I do apologize to my colleagues in the House, Mr. Speaker. Sometimes claiming newness does work, but I do apologize for that.
Our own Prime Minister personally promised U.S. President Bush in 2008 that Canada would pass copyright reforms. Former industry ministers raised the possibility of leaking an advance copy of the copyright bill to the U.S. Former industry ministers gave advice and encouraged the U.S. to pressure Canada by elevating us on its privacy watch list. Former heritage ministers caved to U.S. pressure by enacting an anti-camcorder bill despite departmental analysis that no changes to the law were needed. An official of the Privy Council Office leaked the contents of the mandate letters for the then prime minister's aide. Canada participated in a WTO complaint on copyright against China at the request of the U.S. despite the inability to amass credible evidence of harm against any Canadian interests.
After years of false starts, it is clear that the copyright bill will pass. The government has a majority. However, I appeal to the government and to the House to look at this and make it so that it appeals more to what Canadians need, what our Canadian creative talent needs, as well as our Canadian consumers.
As a teacher, I was pleased to see parts of the bill. I was pleased to see there was a bit of relaxation for educators. On the other hand, I wish there had been a bit more. I was then disturbed when I read that the material that students access will get destroyed within 30 days. When they finish a course they must shred whatever they have.
That made me think about what my history has been like. I know some members will be really wondering what planet I live on, but I do still have my high school notebooks and, believe it or not, I have actually used them when I was covering world history. We do not need to reinvent everything. In the same way, I still have many of the papers I wrote, including some of the research I did from my university days. I do not have boxes of contents. It is all in one box neatly tucked away. However, those are the gems I have treasured over the years and, as a teacher, I have held on to those.
Here we are asking students to destroy things at the end of the course. However, a student who may want to retake the course in order to improve his or her marks, because GPAs drive everything these days, will have no documentation because it will have been destroyed. After 30 days apparently there will be a self-destruct motion, which I find absolutely fascinating.
We are a multicultural society and, as a multicultural society, we get bombarded with all kinds of media. I have am 84-year-old mother who is very fond of Bollywood productions. She purchases and watches those Bollywood productions. As I am looking this, I am thinking about the kind of restrictions this legislation would put on her as she tries to hang on to some kind of heritage and really enjoys watching a Bollywood movie when she cannot go for a walk. I hope there is nothing in the bill that would restrict my mother's ability to watch a movie more than once and then even play it when we visit her just so that she feels we are watching television some of the time, or at least what she watches. My mother is not the only person who could be impacted. Many communities will be impacted.
As I said earlier, there is an absolute need for us to modernize our copyright laws. They are outdated. They do not suit or address the serious concerns we have now or the advances we have made in technology.
In doing that, let us also ensure that we do not forget the rights of the creative talent that will seed a lot of those ventures that we are trying to copyright. As well, at a minimum, we need to address the lock and how that in itself affects not only revenue but could kill creative talent.
In a world that is so digital that once something is sent out by accident, one cannot recall it because it is all over the world, we have to be very careful as we move into this area of copyright.
I hope that members of government will take a serious look at the concerns raised and address some of those concerns through amendment.