Charlie Angus

[Ethics, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we see the tension over there because Elections Canada has come forward now with a document that says there was a forged invoice, a trail of backdated cheques and a bogus cover-up that it says was intentional.

We are talking about a deliberate attempt to break the law in order to win an election. This is way beyond the member for Peterborough. This goes to the Prime Minister.

When will the Prime Minister make the member step aside until the investigation is complete?

[Ethics, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, given the seriousness, he needs to get his facts straight. Elections Canada did contact him through his lawyer, and they went to court to demand the documents.

The Prime Minister told this House there was no election scandal—

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. Certainly, piracy is undermining the rights of artists. However, we are in a world where there is the potential to make millions of copies and artists are not paid for any of it.

We have said again and again, rather than creating this war between the consumer and the creator, and people make copies because they love the music of their artists, we need to find the remuneration systems that would actually ensure people are paid. It can be done. That is forward-looking copyright. The government has backward-looking copyright.

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are suddenly interested in the international community when it comes to depriving artists of getting paid. They say that otherwise we would be international outcasts. Of course, they trash the Kyoto accord or stand up in this House, talk about the crisis in Europe and ridicule what they call failed European welfare states at a time when the eurozone is in need of international solidarity of some sort.

The Conservatives create a false dichotomy that their idea is to re-establish Canada's international reputation. Canada's international reputation has been created through the arts. Our international artists bring in more than the oil, gas and mining sectors will bring in, yet the arts are not treated with the same level of importance.

The fundamental base of copyright is the trade that is established through the Copyright Board, the right of authors in French or in English to be paid for their work. The Conservatives have decided that authors being paid for our right to make a copy is somehow a tax on the consumer. By taking away that market for artists, they are destroying what is one of the greatest entertainment industries in the world.

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question because, of course, the United States is our biggest trading partner. There is a huge corporate lobby in the United States because of the immense power of the entertainment industry, and I love American culture as much as anybody. The problem is that the American digital millennium copyright act has targeted citizens and attempted to use legislation to shut down any form of cultural development in many areas.

It is important to raise here the issue of the diplomatic cables that have been released. We hear the Conservatives talking about the bad guys and the pirates, and we, in our caucus, strongly believe in being able to take the fight to piracy because it is damaging. However, the image that one of our Conservative members claimed, of Canada being a pirate haven as though it were Yemen or North Korea, comes from the diplomatic cables of the former industry minister, the famous Muskoka minister, who, when staff were meeting in Washington, said to put us on the piracy watch list because it would help us.

Imagine a government whose idea of trade is to have this made up and have Canada treated as an international outlaw in order to help the government pass its legislation. It is an outrageous attack on our reputation.

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for that.

This is the Westminster parliamentary tradition. If the member, who is brand new here, does not want to hear a word that he finds offensive, an attempt can be made to shut down this debate. The government can do it on points of order all day, but this is germane to the issue.

The issue here is that the willingness to work with the government is continually pushed back and the government has to stand on points of order to shut things down.

When we are talking about copyright, we are talking about a pattern which has been established, as we have seen in the recent bills and the attacks on the environment. If I mention the environment, I am sure that is going to set people off, but this is what we are talking about. We are talking about the government's attempt to use this House to shut down the parliamentary rights of people who have been here, who represent their regions, who came in good faith. This is the threat, which is why, when we talk about this bill, we see a government that does not understand actually how to do proper copyright legislation because it refuses to listen. Let us go through some of the amendments.

I asked the industry minister about clause 47, but he seemed to be confused. That is why I thought I would not get technical, because whenever I get technical, the government seems to be confused.

I will get technical on this. Let us talk about clause 22, which is the obligation of broadcasters on backup. That clause is tied to clause 34. The government actually created a loophole so that artists could be denied their right to be paid $28 million a year, which is what the music industry relies on. The government created a loophole. When we accused the government of creating a loophole, government members said that of course they were creating a loophole because they do not believe that the big giant radio stations should have to pay. This is their intervention in the market.

The government's idea of bounds is to take $28 million out of the hands of artists by creating a loophole. The government did not have the guts to do it face up, so it created this 30-day loophole. Then the industry said that the loophole is not fair because it would actually have to work using this loophole to deny artists.

I do not know if my hon. colleagues have had the experience of actually being in the industry, but these are agreements, rules and fees that were set by a semi-judicial body. They were adjudicated at the Copyright Board. However, the government decided that big corporate interests should not have to pay artists, so it created a loophole.

That loophole could have been fixed. I have a feeling the government will find itself in court over this. I sure hope the government is not going to try to shut down the courts next, but we do not know. However, the government will find itself in court because the testimony of government members again and again was that they felt they had to bring this in because they thought it was unfair that artists were being paid.

Let us talk about the book-burning provisions. Students have been told that after 30 days they have to destroy their online notes. One of the Conservative members said that it is not just notes, that it is videos. This was at committee. He said, “Imagine, if someone made a video”. I do not think video exists any more; that is an analog tape. The member said, “Imagine what would happen if a student had a copy of a class lesson and he gave it to his friends. What would happen?” Oh, my God, education might break out.

