House of Commons Hansard #131 of the 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was copyright.

Topics

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Wendy Lill NDP Dartmouth, NS

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the amendments put forward on Bill C-36, an act to establish the Library and Archives of Canada and to amend the Copyright Act .

I listened to many of the witnesses who came before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and I heard their concerns and solutions. I have also heard today in the House a great deal of rancour about the way the legislation unfolded and was dealt with in sort of the dying days of the last session. Much of that was unfortunate. I urge members of the House to not allow the hurry and the politicking that went on at that time to get in the way of what I think is very important legislation which meets several needs at this time for some important institutions and also for writers in Canada.

I feel confident that the bill satisfies the needs of the two institutions in question, the Archives and the Library. I have gained assurances from the departments and the institutions that this merger is not a cost cutting exercise, that in fact the merger is for the very best reasons, to make this a storehouse of incredible capacity for the stories, histories and archives of Canada, and I completely support that.

I believe members of the House have to value the archival and the heritage nature of these institutions. We have to value the previous generations of Canadian writers, politicians and citizens. These institutions are all about that. We are bringing together two storehouses of information which are critical to the public good and to our heritage.

The bill will also redress some wrongs done to creators in the previous revision of the Copyright Act. I believe it does that in clauses 21 and 22. I support those clauses.

Clause 7 of the bill has created a lot of controversy, probably more controversy than the original change to unpublished copyright in 1997. The NDP supports any measure that protects the creators of works and their heirs.

Janet Lunn, who is the past chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, said it best in her testimony before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on June 3. She stated:

A writer's legacy to his or her family is the copyright in the works created during his or her lifetime. Often a writer is able to leave little else. We don't as writers have large estates and stocks and bonds usually. Our works are our legacy.

In 1997 the perpetual copyright on unpublished works was changed to match copyright on published works, 50 years after the death of the author. A change like this does not take effect right away. Therefore works from authors who have died since 1948 were automatically protected for a 50 year grace period. Works from authors who died before 1948 only received protection for a five year transition period before implementation. When a similar change was instituted in the U.K., a 50 year transition period was considered fair notice and the U.S. chose a 25 year transition period.

Janet Lunn explained the unintended consequences of such a short transition period. She stated:

--works not published by the end of 1998, even if they have been published since, will come into the public domain on January 1, 2004. This means that while an author who died on January 1, 1949, is protected until 2048, an author who died one day earlier, on December 31, 1948, is protected only until January 1, 2004

Today in question period I asked the veterans affairs minister about a piece of legislation which targeted, or excluded, 25,000 widows of veterans because their husbands happened to pass away one day before the legislation offering assistance was put in place. We realize this incredibly arbitrary date will have such horrible, unintended consequences on 25,000 very vulnerable older women.

I mention that because there is some parallel here, that we have to look at people on either side of these arbitrary dates and try to establish what the consequences would be. I would say they are astounding and would have ripple effects in different sectors of the cultural industry.

Five years may seem a sufficient length of time to publish material, even though it can take that long or longer to convince a publisher of the worth of the material. However the five year transition period would mean a publisher would only enjoy the benefits of publishing material until January 1, 2004, which is a ridiculously short period of time to recoup the publishing costs of a book. In other jurisdictions that removed perpetual copyright on unpublished works, a decade long transition was planned.

Our oversight of 1997 needs to be redressed before the end of this year. It is important that this legislation has the copyright provisions in it.

We all are aware that a major revision of the Copyright Act is to be undertaken shortly and I welcome the opportunity to be part of that. What this is, though, is a stopgap measure to protect people from the unexpected consequences of the changes that were made in 1997. I think anyone in this House would agree that one day should not create such a discrepancy in the lives of our writers and publishers in this country.

The unintended consequences of the bill are the following.

Our authors do not have to publish their books in Canada. Nor do the publishers have to publish them. Given the situation now facing them, many will go elsewhere. They will go offshore and they will be published other places.

Other jurisdictions have lengthier copyright protection than we do. If unpublished work is not protected here for a fair amount of time, authors or their publishers can take the work out of the country for publication.

