Industry Committee on Feb. 15th, 2023

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is my last turn, Mr. Patzer, so I have a challenge for you. It's the same challenge you gave me when you were speaking to your bill. I'm talking about saying the word “interoperability” in French three times in a row.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Interoperability, interoperability, interoperability.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Non—en français!

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

It's a bit harder in French. It was a tongue-twister for me, and we had a bit of a laugh, so I just wanted to get even.

I'd like you to comment on the technology of tomorrow. We can all agree that we will become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence, digital technology, quantum technology and all the rest.

How much will your bill help us prepare for the massive influx of these technologies into the market?

How might it help us protect ourselves from being invaded by different technologies from other countries?

Do we have to have the same technologies, which would boost their ability to flood the Canadian market? If not, would less interoperability protect us, at least when it comes to artificial intelligence?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Yes, as industry grows and develops, changes do happen. This bill is hopefully going to help industry and manufacturers to be a little bit more nimble, a bit more agile.

That being said, this will happen, and then a year or two down the road, something else will happen, and then more changes will be required.

I do feel that my bill is a good start to getting the Copyright Act and just technology in general on a better path to being able to better change and adapt to technology as it changes and emerges. You're right: as artificial intelligence becomes more prominent and has a bigger role to play, our existing framework isn't going to match that, so we are going to have to make some changes.

My bill is one step of many steps that I think are going to be needed to properly address that, so there is definitely more that can and should be done when it comes to changes. If we try to do them all in one private member's bill, it probably will never pass. That's why with our private members' bills we chip away a little bit at a time to hopefully get us into a better spot so we can be more agile and respond better to changes like that.

AI is definitely going to present a very unique and interesting twist and challenge to all of this, but I think my bill puts us into a better position to be able to respond to that.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you for your initiative on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I just want to briefly say this.

Mr. Patzer, you were pulled early in the draft—it's like winning the lottery—and so was I. You didn't come forth with a motion.

For those who are watching this, a motion is non-binding in the House of Commons. It can be, depending on whether or not the government lives up to it, but most of the time it's not.

You've put together serious legislation on something, and I just want to commend you for that because you're making the most of your opportunity, and it's not the easiest path to go down.

I'll just conclude by saying that, Mr. Chair, because it's not to say that when a member uses their opportunity for a motion it's wrong; it's just that doing that is entirely different, and this is a different road to go down for you and your staff. I just want to say thank you for doing that.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you for that.

Yes, you're right. When we get these bills early in the draw, or when people use motions, sometimes motions and even private members' bills are used for partisan reasons. This bill is non-partisan. It doesn't matter what party you're from or what part or region of the country you're from. It's a concept that I think we can all get behind, because it doesn't benefit one region over another.

I did have a study done on the benefits of interoperability, with an overview of the western perspective, but when we looked at it, we also looked at the financial implications that it has not just for Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba, but also for Ontario and Quebec. We looked at where all these small manufacturing companies exist. They're all across the country.

When you're looking at agricultural manufacturing companies, there are physically more of them in Ontario per capita. Most are in the Prairies, for sure, but there are more companies in existence in Ontario. There are some in existence in Quebec. There are some—not very many—in existence in the Atlantic provinces as well.

When you look at how big and vast agriculture is, for example, you see that it touches every province and every province uses it. For this bill, again, I come at it from an agricultural perspective, so it has that benefit for ag, but it's going to have that benefit whether you're in the fishery, in forestry or in mining. The benefits are there. For technology in general, the benefits are going to be there and realized with this bill.

We tried to design it in a way so that it didn't matter what party you're from, you could support it, because at the end of the day, this bill is about trying to do what's right not just for one industry but for all of industry and for the entire country. It's born from people who live in my riding, but at the end of the day, it's geared towards the entire country.

