—so our anti-circumvention rules are consistent with the USMCA, but only because there was enormous U.S. pressure leading up to the 2012 reforms, and in fact, we are now more restrictive than the United States, which creates disadvantages for us.
Then there's the one area, the notice-and-notice rules, that the government clearly prioritized and took a stand on to ensure the Canadian rules could continue to exist.
The term extension has an enormous impact, and quite frankly, it's obvious that the government recognized that. It's no coincidence that when we moved from the TPP to the CPTPP, one of the key provisions that was suspended was the term extension. Economist after economist makes it very clear that it doesn't lead to any new creativity. Nobody woke up this morning thinking about writing the great Canadian novel and decided to instead sleep in, because their heirs get 50 years' worth of protection right now rather than 70 years.
For all of the other work that's already been created, that gift of an additional 20 years—quite literally locking down the public domain in Canada for an additional 20 years—comes at an enormous cost, particularly at a time when we move more and more to digital. The ability to use those works in digital ways for dissemination, for education, for new kinds of creativity will now quite literally be lost for a generation.
If there's a recommendation to come out of this committee, it would be, number one, recognize that this is a dramatic shift. When groups come in saying, “Here are all the things we want as rights holders”, they just won the lottery with the USMCA. It's a massive shift in terms of where the balance is at.
Second, the committee ought to recommend that we explore how we can best implement this to limit the damage. It isn't something we wanted. It's something we were forced into. Is there any flexibility in how we ultimately implement this that could lessen some of the harm?