Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the House to oppose the bill on copyright modernization.
It is clear that the Copyright Act needs to be amended in order to reflect our changing technology and ways of communicating in Canada. We are witnessing the transformation from print media to digital media, which has caused a profound change in the way Canadians interact with their political environment, their society and their cultural context.
In Canada, creativity, innovation, and vision are born where people live and where they identify as Canadians. All artistic works, whether they be musical, literary or in the visual arts, are based on the experiences that people have in their native regions and these experiences are important.
In my riding, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, artists like Kevin Parent, Jean Lemieux, Stéphanie Boulay, and Madelinots like Georges Langford, Sylvain Rivière and many others help to share our culture with those outside our region.
Indeed, cultural events such as the festivals that take place in the Gaspé and on the Magdalen Islands are important economic and social forces in the region. Moreover, these events encourage artists to continue to be creative.
For example, the Festival Musique du Bout du Monde is one of the most popular events in my region. Held in the Gaspé, this festival showcases world beat music and also provides a forum for cultural exchanges between the Gaspé and the various cultures of the world. It is a very popular festival.
Amending the Copyright Act may have an impact on our festivals. La Virée in Carleton-sur-Mer is a festival that showcases the cultural customs of the Quebec tradition of storytelling, music and traditional dance, and circulates them more widely.
The Festival International Maximum Blues, which also takes place in Carleton-sur-Mer, is one of the best-known festivals in the region. Each year the festival presents over 50 shows.
The Festival international Contes en Îles is a major cultural event for the people of the Magdalen Islands. This storytelling festival takes place in the fall. In just six years, it has become one of the major storytelling festivals in Quebec.
These festivals are crucial to the economy of the Gaspé region and to the cultural and social development of the Gaspé and Magdalen Islands.
Unfortunately, Bill C-11 will deprive artists, such as those behind the festivals in my riding, of millions of dollars in revenue and will erode the market. This bill includes a long list of exceptions that do not adequately recognize the rights of creators. In fact, these exceptions create new ways for consumers to access protected content without simultaneously creating new avenues through which to compensate creators for the use of their work.
It seems that all the efforts put into reforming the Copyright Act in recent years have not been intended to create a balanced system that takes into account the rights of creators and those of the public. Instead, these efforts have constituted attempts to meet the demands of the major U.S. content owners. I am referring, for example, to film studios and record companies.
We all know that the vast majority of businesses in Canada are small, local or family businesses. The vast majority of artists are independent and local. These are the artists who transform culture and society and who sow the seeds, yet it is the multinational entertainment industry that reaps the financial rewards.
Canadian copyright legislation can succeed in striking a balance between the right of creators to fair compensation for their work and the right of consumers to reasonable access to content. This bill grants a number of new privileges in connection with access to content, but does not provide any alternative method of remuneration for artists.
That will have a significant effect on artists’ ability to survive. The copyright modernization bill gives with one hand and takes back with the other.
Although the bill contains some concessions for consumers, they are undermined by the government’s refusal to adopt a compromise position on the most controversial copyright issue in Canada: the provisions relating to digital locks.
In the case of distance education, for example, the provisions of the new bill mean that people living in a remote community would have to burn their course notes 30 days after downloading them. That is not an improvement over the present situation and not an appropriate use of copyright rules. A lot of people in my riding count on distance learning to finish their education. The idea that students would lose access to their course notes after 30 days is completely ridiculous. Does that mean that 30 days after a student finishes a course, the knowledge and skills they learned are no longer needed?
As a university graduate, I still have a lot of books that I bought for my studies. I have had some of those books for more than 20 years. Should I burn them? Are my university studies no longer valid because the 30 days have expired?
Will students who do not burn their notes be convicted of violating the Copyright Act? Are they going to be sent to the new prisons we have just built?
The NDP is proposing that the clauses that criminalize removing digital locks for personal, non-commercial purposes be withdrawn from the bill. We support reducing the penalties for people convicted of violating the Copyright Act, since that would prevent excessive prosecution of the public, a problem that exists in the United States.
The Conservatives have ignored the opinions of the experts who testified in committee and the conclusions of their own copyright consultations in 2009. As a result, they have presented a bill that could cause more harm than good.
The NDP believes it is high time to modernize the Copyright Act, because this bill presents too many blatant problems.
I am waiting impatiently for the return of the festivals in my region so I can once again participate in the emancipation of the culture of the Gaspé and the Islands, and also of Quebec and Canada. Our culture is always threatened by our powerful American neighbour, which will always have more resources than we have and has always had a louder voice. American multinationals are given preference in this bill. Artists’ small businesses in Canada are largely small and medium enterprises. They are family businesses and regional businesses. The bill before us is going to affect the regions significantly.
We often seem to be under attack from the Conservatives. They constantly try to make us pay for the economic crisis. The people in the regions are starting to get a little impatient with waiting for the Conservative government to give them a hand. The artists in my region cannot improve their situation with the bill before us today. They are going to lose an enormous amount.
We should really be working together to protect our local culture. That is the real Canadian culture, a culture that exists in spite of all these economic and political forces. It is just about time for us to work together to restore balance here in Canada.