Madam Speaker, I would like to answer my colleague who just put forward the motions. Motions Nos. 12, 17, 20 and 23 were selected by the Chair.
I will first speak to Motion No. 12. It says, and I quote:
(k) transfer Communication Canada's Depository Services Program to the Library and Archives of Canada.
Under the motion, the librarian and archivist would have the authority to transfer the program. However, I would add that it is the government's decision, not the librarian's and archivist's. It is certainly not the practice, in Canadian legislation, to identify programs of this nature. That is why I think Motion No. 12 should not be carried.
As for Motion No. 17, it proposes that:
(5) The Librarian and Archivist may review any record that the Minister claims to be of a personal and political nature to verify that it is of such character.
This motion deals with ministers' private or political records. The motion proposes that the deputy head be able to examine any document to verify that it is personal or political in nature, as the minister claims.
The framework of and the definitions contained in the legislation—such as the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, the National Archives of Canada Act—were all carefully formulated to reflect or supplement the substance of each statute, thereby ensuring their overall linguistic uniformity given that they must interact.
Any change to the legal order governing information created or used by government institutions must be made to all three statutes. A fragmented approach to such amendments, as my hon. colleague is proposing here today, would lead to legal confusion that would jeopardize the implementation of these three statutes and would probably lead to court challenges.
This is why I suggest that my hon. colleague's motion not be retained.
Motions Nos. 20 and 21 deal with amendments to copyright. The purpose of Motion No. 20 is to eliminate the proposed application of copyright to unpublished works.
Of course, there has been ample discussion of the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act, now being debated, and in relation to which my hon. colleague is moving a motion. This legislation was studied in great depth in committee. The committee heard witnesses of all political persuasions, some of whom supported these amendments while others did not.
This issue was discussed over the course of several meetings. The committee concluded that the numerous concrete advantages to this proposal, not only for the authors but also for archivists and users, outweighed the potential inconveniences, which have yet to be proven, for some unspecified groups.
The important thing is that section 7 of the Copyright Act will be amended to extend copyright protection to unpublished works by Canadian authors who died after 1929, but before 1949, until 2017. This would allow the author's heirs to publish this previously unpublished work. If the work remained unpublished at the end of this fourteen-year period, it would come into the public domain. If the work is published during that period, it would then receive copyright protection for twenty years following the date of publication.
The conditions for the protection of unpublished works of authors who died before 1929 are unchanged. Protection terminates on December 31, 2003. If the works in question were published before their protection expired, they would be protected for an additional 20 years from date of publication.
In 1997, section 7 of the Copyright Act was considerably amended by Bill C-32. Before that, unpublished works had perpetual copyright protection.
The amendments proposed in Bill C-32 proved to be highly controversial. Historians, archivists and genealogists lobbied vigorously to have the transitional periods shortened so that older archival material, a large part of which remains unpublished, would enter the public domain sooner.
Their arguments carried enough weight that the government decided to shorten the transitional period, and as a result copyright protection on unpublished works whose author had died before 1949 would expire at the end of 2003.
The people whose interests were being threatened by this therefore launched a campaign to extend the protection of unpublished works to allow heirs the time to publish the works in question.
After a number of meetings, a compromise was struck, and that is what was adopted and is found in clauses 20 and 21 of the bill.
Section 7 of the Copyright Act would be amended so that unpublished works by Canadian authors who died after 1929 but before 1949 would be protected. This protection would be extended beyond the end of 2003, until 2017.
This is a compromise that had already been negotiated. Section 30.21 of the Copyright Act would also be amended to remove the condition that archivists must keep a record of persons to whom single copies of unpublished works are provided for the purposes of research and private study, where copyright has not expired but for which the copyright owner cannot be located.
In light of the compromise agreed to by the stakeholders and given the need to amend section 30.21, on behalf of the Library and Archives of Canada, this amendment is put forward so that it can be approved by December 31, 2003.
This is an important date, because unpublished works would enter the public domain at that time and any subsequent change would have the effect of according protection again, retroactively, which could be a source of even greater confusion.
Allow me to note that the changes in question are consistent with the consensus achieved by all the stakeholders, who agree that the changes I mentioned a moment ago are necessary. That is why the motion put forward by the hon. member opposite must not be passed.
Motion No. 21 proposes to delete clause 22, the same way that Motion No. 20 proposes to delete clause 21. As indicated earlier, the amendments to the Copyright Act flow from the efforts of this government to promote greater access to unpublished works and are part of the agreement reached by all stakeholders regarding this change.
Bill C-36 will amend section 30.21 of the Copyright Act to remove certain conditions that archival institutions must meet in order to make single copies of unpublished works. Such copies are used for the purposes of research and private study.
I am sure members will agree with me that this bookkeeping is only adding to the administrative burden of our archival services and squandering our limited resources which could be better used serving the customers of the Library and Archives of Canada.
Finally, Motion No. 23 proposes to remove references to sections containing amendments to the Copyright Act. I think this motion should also be rejected for the reasons I have already given.