Mr. Speaker, I would inform you that I will be splitting my speaking time with my colleague from Québec.
Today we are talking about Bill C-11. Never has a name suited a bill less. This is not a bill about copyright, it is a bill about the denial of copyright. Coming from a Conservative government whose trademark is hate, fear and despair, this is not surprising. It is not surprising that this same government, which has cut international representation of artists, is again attacking people who advocate something other than hate, fear and despair.
With this bill, the Conservatives are giving the digital industry complete ownership of Canadian culture. It has all the rights, all the resources, and the financial sacrifices made for it. Canadian artists are no longer anything but foils. They are no longer entitled to any financial compensation for their works.
This evolution is taking place internationally. There are two trends. The American trend is to simply try to install technological locks to prevent copying, and give the owners of search engines or Internet sites the right to penalize people who violate their rights or have them sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The artists are the ones forgotten in this debate, because there are also effects on private copying in Canada. They are also totally ignored and deprived of the economic right to earn a living from their works. This bill gives the owner of the Internet content complete power by controlling a lock. It also gives them all the rights in copies and the right to deprive artists, what was called private copying.
At the time, this was not a problem. There were vinyl records and cassettes. They were produced and sold by the unit. Artists received royalties on their works with each sale. When the compact disc and the computer arrived on the scene, there was a financial problem. Records, films and any artistic content could be copied. The response from the Canadian industry at the time was to add a levy for private copying to the price of a compact disc. That generated very substantial sums for Canadian artists—over $60 million. But the technology has continued to evolve. We have seen the emergence of new digital devices like the iPod and the BlackBerry, which allow a work to be reproduced ad infinitum without necessarily having a physical medium like a CD.
For the first few years, we got around the problem by expanding private copying rights from CDs to all digital equipment. This allowed artists to continue receiving the same amount of money. Unfortunately, the legislation was not adapted in that respect, which meant that all of these private copying rights became obsolete. The owners of these rights were deprived of their revenues. For the industry, this meant the end. The music recording industry disappeared. Manufacturers do not produce records anymore. Artists now produce their recordings themselves. The large corporations provide only marketing and commercial support.
Sales have dropped considerably. Not only did these people lose all financial support, but they were told to simply accept it. Educational institutions were even told they had to give up their rights. It was left to artists themselves to pay for the rights of educational institutions to have artistic material.
The creation of these infamous digital locks, intended to prevent piracy, led to two major problems. The first has to do with consumers' rights. There is no guarantee that consumers will really get the artistic performance for which they have paid, to be able to put it on their computer, through the Internet. This basically depends on the capacity of the search engine, the website they are using, the links. It depends entirely on all of that.
The second problem has to do with artists’ rights, copyright, which is completely absent from this bill. It has completely disappeared. It is no longer there. That is why Bill C-11 is not the Copyright Modernization Act, but rather an act to deny copyright. It cannot be called copyright if the individual who has produced or invented something derives no financial benefit. That person's work is being stolen and the government is letting it happen.
It is quite clear whose side this government has come down on when it comes to the new digital economy and the Canadian artistic community. Once again, the government has decided not to be Canadian. It has decided to favour foreigners at the expense of our economic rights and our cultural rights—because Canadian culture is also at stake. The Canadian economy is financially well off. Prosperous, according to reports. Unfortunately, it has been determined that this prosperity will not trickle down to the artistic community, that this community will be deprived, and that only foreigners will benefit from it. Canada is being stripped of a key part of its makeup: its culture. Culture has never been a strong suit of the Conservatives, nor of this particular government.
Need I remind you that this very same government slashed budgets for culture and is cutting the CBC budget, and that it continues to cut and cut deep. It even presided over the demise of grants for international representation. The government hates everything to do with culture. It is an area over which you have no control, and that which you do not control, you usually do away with. That much does not change. Once again, you are attempting to do away with something that you do not like, that you do not control, that is not there to serve you, that does not fit in with your philosophy on wealth creation. It is as if creating something, creating a cultural asset, is not in and of itself important. You do not give it an economic value. You do not assign it a monetary value.
The problem is that, as a consequence, the Conservative government is robbing Canada of its soul. It has deliberately decided to do away with everything that artists need. What do you expect them to do? How do you expect them to live with no income? These people should still have a right to earn income for what they have created, but you have decided to steal from them legally. Because that is what it is, theft.
