Madam Speaker, I greatly appreciate the comments by my colleague from Eglinton—Lawrence. We have to realize that Bill C-32 is basically the third attempt to update Canada's copyright laws in the last six years.
The legislation has remained untouched since 1997, and the Liberal government attempted to update the legislation in the dying days of the Paul Martin regime with Bill C-60. Therefore this is a similar type of bill.
The Conservative government introduced Bill C-61 nearly two years ago but had to withdraw the bill in the face of widespread criticism that it was too cumbersome and too closely modelled on the restrictive U.S. DMCA, the digital millennium copyright act.
At first glance, Bill C-32 appears to strike a balance between corporate and consumer interests. However, my colleagues on the NDP side and, from what I can understand, also my Liberal colleagues are raising some concerns with respect to whether or not the bill actually does what it should be doing. I hope the Liberal members are true to their word with regard to their concerns and when the bill gets to committee they will actually be honest about wanting to change the problematic areas of the bill and will not look at passing a bill that is still going to be defective.
In looking at Bill C-32, we see that it treats breaking of digital locks for personal use the same as if the lock were being broken by commercial counterfeiting. I am trying to get some sense if the member is in agreement with me with regard to whether or not this is politically problematic, as it potentially pits artist groups against students and educational organizations.
I know the member spoke about the education aspect of it and whether we should actually be trying give criminal records to our students. I guess that is the bigger question. Should we be treating our students like criminals?
The member talked about the teachers and whether or not they should be destroying those notes. So again it is the cost to the education process.