Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you how happy I am about the tabling of Bill C-59. For those who do not know—in addition to what the Minister of Justice said in his speech—two parties worked hard to get the government to finally table such a bill: I worked on behalf of the Liberal Party in my role as official justice critic, and the member for Hochelaga worked on behalf of the Bloc Québécois.
On March 2, I sent instructions to legislative services for drafting a private member's bill to amend the Criminal Code to include criminal offences, as in the government's Bill C-59.
Moreover, my Bloc colleague filed a notice of motion on March 13, 2007, with the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights regarding movie piracy in Canada. The notice of motion asked the committee to devote a sitting to analysis of this problem and to invite representatives of the industry and of the Department of Justice to appear before the committee. It also asked that this sitting be held no later than the committee's last sitting in June.
The minister could have recognized the hard work of my colleague from Hochelaga and of the Liberals on this issue. But he did not, and I do not know why.
The issue of movie piracy is a serious issue for the Canadian industry, the film, movie production, movie distribution industry, as my colleague from North Vancouver mentioned.
I draw the attention of the Speaker to the fact that I will be splitting my time with the member for North Vancouver.
I can give just one example. In 2006 there was a camcording illegally made of a film in a Canadian theatre. That illegal pirated copy went to Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Fiji, the United States, elsewhere in Canada, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, the U.K., the Ukraine, Hungary and Russia. Copies of the DVDs are made, bootlegged and then sold. That is not all. It was also released on the Internet by 11 different pirate groups. There were streaming sites, new groups, auction sites and P2P networks.
It is a serious problem. The Canadian Motion Picture Distribution Association estimates that in 2005 its members lost $180 million U.S. due to movie piracy in Canada.
Unfortunately, while Quebec is the heart of Canada's cultural industries and has a vibrant film production industry, it has also, via Montreal, become the place for movie piracy.
I have had cinema theatre owners meet with me in Ottawa from Montreal and describe specific events where individuals were illegally camcording. The police were called and the police refused to come. As the Minister of Justice mentioned, the RCMP has experience in applying the Copyright Act, but not the local police.
Let me just give a couple of facts. The Canadian Movie Picture Distribution Association and some of its members has already estimated that the source of illegal camcording of certain blockbuster films, came primarily from Montreal. Those films were Borat, Eragon and Night at the Museum.
Mr. Snyder, who is Twentieth Century Fox's Hollywood based president of domestic distribution, said that at one point in 2006, Canadian theatres were the source for nearly 50% of illegal camcordings across the globe.
For the third year in a row, the U.S. government has placed Canada on its watch list for a lack of intellectual property rights enforcement. As the minister mentioned, that puts our country, Canada, in the same country as notorious film piracy hubs like China, Lebanon, the Philippines and Russia.
That is not all. In the United States the government acted in 2005. The U.S. President signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which made camcording in a theatre, without the consent of the owner, a federal felony. Now 38 of 50 states have specific state laws that impose criminal sanctions against camcorder pirates with both fines and jail time.
Here in Canada we do have the Copyright Act and under the Copyright Act, exhibitors have the ability to lay a criminal complaint before the police and to have that person charged criminally. The problem is, in order to charge someone under the Copyright Act, we have to prove that the individual camcording in the theatre not only does not have consent of the owner but also is doing it for distribution purposes. That is virtually impossible.
In order for the RCMP and local police to be able to do that, they have to mount and invest serious human resources, serious financial resources, and sometimes those kinds of investigations can take several years in order to be able to make that kind of proof before a criminal court.
Let me give the House an example of one of the few film pirates that Canada actually arrested and prosecuted. Several months ago, the police in Richmond B.C. raided a small business in a strip mall, seizing thousands of counterfeit DVDs. The owner, 46 year old Chiu Lau, was arrested and fined for his third time in three years under the Copyright Act. Last Remembrance Day, Lau pleaded guilty to 83 counts under the Copyright Act. What was his sentence? He received a $5,000 fine and a 12 month conditional sentence. He was confined to his home from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. It is ridiculous.
The Liberals will be supporting Bill C-59. I am proud that by the actions of this Liberal Party, this Liberal caucus, by my actions as the justice critic for the Liberals, and by the actions of my colleague of the Bloc Québécois, the MP for Hochelaga, that we were able to bring pressure to bear on the government, which appeared to not be doing anything for some time, and finally did in fact decide to move forward on this.
I would like to congratulate the government for moving forward on this legislation. I would like to congratulate my colleague from the Bloc, the MP for Hochelaga. I would like to thank my Liberal colleagues, who will be supporting this bill.
We do wish to see this bill fast tracked. In fact, we had even offered not to have any speakers if the government would also have no speakers. The government decided, in its wisdom, that it did want the Minister of Justice to speak to it, and therefore Liberals will be speaking to it, and I assume the Bloc and the NDP.
Kudos to the movie industry here in Canada for bringing this to our attention. Kudos to the members of Parliament who will be supporting this bill.