We have such an enormous opportunity and potential through digital education to reach all across Canada. Again, I represent the James Bay region, which is larger than Great Britain. The opportunities of digital education are amazing. What we need to work out are the copyright royalties, how we ensure that the creators who create the books and lessons and the help are paid, and then the students should be able to use it. However, the government's idea is that this somehow has to be limited.

It gets even more bizarre. Clause 29 is an attack on libraries. This is how it works in the analog paper world. If, for example, I am doing a research paper or a family history and I contact the library, the library will send me a paper copy in the mail. I have 30 days or 60 days to study it, because it takes time to go through a document. In the digital culture, the library could send a copy to me immediately. We would think that is a real benefit and a forward act, but the Conservatives said that the library is obligated to put a digital lock on it.

The Conservatives think a lock has chains and so on, but it is actually an algorithm. They said that the library is obligated to put on a digital lock and after five days the paper has to disappear, otherwise that is somehow a threat. A threat to whom? It is a threat to education, I would think, if five days is how long a person is allowed to have access, otherwise the person would be breaking the law.

The Conservatives obviously did not talk to the libraries in Canada. They talked to supposedly millions, but I think what they meant to say is that they spoke to people who have millions. They just shortened it and said that they spoke to millions. No, they spoke to the people with the millions. They did not speak to the libraries, because the libraries said that was not how to develop education. This is an issue for the small libraries.

There is a wonderful little library in my town, Cobalt, which has been voted the most historic town in Ontario. We have a little archives there. Historians want that, but the little town of Cobalt's library will be obligated to put in a computer code to prevent someone from making an extra copy of old Granny McGuire's memoirs of the early days after the fire. Oh, my God, what would happen then?

The Conservatives' idea of the marketplace is to lock up the market. They are the supposed free marketeers, but no, they will lock up the market and that will create a market.

That is not how a market is made in music and in education and in learning. A market is made by establishing the fees that are paid. In a digital age it is about the ability of people to access works. It is all around us. The Conservatives think they are like King Canute, that they will stand down and tell those digital waves to recede. It is not going to happen. We have access, a multiplicity of access.

What we need to find out are the methods of remuneration for our artists. It is no surprise that every single arts group in Quebec said the bill was a direct attack. We said we should find the common ground and fix it.

Let us continue on to the other areas where the Conservatives have completely failed, such as clause 47, in particular the WIPO provisions, and the linking of criminality to the circumvention of technological protection measures. The New Democratic Party has made it clear from the beginning that we support the ability for new business models. Whether it be on streaming of music or in the gaming industry, there is a role and a right for corporate creators to have technological protection measures that are not going to be broken so that works cannot be stolen. That is a good provision. We support that. It would make us in compliance.

Our friends over there keep talking about WIPO. We have been pushing the Conservatives to implement the WIPO treaty since the day they came into power. They did not want to touch WIPO. We kept saying that WIPO is essential and that we have to ratify WIPO because it is part of our international obligations.

The Conservatives do not seem to understand that under the WIPO treaty, it is very clear that there are exceptions where the technological protection measure is not a right in itself. It is an adjunct to a right. It enables a right. The right is the right of creators on the one hand to protect their work. The technological protection measure is an adjunct to the basic right that protects the work, but in the balance of copyright, there are other rights as well. There are the rights of people to access that work, and the right to access something that is under a technological protection measure for research and innovation. That is a reasonable goal.

The technological protection measure should not be there to interfere with research and innovation. We have a right as consumers to access a product. The Conservatives keep talking about legalization so that people know their legal certainties. The government will give us all the rights that we should have, but when we go to exercise them, it will say to talk to Sony Corporation and Sony will decide whether we have that right or not.

There cannot be a two-tiered set of rights. This is what Parliament is about. There are rights that Canadian citizens have and those rights are defined by Parliament. There are rights within the Copyright Act that go back hundreds of years. That is the balance. The creator's right is not absolute. It is not the creator's house that he or she lives in and nobody gets to come in. It is a public good. Creation is changed. People come in and they get ideas. It is not a walled garden. We accept the right of the creator to have certain rights to his or her work, but we also accept the rights of the public to access that work and create new works. That has been in the parliamentary tradition of France, Britain, the United States and Canada for hundreds of years.

The Conservatives are introducing something new, which is that these rights exist until a corporation decides that one does not have that right. By putting in the absolute protection for technological protection measures, they are saying that people have that right, but when they try to access it, they are breaking the law. If there is a computer code to stop people from doing research and innovation, they are the same as criminals.

The Conservatives somehow think that is being compliant with international treaties. It is not. The WIPO treaty is very clear. The exceptions for accessing works that exist in the analog paper world have a right to exist within the digital realm. How do we do that?

