Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate my colleague across the way on his re-election. I know he had an interesting night on election night. It is certainly good to see him back in the House.
He asked me about my expertise and knowledge in the information technology field as it pertains to copyright reform.
We could go on and on about the WIPO treaties and the need to be part of an international organization or part of a greater picture that takes a look at how we do this copyright reform because, frankly, media comes from all over the world. We are not the makers of all the media and we are not certainly the listeners and users of all the media, so we have to ensure we get along in the international sandbox, so to speak.
In the last session, we brought forward legislation that would have improved our current copyright regime immensely. We would have had time-shifting. I believe we cannot even legally do that today. Under the current laws, we cannot tape something earlier and watch it later. That is actually a violation of the current law. Therefore, we would have accounted for that and allowed that time-shifting.
Then there is format-shifting. When I taught at Red Deer College, I taught computer systems technology. All the time I saw many young kids walking around with their iPods. They would rip some music, or a movie or whatever the case might be, which is illegal behaviour. We would have allowed for that format-shifting to happen. That would have been a significant improvement. Canadians would have been much better off today had that legislation gone through.
As for what is going to happen, we will have to leave it up to the Minister of Industry to come forward with legislation. I know it is addressed in the Speech from the Throne. We will have to take a look at what that legislation looks like. We plan to deal with the issue. I would encourage the hon. member to wait and take a look at the legislation when it gets here.
Then he talked about arts and culture. The reality is quite different from what he said. We have increased funding to arts and culture. In fact, I spoke eloquently about the needs of families. One of the things I liked most about our last campaign was the fact that we would use the tax system to promote the advancement of arts and culture for our young people by giving the same tax advantage families have for sports, so they could write off those piano lessons and those dance lessons. Those things are very important. That would be a great use of arts money in our country.