Madam Speaker, I hope my colleague will forgive me if I was reading while she was also making a comment. The reason I was reading is that a page handed me a faxed sheet from a major employer in the educational field in southern Ontario. The present CEO happens to live in my riding and he said, “I have been watching with great interest the introduction of this bill. It has an enormous impact on our company”. I am summarizing. “We employ some 250 people. In education this would create a serious problem for us, in all of the full range of the materials that we utilize and we sell to school boards and to teachers”.
The member's question is absolutely apropos. It should not be anyone's intention to turn students into criminals, nor should it be anyone's intention to turn teachers into criminals for sharing some of the artistry, the creativity of others, in a learning process.
We need to be able to come up with the definitions that make sense in the real marketplace. We need to come up with the definitions and the legal parameters that make sense from, in this case, the producer's point of view and the consumer's point of view. They both live, economically, in the same environment and we need to strike that appropriate balance.
I think the member can count on members of our caucus to make sure the debate goes in that direction.