on copyright. There's no time written into this, although it obviously would behoove the committee to hear it so we can include or make reference to the testimony of the ministers and the officials in the report.

I hope that members across the way find this a reasonable suggestion. There are a number of different changes directly to our work, and this would allow the incorporation of that, and to have some accountability too, and some learning. If there is a movement or a particular policy that's good for Canada, it gives the opportunity to government to be able to say why, and for us as parliamentarians who are doing a very labourious, intensive study to be able to incorporate some of that knowledge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

The intention of the motion for us to understand what's being negotiated or has been negotiated to date definitely has merit, but I think, in terms of the deal, we now have to see what the Americans are going to come back with in terms of ratification. They're going through their mid-terms and their 21-day review. I think there could be some impact on intellectual property and copyright as we're going through our study.

The timing for bringing some officials in for a technical briefing would have to be after we know what it is that we're talking about in terms of the deal. So far, we're still going through ratification.

I'd also be interested in the CPTPP, which is going back to the Senate after we vote a little bit later on this week—and we have CETA.

I think the intention of seeing what the international impacts will be, especially with the United States, is good, but I don't think we're ready. I think we should be plowing through this study we're doing until the end of the year, as the committee had already planned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I think the motion's extremely reasonable and very fair. First of all, I can clear up a couple of things that Mr. Longfield mentioned. I was in Washington the day the tentative deal was done. I was asked Mr. Easter, for the Canada-U.S. parliamentary association, to be there with Mr. MacDonald as part of a bipartisan group, the Canada delegation for the Border Trade Alliance meetings. It was an interesting time to be there.

The U.S. decided to table its text immediately. It usually has 30 days to table its text, to clean it up, and that's why some of the text had some errors in it, where Mexico and Canada were reversed a bit and so forth, but they did that so they could get into their public discussions, and that's what's going to go before Congress.

That's what's in the process right now, but that's separate and independent from us. Nothing can change in that process for the final deal. They will present reports to Congress and the Senate will look at it too, but nothing can change at all about the deal. The deal is exactly how it's been tabled in the U.S. There can be some amendments to some grammar and so forth, but nothing changes to the substance of it whatsoever.

Even with all the hearings that are happening—you saw most recently the Governor of Kentucky expressing some concern—those are so they get feedback from the public so that Congress members have an understanding when they vote. That's the vetting that they have for it. I would say that what we would do here would be similar to that. Their parliamentary process for vetting is that different committees will come back to Congress, whereas for us the minister comes forward. Having a meeting on that certainly would be helpful because it would also eliminate some of the confusion around some of the clauses that we have to decide upon in Parliament.

I would think this is a very reasonable approach. I think it's almost unreasonable for us to continue the study without having this discussion. It gets to the point where we are reporting on something where the rules have already changed without us even having a commentary about that. It would be, quite frankly, absurd for us to pretend that we just are going to spend a year and a half and all this public money and time on a study about something that our number one trading partner...and our relationship is so germane. Even before this we've had testimony here from people talking about what the U.S. law is and the consequences to Canadian artists, cultural industries and so forth, whether we get a deal or not. And then the deal itself may not go through this particular Congress. We don't know.

What we do know right now is that we're being asked to do a report based upon the things that are in front of us, and one of them is now this potential deal between Canada and the United States. I think it's reasonable to have a meeting with the minister to get a lay of the land and have our report have a bit of commentary on that.

If we're going to have some commentary on it, I'd rather include the minister and I think it would probably provide a great opportunity for some of those questions to be clarified.

I know this doesn't include, for example, automotive but because we're doing this study it's very germane. I think that's why it gives it a little more merit in terms of their seeming to be so concerned about the politics behind this. I think we should have a separate meeting for automotive on it. I've gone through it and I've had trade lawyers go through it and there's a whole list of qualifiers in the automotive, which is very complex. But that doesn't have anything to do with what we're having right now. We're not doing an automotive study right now. We are doing the copyright review, and we just entered into an agreement that's going to change that. I think it would be a great opportunity for that to be part of what we submit. Sorry to go on, but I think it is important.

We're going to submit something to the minister but he's going to then have to respond and get something back to us and maybe do something before the Parliament ends. The timeline is constrained on that, so I think having that element as part of it would be most beneficial.

Having it without it, I assume would be odd. I think it would be the first thing that somebody would say. How did you actually do all this and then pretend that the United States deal didn't happen? It's worse than ignoring the elephant in the room. It's basically the elephant dies in the room and you walk over it and through it and it sits in the room and rots. Meanwhile, you have a deal going on. You keep talking. You keep going forward, and the stink gets worse.

I think one meeting would be great and that's enough.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Mr. Albas.

[Dan Albas]

To reiterate some of the things my colleague has said, there has been an agreement in principle. We can't say when ratification will come from our end or the American end. However, we've made an agreement in principle with our largest trading partner and ally. We operate more in a North American ecosystem when it comes to creativity, copyright and whatnot.

This is going to have major impacts. Our report needs to take those things into account. Again, our recommendations are going to have to skate around this. Let's find out what the rationale was. Again, there is no date put on this for a reason. It's a reasonable request for our study.

I would encourage members to allow it. I'm happy to give it to the chair. He can work with the ministers. If he wants to arrange half a meeting with one minister, and another half with another, that's fine. I do think, though, it's important to have both. Ultimately Minister Bains is going to be reading our report, but Minister Freeland will actually know the rationale for those changes being given. Let's do our jobs. We're doing a great job consulting with industry. Why would we not want to consult our own government?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Seeing no further debate, I'll put it to a vote.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I would like a recorded vote, please.

(Motion negatived: nays 5; yeas 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Is there any other business?

Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.

We'll see you on Wednesday.