From what I understand, the original intent of Bill C-244 was to somewhat broaden how the Copyright Act applies. Just from reading amendment G-1, it talks a lot more about “performer's performance fixed in a sound recording”. Again, it's talking a lot more about musical works. It's not recognizing or realizing that that's not necessarily what we're talking about here.
The vagueness of the Copyright Act is that a work can be anything. It can be computer code. It can be a musical piece. It can be a book. It can be a museum and archives. That's the vagueness issue with the term “work”.
I think the original intent of Bill C-244 was to try to address that vagueness. I feel that this amendment doesn't fix that problem with regard to what Sébastien was just asking about: “Does this enable somebody to fix a John Deere tractor?” I mentioned this earlier. When you hop in that John Deere tractor and hit “start” on the screen, it's expressly written right there that you do not own a copy of the software. You have a licence to operate it, but that licence does not give you the ability to access that software. What this bill was originally intended to do was to allow a repair shop the ability to import a device that would allow somebody to get the information they'd need to complete the repair on that tractor.
The amendment that's been provided here by Mr. Fillmore.... I feel like it's completely gutting the entire purpose of trying to get a right-to-repair bill because, again, it doesn't address the vagueness of the term “work”.
I'll leave my comments there for now.
I guess the only other thing I would add is this—and this would be my question: Do you, as the experts, have any comments on that? Would you like to comment on that?
The second point I'd like to touch base on is that, obviously, there are 14 or 15 states in the United States that have already passed and implemented right-to-repair legislation. What's stopping those states from...? They're obviously not concerned about CUSMA. Is that because it's done at the state level and not the federal level? If it were a province doing this, would it be at risk of violating the trade deal? If so, what's the difference between an individual state's doing it versus what we're doing here today?