Is that loss of heritage what we want to bring about in a bill such as this? What about the loss to the publishing industry in this country, which is in fact struggling at all times anyway?

Therefore, I repeat that this section of the bill would not make it impossible for researchers or genealogists to use information from archives or collections. This is a point that has been made and I think it is a bogus point. They were able to do that under the perpetual copyright provisions pre-1997 and we all benefited from the books, essays, plays and movies created from people looking at old letters and papers that had never been published.

As always, the concept of “fair dealing” still applies, which means people could use copyright material for research and review, but the right to publish material in its entirety remains with the copyright owner until copyright expires.

I would like to return to the bill as a whole.

Both these institutions under discussion are charged with maintaining the documentary heritage of Canada. It is an important and a costly exercise.

Under the former finance minister, both these institutions saw their budget slashed in half. It is time that we focus again on these institutions and ensure they are economically viable. We need legislation in place which will give them the tools to move forward with this important merger. We need the copyright provisions in place that will protect writers, publishers and historians. I want to work to ensure that the legislation goes through before the House possibly comes to a premature end.

I and the New Democrats will be supporting the bill in its entirety.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

4:50 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

James Rajotte Canadian Alliance Edmonton Southwest, AB

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to stand and address Bill C-36, an act to establish the Library and Archives of Canada, to amend the Copyright Act and to amend certain acts in consequence. It is also my pleasure to support the five motions introduced by my colleague, our critic for Canadian Heritage.

As my colleagues in the Canadian Alliance have stated, we support the preservation and protection of Canadian heritage, including the documents and artifacts that will be held by the new entity created by the bill.

On a personal note, I am accused often by my staff and others of being both a librarian and an archivist. I love to read and my office is filled with books on many subjects. Plus, with the amount of paper I refuse to throw away, I may consider becoming an archivist if the politics thing does not work out.

As the Canadian Alliance senior critic for industry, my interest in the bill lies primarily with the clauses that affect copyright, clauses 21 and 22, and the subsequent Motions Nos. 20 and 21, both of which seek to delete the copyright clauses.

Copyright is the right of the creator of an original work to authorize or prohibit certain uses of the work or to receive compensation for its use.

I find it quite ironic that in a bill which seeks to promote the work of institutions that have as their mandate to put on display and preserve works to be viewed by the public, we find clauses with the express intent to restricting public access to historical works.

In terms of housekeeping provisions, I also find it strange that copyright amendments were introduced in this fashion. Because copyright issues change so quickly, there is a requirement under section 92 of the Copyright Act, which states:

Within five years after the coming into force of this section--

For example, no later than September 1, 2002.

--the Minister shall cause to be laid before both Houses of Parliament a report on the provisions and operation of this Act, including any recommendations for amendments to this Act.

Clearly, no such revisions have been laid before the House. However I understand that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage announced in June of this year that it hopes to launch its statutory review of the Copyright Act later this fall.

In addition to this, last year Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage jointly issued a report entitled “Supporting Culture and Innovation: Report on the Provisions and Operation of the Copyright Act”. Surely the Minister of Canadian Heritage could have raised the copyright issue in that report, instead of trying to put it into a bill in which we think it is not appropriate to be there.

These are very technical amendments that concern the protection of unpublished works. In Canada, the standard term of protection for published material is 50 years after the death of the author.

Unpublished works of authors who died before 1949 will come into the public domain on January 1, 2004. In other words, their copyright protection and the opportunity for their family to make any financial gains from work will expire in the new year.

What the legislation would allow is for the heirs of authors such as Lucy Maud Montgomery to maintain control of Montgomery's unpublished diaries a further 14 years in hopes of finding a publisher.

As legislators, and especially in the age of the Internet, we are often asked to be mediators between the protection of creative works in order to allow the creator to preserve his or her integrity and to earn a living, and the opportunity for the general public to enjoy such creative works. It is a difficult balance to strike I admit.

This situation has been recently raised with respect to access to census records. What is a reasonable time period as to how long such information should be kept from public release? For copyright, in my view, 50 years is a reasonable time period.

