moved:
Motion No. 12
That Bill C-36, in Clause 8, be amended by replacing lines 23 to 25 on page 4 with the following:
“it;
(j) carry out such other functions as the Governor in Council may specify; and
(k) transfer Communication Canada's Depository Services Program to the Library and Archives of Canada.”
Motion No. 17
That Bill C-36, in Clause 13, be amended by adding after line 39 on page 7 the following:
“(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.”
Motion No. 20
That Bill C-36 be amended by deleting Clause 21.
Motion No. 21
That Bill C-36 be amended by deleting Clause 22.
Motion No. 23
That Bill C-36, in Clause 57, be amended by replacing line 23 on page 21 with the following:
“sections 53 and 54, come into force on”
Madam Speaker, Bill C-36 may not be seizing the nation, but it is an important bill because it does bring together for the first time in an official way the Archives of Canada and the Library of Canada. The bill does this in a way that would allow them to organize their efforts to minimize duplication and also would allow them to organize themselves in a way that would allow one input for both library and archival material. That part of the bill is worthy of support and should be supported. I will talk more about that at the end of this debate.
There are only 10 minutes to debate all of these motions. That is barely enough time, but I will whistle through them, give an explanation, and hopefully make a case for why we have these motions before us today.
Motion No. 12 calls for the government to:
(k) transfer Communication Canada's Depository Services Program to the Library and Archives of Canada.
This may seem like a small technical problem, but it is a huge issue for librarians across the country. Over 790 public and academic libraries in Canada are concerned about the current management structure, which does not ensure that publications of the Government of Canada are properly handled by libraries and archives across the country.
We heard ample evidence in committee that this depository service should be moved under the Library and Archives of Canada. Right now, for example, only 46% of government documents are ever delivered to local public and academic libraries across the country, and that is because it is just not handled by librarians and archivists right now. Certainly librarians and people who deal with this material want to have access to it and they have suggested this as the best way to handle it.
I have received letters from people in my riding about this issue. Believe it or not, it is very important to librarians. I would like to thank Kim Isaac in my riding for bringing this to my attention initially and her other colleagues across the country who have made a very strong and convincing case that this is the way we should be handling it. I urge all members of Parliament to support Motion No. 12, which would officially put that depository service under the auspices of the new Library and Archives of Canada.
Motion No. 17 is primarily about the principles of accountability and transparency. As it is worded now, clause 13 would allow no objective oversight by the librarian and archivist to make sure they are receiving from the ministers of government all ministerial records that they feel have historical significance. This is done by law in the United States. As the secretary of state or for any position in the United States, that individual has to provide records to the archives. They have no choice. It is a legal requirement.
When the access to information commissioner gave testimony before our committee, he very strongly indicated his concern that, either through oversight or deliberate efforts by ministers, information that should be archived will not be. This amendment is brought forward in an effort to force all ministers to allow the archivists to have access to this material because it really belongs to the people of Canada and to the Government of Canada, not to individual ministers.
We also had testimony about what happens right now. Ministers get shuffled from one post to another or kicked out of cabinet, and who knows what may happen as time progresses, so they tell their staff to put tape on top of all the boxes in their offices or on the entire floor because they believe the information is theirs, that it is personal information and is therefore is not available to the archivists. That is simply not true. It may be useful if they decide to write books later in their life, or it may be useful memorabilia, but it actually belongs to the people of Canada and it should be available to the archivists. All kinds of information is simply lost. It is not done in a nasty way; it is just lost. Obviously material that belongs to the government should be available to the archivists. Motion No. 17 would allow the archivists to have that access and to make that determination.
One of the things mentioned in committee was document management. If I could quote from the May 12 Ottawa Citizen , it said about document management:
Today, government decisions are being made in oral briefings and over e-mail, voicemail, BlackBerry and faxes, with few or no records kept. Files are scattered on paper, diskettes and hard drives. Minutes of meetings are rarely kept and what is kept is usually hand-scribbled notes that bureaucrats squirrel away in their files which they take with them when they move or retire. To compound the problem, Mr. Reid has charged that bureaucrats are told right from the top to avoid keeping records at all.
That culture which is being created is one which we need to reverse to openness and accountability. It will be reversed if we pass Motion No. 17 which would make all information available to the archivist.
Finally, Motions Nos. 20, 21 and 23 delete copyright provisions that have been tacked on to the end of the bill almost willy-nilly and ad hoc. We heard from so many people who said that the way to revise copyright is to do it holistically. In fact, the Canadian heritage committee has been tasked with the statutory review of copyright. It must be done within a set period of time by statute. It is a requirement. It should be done holistically and all at the same time.
These clauses, which some people are calling the Lucy Maud Montgomery clauses, benefit only a very few people and are not the proper way to amend copyright legislation. It has made the bill difficult to handle in committee and it is going to make it difficult here again in the House. We are making the case today that the clauses should have been deleted.
In fact, there was broad agreement in committee to delete these clauses. Through some unfortunate shenanigans that went on in the committee, they were not deleted. They were kept in the bill and they are back here today. They should never have been in the bill and it is unfortunate that we are dealing with them today. They should be dealt with as part of a copyright debate and a proper change, an amendment to copyright legislation generally.
These amendments that are in the bill currently will have a negative impact on Canada's families, researchers and writers and Canadian culture. A copyright lawyer told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, “Canadians will have to wait another 14 to 34 years to get access to historical material in various estates of public persons who may wish to suppress it”, to lock it up through publication effectively restricted by technological protection measures, “or to price it so high as to effectively limit access, using the powerful weapon of copyright law”. This would hardly help Canadians to tell their stories.
The copyright amendments located within the bill, if passed, would have a negative impact on Canadian families, on Canadian culture, and on historic researchers and writers generally. I just hope that today we are going to fix what should have been fixed in committee, that we are going to delete these clauses and we are going to deal with this properly in the review of the copyright legislation.
I think the members of the committee know that it was done poorly and improperly. It was not thought through well. Person after person testified before us that this should not go ahead.
It is not just the Lucy Maud Montgomery heirs who will benefit. It is funny that people are calling it the Lucy Maud Montgomery amendment because it so exclusively benefits such a small group of people, but historians have asked about the papers, letters and so on from R. B. Bennett, the Prime Minister of Canada during the Depression. They will not be able to publish from those letters because they will get caught up in this clause. What about Sir Robert Borden, the Prime Minister of Canada from 1911 to 1920? It is the same problem.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier was a legendary Prime Minister of Canada. Any of his unpublished works would now have protection until 2024 if they are published first before the end of this year. In other words, they have another long period of copyright protection, even though Sir Wilfrid Laurier of course has been dead and gone for almost a century. The same goes for Stephen Leacock, who is a well noted Canadian educator and humorist.
I urge people to support, first of all, my Motions Nos. 12 and 17 for the reasons I have already laid out. It would make the bill stronger. It would make it more palatable to many Canadians and give more direct instructions to our ministers. I also urge them to support Motions Nos. 20, 21 and 23 which will delete the copyright provisions.
It was the right thing to do in committee and we had a deal to do that in committee. The fact that it was not done there is unfortunate, but we can fix it here today by deleting those clauses and then doing a proper job of copyright review in committee. That is the way it should be done. That is the proper way to make legislation. To just throw it in an omnibus fashion at the end of the bill is a travesty for the archivists and librarians who just want to put their organization together. It has made it controversial when it should have been straightforward.
I urge all people to follow that course of action. I look forward to the debate. I hope the government will support these motions.