I view it as a nation-building project, right? When you look at manufacturing products in Saskatchewan, you see that we have a use for Quebec aluminum and we have a use for components that are manufactured in the Windsor area and are going to be used to build the greater piece that you're going to be attaching. This is a good way and, post COVID as well, this is a regulation that's going to help to drive the economy back into full force and help us fulfill the potential we have here in Canada for a more active and robust manufacturing sector. This helps us to support the key industries we have in this country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Patzer.

Mr. Williams, you have five minutes.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

For people who perhaps are watching, and maybe even for some people in the room, can you explain the difference between interoperability and another bill that we're looking at for the Copyright Act, which is right to repair, something we're studying today. In other words, does interoperability interoperate with right to repair?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

As for the mechanism of what the two bills are doing, they're very similar. The concept is definitely a lot different, but the mechanism for how both are going to be achieved is very similar, right? With regard to interoperability, it's driving innovation. It's driving competition going forward. The right to repair bill is more so about a product that's already in existence and about making sure that people have the choice to repair where they need to.

I'm going to focus on my bill in a sense, though, when we look at our rural communities and at what this means to all the small towns all across this country that have these small manufacturing shops in existence. It might be a town of 200 people, but that shop might employ half the town, and because it employs half the town, the benefits to the rest of the community are there, because you have people buying groceries in the grocery store.

In Frontier, the town I grew up in, there were 300 people, but we had two independent grocery stores. The Co-op had just a gas station. That was it. Now, in lots of places, the Co-op is your grocery store, your gas station and your lumberyard. It's everything.

In Frontier, because we have a company like Honey Bee in existence and had Friggstad Manufacturing prior to that, it allowed private industry to grow and to thrive. For a lot of our small towns, it's fantastic that we have the Co-op to keep things going, but these other companies do exist. Other private industries do succeed and do thrive. That's what we want to focus on with this bill, because it helps to preserve those companies and those businesses that exist in the small towns and also incentivizes new ones to open up. Hopefully, they'll do so. If they're going to be in a city, great, but if they want to be out in a small town somewhere, where they can have the room to operate, yes, there's a need for them in the small towns too. Hopefully, this will keep the ones that are there but also incentivize more to want to join the market.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Besides Frontier and the rest of Canada, what other jurisdictions in the world have implemented interoperability? Is the U.S. working on this? Has Europe completed this? Which jurisdictions have studied this?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

The Americans have a completely different mechanism for how they would get an exemption from a TPM. There's a copyright librarian in the U.S. that has already carved out an exemption for agricultural manufacturers to be able to circumvent TPMs to make their products interoperate. There is an atmosphere in the United States for some manufacturers to be able to do what we're trying to do with this bill here. It's a different mechanism, but it puts us at the same capacity as what the U.S. has in terms of getting that exemption to circumvent the TPMs.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

How long are those exemptions good for?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I believe in the U.S. it's every three years. Every three years you have to go back and reapply or prove your case as to why you still need to be able to circumvent that TPM.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Have you studied that in Canada? If it's the copyright librarian in the U.S., what's the equivalent here in Canada?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I don't know if we have a comparable thing, but maybe through an order in council they might be able to do something to that effect. I'm not entirely sure. I think that would be where they might be able to have something similar.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Europe has implemented this. Is that right?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

In the European Union, I don't know how fully integrated it is at this point, but yes, they're continuing to push the issue on it. France has a framework they're working on, as does Australia. There are other places that are working on this and pushing beyond even what my bill would do.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

In Europe, then, looking for the restrictions, who would approve that? Have you looked at that at all?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Yes. I don't know their mechanism off the top of my head. I'd have to go back through my documents and see what they did, but yes.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Not to confuse everyone by bringing another bill in, because I think it's still important, but Bill C-27 is about our privacy legislation. I think we've heard some witnesses on the right to repair. There have been concerns or looking at the restrictions for privacy, especially around the data that sinkhole the system.

This is copyright law, so it's not privacy law, but is there anything we would be using, looking at Europe with the GDPR and the Americans with their state privacy law, in interoperability that would be interoperable with the Bill C-27 that we're bringing to Parliament?