That is shameful. It is hard to imagine that could happen. Surely, the Conservatives would have more respect for Parliament and for the House of Commons than to offer it to a foreign government before tabling it here and making it available for members and for Canadians to examine.
Worse than that, the cables revealed that the Conservatives actually asked the United States to place Canada on the United States trade representatives' piracy watch list. They wanted to scare Canadians into supporting this copyright bill. Talk about a regressive, recidivist, bizarre way to approach this. Ten days after the Conservatives made the request, the U.S. was only too happy to oblige them. Naturally. It is no surprise that they went along fully.
The irony of all this, of course, is that the U.S. is now loosening up its own provisions on digital locks. During the last review of the American circumvention rules, it significantly loosened them up. While it is now legal in the U.S. to circumvent a protection measure to create a mash-up for YouTube, in Canada it is going to be illegal, thanks to the government. Can anyone Imagine that? The Conservatives talk about this being balanced, fair and a modern copyright law. This is regressive.
While the Bush White House had a direct line into the Prime Minister's Office, the opinions and advice of Canadian stakeholders, Canadian citizens and Canadian experts fell on deaf ears.
During the 40th Parliament, a special legislative committee on the copyright bill heard from 142 witnesses and it received 167 submissions. That is a lot of input. As members of Parliament, we also received comments from thousands of Canadians. In fact, yesterday alone, my office received nearly 3,000 emails on this one subject. Canadians are concerned about this and have made lots of comments but the government is not listening.
Much of what the committee heard last winter and spring made a lot of sense. Instead of listening, instead of saying that they heard what the witnesses were saying and that they would make some changes, the Conservatives chose to table the exact same bill with the identical wording. There was not a comma change, a period change or a letter moved in the bill except for perhaps the numbering now because it is a new Parliament.
The heritage minister has said publicly that he will not accept any changes. Today, he seems to be singing a bit of a different tune but we will have to wait and see if that is true. His handlers in the Prime Minister's Office have let it be known that they do not even want full hearings on the bill. They do not want members of the House, many of whom are new to the House, to hear from different witnesses and to have the opportunity for a full debate on the bill. I hope not, but perhaps we can expect to see today what we have seen in the last few weeks from the government on every major bill so far, and that is it using closure to move it quickly forward and to ram it through the House. Because of this heavy-handed approach, the undue American influence and the government's unyielding and misguided stance on digital locks, the Liberals have no choice, in our view, but to vote against Bill C-11.
A central concern heard at previous committee hearings was how the expansion of fair dealing into areas such as education would affect artists and creators. Many authors explained repeatedly that the changes in the bill would significantly affect their business models, and that is an important concern for us. However, in Bill C-11 we see no attempt to improve the definitions of fair dealing or provide any kind of certainty to these authors.
Finally, the Liberal Party continues to believe that artists and creators deserve transitional funding in order to cope with the effects this bill would have on their revenue streams. For instance, by no longer allowing creators to charge for ephemeral recordings, artists will lose a revenue stream of roughly $8 million a year. We believe the government should provide some transitional assistance to help artists adjust to the new reality. That is why we proposed in the last election a fund to compensate artists.
Many members will be aware that in the past there was a levy on blank cassettes and CDs. At one point that levy was producing revenue of $27.7 million for Canadian artists, and that was a very important revenue stream for them. Unfortunately, over time things change and people are not using as many cassettes or that many blank CDs and, therefore, the revenue has gone down to about $8.8 million a year. That is a dramatic drop for the artists who were relying on that. It seems to me that the government ought to be recognizing this and trying to find a way to respond to it, but it does not seem interested. It does not seem to have any concern for the impact this is having and we should be concerned.
As a result of the many problems in the bill, particularly the fact that the government has demonstrated that, after hearing 142 witnesses, reading 163 submissions and hearing from thousands of Canadians commenting on it online, in emails and so forth, it does not feel the need for any changes whatsoever, I want to bring forward the following amendment. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and submitting the following:
“this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, because it fails to:
(a) uphold the rights of consumers to choose how to enjoy the content that they purchase through overly-restrictive digital lock provisions;
(b) include a clear and strict test for “fair dealing” for education purposes; and
(c) provide any transitional funding to help artists adapt to the loss of revenue streams that the Bill would cause.