Evidence of meeting #142 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 board.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much for your presentation.
We're going to go right into questions, and we're going to start with Mr. Graham.
You have seven minutes.
December 5th, 2018 / 5:25 p.m.
David de Burgh Graham Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Thank you.
I'm going to share my time with Mr. Longfield. If you can cut me off at the halfway point, I'd appreciate it.
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Thank you.
Ms. Chapdelaine, you talked about fair dealing as a more fluid model, if we could call it that. How do you see that actually looking, in the law? If there aren't specific fair dealing exceptions, what would it say?
5:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, As an Individual
Basically, it would be similar to the model in the U.S. The U.S., as you probably know—
5:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, As an Individual
—has a fair use model. So it does refer to purposes, but only in an illustrative way, not in a limiting way, as it does in Canada. Expanding that to not stating specific purposes would, I think, bring more flexibility and allow the act to evolve as new technologies arise. Still, there would be a test of fairness—that's very important—to determine whether use could be allowed without the authorization of the copyright holder. It would need to meet the fairness test.
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
Would you see this fair use model as something that would permit us to finally have right to repair, for example? Are you familiar with the movement to right to repair?
5:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, As an Individual
That would be one example, which is the common law, something that has been recognized in common law.
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
You also mentioned content ID. We heard from Google and Facebook here last week, and they admitted that their content ID systems don't really care about fair dealing exceptions. What kind of action should we be entitled to take, or should we be taking, against companies that have a system of copyright enforcement that doesn't actually follow Canadian law?
5:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, As an Individual
Actually, right now there is not much that is provided. That's the whole point of making sure to clarify that there's no contracting out possible of fair dealing, or let's say fair use. That's one of our recommendations, to actually build it in, make it a right, an obligation. Basically, they would be held liable to make sure access is being granted. That's what we're proposing in our recommendations.
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
I appreciate that. I don't have much time at all, so I'm going to jump to Mr. Sheffer.
I want to learn a bit more about ALAS, because it seems to be quite relevant to our study. I'll ask three questions together, so you can answer them in the 70 seconds or so I have remaining.
How many clients does ALAS have? What are the most common issues they face? What are the most common resolutions you see?
5:25 p.m.
Hebb & Sheffer, As an Individual
On the question of how many clients ALAS has, we don't carry any caseload, so the—
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
What kind of legal advice are you providing?
5:25 p.m.
Hebb & Sheffer, As an Individual
It's summary legal advice.
I should mention, too, that ALAS is the administrative end of things and is run by U of T law students. We have anywhere from three to four appointments a night on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Toronto. They're half-hour sessions.
5:25 p.m.
Hebb & Sheffer, As an Individual
It is not-for-profit, yes.
The corporation that runs ALAS is Artists and Lawyers for the Advancement of Creativity. The acronym is ALAC, so we have ALAS and ALAC.
5:25 p.m.
Laurentides—Labelle, Lib.
ALAS and ALAC...I gotcha.
I'm already out of time, so thank you very much for that.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
Thank you all for another interesting session.
Mr. Sheffer, the model that you put out, and the presentations we had in the last hour, made me think about value chains. There's no room in the value chain for legal advice, which is not what we need to see going forward. I think the artists need to have the right protection.
With regard to the value chain analysis of this, I was talking about flow charts and where value gets created. Who gets paid for it? How could we have legislation that gives fair value within the value chain?
You have a micromodel with the publication West End Phoenix that we could be using.
5:25 p.m.
Hebb & Sheffer, As an Individual
I think it starts with solid copyright protection for the original owner of copyright, which is the author. Beyond that, one hopes that the author or performer is aware of his or her rights and doesn't go about signing those away. If the author or performer does retain his or her rights, that creator is in a good position to negotiate remuneration.
As I said in my presentation, I'm very proud of the fact that at the West End Phoenix, we make a point of—
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
No, no. That's exactly where I was heading with that.
To the other two presenters, before we began this study, I read a couple of books on copyright history to understand where we're coming from. I remember one of the books talked about the history of copyright in the U.K. versus the U.S. and how very different the history was, and how Canada is somewhere in the middle, as we always are.
When you're looking at us taking ideas from the States—and looking at France and Germany—where are we in that continuum right now?
5:30 p.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, As an Individual
I can tell you that at the very earliest, we modelled ourselves on American copyright law. In effect, some of the recommendations we have—to adopt an American fair use-style provision, for example—are actually quite consistent with our history. However, we're talking about over 200 years of history.
Although Canada has chosen traditions and had traditions imposed on us in the 20th century—the British tradition particularly—we've always taken some elements from the French, British, and American and incorporated them into things that are uniquely Canadian, to try to develop the flexibilities we need to manoeuvre.
In a sense, the quick answer is that it's all of the above, but we've done it differently and our approach has been different.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I loved your approach. I could picture you both having coffee over this and thinking of the guiding principles, going back to the guiding principles.
It seems that we've missed that whole piece in our study: What are our guiding principles as Canadians, and how does our legislation reflect our guiding principles?
That seems like the most common-sense place to start. Thank you for that.