Mr. Speaker, one of the things I observed over the last few years with my students is that many of them could not afford to buy hard copies of textbooks. They are looking for new ways with lower costs to try to access educational materials.
I taught in the area of Canadian criminal justice and, as instructors we all know that textbook costs are extremely high for the hard copies. Students really need those alternative ways of accessing information. They need those books for a semester, not 30 days, and they probably need them for longer than that because most of the courses in the program that I taught build on each other and, therefore, students will want to keep those previous resources so they can do better in the next class they are taking. They are not using them to profit. They are not selling them on to somebody else.
Like my previous colleague from Newton—North Delta, who still has her notes in a box in the basement, they will probably keep these materials for a very long time and continue to use them as they launch into their professional careers.
This 30 day retroactive book burning is a very pernicious part of the bill. I hope at the committee stage we can remove that provision.