One of the roles I have as industry critic is to support and promote research and development. R and D is not limited to the lab or to scientific works. It includes written works and works that obviously deal with the human arts. I would not like to further inhibit the work of historical and social researchers for the sake of protecting the possible financial returns of a few families.

Many have noted that copyright protection for unpublished works in the United States has been extended to 70 years after death. This extension was engineered by the Walt Disney Corporation in order to protect its profits.

What is interesting is to actually think about Disney in terms of borrowing from others in order to create the great films that it has in the past. Cinderella was not originally written by Mr. Disney. Beauty and the Beast was not originally written by Mr. Disney, nor was Winnie the Pooh . The fact is that the Disney empire has greatly benefited, as all of us who have watched these films have, by borrowing from works that have fallen out of copyright.

There is no doubt that copyright is important to innovation. It reinforces an author's rights and entitlements to his or her hard work. However, there is also a relationship between the written word and the role it plays in the process of social and political dialogue.

For example, the genome, also known as the book of life, is a map of all the genetic information stored within our cells. The White House intervened in 2000 to make sure the genome would not remain hidden from public view through intellectual property rights protection.

In the case of the genome, compromises were reached to both protect intellectual property and further research. The public has free access to the genome sequence over the Internet, but those who did all the hard work have legal protection against data piracy. In addition, those who want to use the sequence for commercial purposes must negotiate an agreement with one of the organizations that completed the sequencing.

In my opinion, the genome is an excellent example of how we as elected officials can mediate property rights for the greater good.

From an innovation perspective, it is good to see we are speaking more and more about copyright, patents and intellectual property in the House. Most companies that patent scientific research seem to be able to balance the common good with the clear financial rewards of owning intellectual property.

Ideas and creations are part of an innovative economy and country. According to Industry Canada, patents and copyrights are highly correlated with R and D spending. They help us to work better and compete with each other. They stimulate us to experiment and to eventually reap the rewards of our hard work.

However, at some point we need to share these creations and designs with others so that we can learn from our successes, we can learn about each other and we can learn about our failures. It is finding that balance between the protection of intellectual property to reward the creator and the innovator and allowing the public good to have access to that work.

In conclusion, I am supporting the motions introduced by my colleague, particularly to delete clauses 21 and 22.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5 p.m.

Bloc

Pierre Paquette Bloc Joliette, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate. I will start by saying that we are in favour of the motions by the Canadian Alliance concerning the removal of everything pertaining to copyright in Bill C-36.

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is already looking at this issue. It is extremely complex, as we know, particularly when we want to be able to take into account both the rights of the heirs of the authors in question and those of researchers or members of the general public to have access to these works.

It is completely logical to remove any references to copyright from Bill C-36. Let us hope the heritage committee will succeed in striking a fair balance in this complex matter.

I believe that Canadian Alliance Motions Nos. 12 and 20 address this and therefore have our support. As for Motion No. 17, however, I believe we will vote against it.

That being said, this whole debate is extremely important. A number of my colleagues have taken the opportunity to point out how opposed to Bill C-36 the Bloc Quebecois is, particularly the issue of merging the Library and the Archives, which have two different missions.

The hon. member for Laval Centre has suggested I look up the dictionary definitions of “archives” and “library”. I think that reading those definitions will provide a clear understanding of the fact that their mandates are different and are not such that they can be combined, as Bill C-36 seeks to do.

The definitions are from Le Petit Larousse , which I am sure all will agree is a totally reliable source.

The definition of “archives” given by this dictionary is: “Body of documents relating to the history of a city, a family etc, or those of a corporation, administration and the like”. “Archives” is also defined as “a location in which such documents are stored”. We can clearly see that archives have to do with a certain type of document with a connection to a family or company, as well as certain historical documents.

The definition of “library” given in Le Petit Larousse is: “Location, room or institution, public or private, in which a collection of books, texts, manuscripts and the like are shelved and managed”. Hon. members can see that this is really connected with the printed word and not with documents that could be described as archival.

