Madam Speaker, the Reform Party fully acknowledges the necessity of the revisions for the Copyright Act. As a matter of fact, the Reform Party would be very supportive of a well thought out process which would achieve that objective. Unfortunately this bill does not represent that well thought out approach.
The bill was initially tabled on April 23, 1996. It had second reading on June 4, 1996 and there was a briefing meeting with officials from industry and heritage on June 18, 1996. It was at that meeting that we had our first indication that the bill, indeed this entire effort on the part of the heritage minister, was in great trouble.
There were a number of questions that I had posed at that briefing meeting that it seemed to me the officials, with all due respect, were completely unprepared for. Many parts of the bill, unfortunately, had not been thought through at all.
When the minister made her presentation to the committee, which I believe was in September 1996, she was basically working from briefing notes and had not grasped the implications or the problems which the bill she was proposing would create both for the creators and for the users of the work that comes under copyright legislation.
The process, unfortunately, went further off track in my judgment in that the committee also decided, against my protestations, to have the selection of witnesses in camera. There was a deletion of concerned parties to the bill. There was a period of time when there was a tremendous amount of unhappiness about that.
I must say that during the process of the crammed committee hearings there developed a tremendous spirit of co-operation among the members of the committee.
As with the member who spoke before me, I would like to pay tremendous respect to the members of the committee from all parties who worked in that spirit of co-operation. I would particularly like to say that the work of the parliamentary secretary and the work of the chair of the committee aided the process, and I commend them for that.
It was unfortunate that the spirit of co-operation, although it was leading to a very productive process of making necessary changes and improvements to the bill, ended up being seriously side tracked. As a matter of fact, it was fully derailed in a massive train wreck by the heritage minister.
It seems to me that basically what happened was she came to the conclusion that since becoming heritage minister she really had not accomplished anything and suddenly decided-