When we consider a land register, which records properties with buildings on them or under cultivation, with the names of owners, it is quite clear that this type of record has its place in an archive, but not at all in a library, according to the definitions in Le Petit Larousse .

Moreover, most of the industrialized nations have understood very well that these entities have two different mandates. In France, Germany, the United States and Belgium, these are separate entities, with their own administrations, which develop their own logics, since they are not the same.

I think that by merging the two, Bill C-36 creates a great deal of confusion, as much in terms of administration as of mandate. Whether it is the archivists or the librarians, one of these two professions will end up losing.

When I was general secretary of the CSN, I had the opportunity to manage staff. I have already been an employer. We had a records department and a library. When we hired a records clerk, an archivist if you will, we hired someone who was trained to be a records clerk, not a librarian. However, when we needed a librarian, we hired a technician in that speciality, or someone who had studied library science.

Two completely different kinds of training, work and mandate are involved, and Bill C-36 does not take this into account. If it is adopted—we hope it will not be—it will surely result in a loss, for one group or the other, of a fundamental mandate.

Why is the government seeking to combine the two mandates? This is a question that remains unanswered. It is no doubt for reasons having to do with what we could think of as economies of scale. But as far as the mandates of the National Archives and the National Library are concerned, are economies of scale really that important? Will the savings make up for the cost of losing one mandate or the other? I do not think it is appropriate to think in those terms.

Is the idea more to give the new institution a broad propaganda mandate, to promote the Canadian vision of history and culture? That is probably closer to the truth. We know full well that this is a debate that we had right here, during question period.

Like most Quebeckers, including the current Premier of Quebec, we in the Bloc Quebecois believe that Quebec is a nation with a culture of its own. But just recently the Minister of Canadian Heritage referred again to Canadian culture. For her, anything relating to Quebec's culture is in fact a regional aspect of the broader Canadian culture.

I think it is more in this perspective of building Canada according to the Canadian vision that Bill C-36 must be viewed. Especially since the bill expands the mandate of the new institution, Library and Archives of Canada, to include a reference to the interpretation of Canadian history.

There is great cause for concern there, because if there is one area in which diversity and complexity preclude any official interpretation or something of the sort it is that one. I would be curious to know how Canadian history would be interpreted under that mandate. Take Louis Riel for example.

I will tell members a story. I had opportunity to visit Charlottetown. They have a sort of Fathers of Confederation museum, where they outline how the Canadian Confederation came about. This kind of information is always interesting, but it was set in a clearly Canadian vision. For instance, I learned there that Louis Riel had played an important role in the creation of the province of Manitoba. But there was no mention anywhere of the fact that he was hanged for high treason. Is that the interpretation we will be given of this tragic chapter of our history?

There was also conscription, both in 1917 and during the second world war. Canadians and Quebeckers interpret this event completely differently. In this respect, which interpretation will be considered the right one? I can give another example, the War Measures Act of 1970. No matter how we try to look at this, surely our interpretation will be different.

This is extremely dangerous. One of our top sociologists, Guy Rocher, conducted a study with one of his colleagues, whose name I unfortunately forget, on the perspective found in the history books used by schools in Canada and Quebec. He was able to prove that this perspective was completely different, depending on whose it was, Quebec's or Canada's.

As a result, I think that this aspect should be totally eliminated from the mandates of the Library and Archives of Canada. This results in a reductionism that does not correspond to reality. History is constant evolving. Our interpretation of the past is constantly subject to change.

For example, our current view of the first nations is quite different from our view at turn of the century. We realized a number of things that might not have been so important back then. Values also change.

All this to say that this aspect must be totally eliminated. Overall, this legislation is not relevant. As a result, although we agree with some of the Canadian Alliance's motions, in the end, the Bloc Quebecois will vote against Bill C-36.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

Is the House ready for the question?

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Question.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

The question is on Motion No. 12. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

All those opposed will please say nay.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

The recorded division on Motion No. 12 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 17. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

All those opposed will please say nay.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

The division on Motion No. 17 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 20. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

Library and Archives of Canada ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.