If the government were not so defensive and paranoid and sometimes just downright weird about suggestions, it would have worked with our amendments. We had a number of amendments on the linking of criminality to circumvention of technological protection measures which made it clear that university institutions that need to access work that is under technological protection measures are not breaking the law if it is being done for research and innovation. The university or the student or the person with a perceptual disability is not a criminal. They are not in the same class as the pirates.

However, the Conservatives only see a black and white world. They cannot see anything in between. As they said, “You are either with us or the child pornographers.” The government does not see any middle ground between extremes. That is not how copyright works.

That gets us back to clause 47, which I thought was not given much attention, because people with perceptual disabilities, the blind, the hard of hearing, are not a big corporate lobby. They do not get to meet with the minister. They do not have large lobby organizations. Their interests were completely ignored by the government.

All they were asking for was a very straightforward provision, that for the creation of works for the blind, and we have found that this is of particular importance within Quebec because of the much smaller book market, there is an audience for books created in Braille, but it can only be within the limited Canadian market. What about France, where there are other groups that are making their products available to the blind there? We could have that exchange. We are not trading pirated works. There is no commercial market for taking Braille. This is something that is a service.

It is the same with the issue of the breaking of a technological lock. Again, the government thinks that the lock is like a door lock that is picked. It will only allow the students with a perceptual disability to tamper with the lock. It sounds criminal. It sounds as though they are sneaking around wearing a mask and breaking in through a window.

This is about when a student is in a classroom and cannot see the board. That student should not be denied that right because someone says there is a technological protection measure, and unless that student with a perceptual disability can guarantee that he or she is going to repair the lock after damaging it, the student cannot access it.

It is a ridiculous provision within the bill. It is ridiculous. There is no way that one repairs that lock after it is broken. It is a computer algorithm. It is about extracting information.

A practical example is that my daughter was in human rights law and there were lessons she could not hear because of her deafness. We needed to access the visual works so that she could get subtitles. For the university to do that, it had to actually break the digital lock. It is a fairly straightforward thing. Then the university could create a work that the student could access. Under the human rights code, a student has the right to access it. That is a guaranteed right. That is a right recognized by Parliament, but it is a right that is being denied under this bill, because only if those students can guarantee they can somehow fix the lock, that they can somehow stuff all the information back into the CD, put the cover back on the CD, and put the CD back on the shelf, then it will be okay. It is ridiculous.

We had straightforward amendments which the government refused at every step of the way. Then the Conservatives whine and complain that they actually had to sit and debate the bill. If they had worked on those straightforward amendments, this bill would have been through the House months ago.

It is going to be like this with every single bill, unless the government starts to realize that with a little compromise and a little goodwill, we can create legislation that is in the interests of all Canadians, not just in the interests of the Conservative Party and its friends who have millions.

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will stay on the issue of what we are dealing with, which is the government's defensiveness. The member is telling me that he will get up and walk out if he has to listen to things he does not want to hear. That, unfortunately, has been the problem with this bill.

We came forward with numerous amendments. We told the minister that if we could sit down and discuss it, this bill would pass quickly. We were willing to do that. The government has to go to time allocation again and again because it will not work with anybody. It sees amendments as a threat, just as it sees a threat when the issue is raised about how it stripped Fisheries and Oceans and the Kyoto provisions. It tries to shut down debate or—

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on this issue, which is vitally important for Canada. The need to update Canada's copyright legislation is something that the New Democrats have been pushing the current government and the previous Liberal government on for the better part of the last decade.

The problem is that this bill fails. It fails the rights of artists. It is an attack on the royalty regimes that it created, not just an incredible worldwide industry but also a sense of identity of culture that has created the importance of ensuring we have a voice. That voice is actually created within the marketplace of copyright, which I will get to in a moment. It attacks education, students and people with perceptual disabilities.

The government did not need to go down this road. We could have worked with the government. We were more than willing to work with it and we said it again and again. There are elements in the bill that are much better than the previous Conservative bill, which looked like a dog's breakfast when we considered how badly it was constructed, but this bill could have been fixed.

At the outset, we said that this did not need to be an ideological fight. We all have a stake in improving copyright. Unfortunately, the government does not know how to do to anything except in an ideological way. The government's idea of balance is that it is its way or the highway. Its idea of balance is that anybody who does not agree with it is a threat, which is why it had to go to such extreme measures as threatening Parks Canada employees, telling them that if they embarrassed the hapless parks minister their jobs would be on the line. It seems that the public servants of Canada, whose job it is to be public servants to Canadians, are to be the loyal soldiers of the Conservative Party or they are threatened.

We have seen how the government destroyed the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. We know now why. It is because it had—

[Copyright Modernization Act, June 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have spent many years on the issue of copyright in our attempt and our willingness to work with the government to improve legislation that is fundamentally flawed. However, like everything with the Conservative government, it will not work with anybody. It sees people as perceived threats, as perceived enemies. Every amendment that we brought forward was attacked or shut down.

I would like to ask the hon. member about clause 47. Clause 47 sets out to punish people with perceptual disabilities. When my daughter, who is deaf, went through school and needed copyrighted material, she had to actually break the algorithm to access materials. That is a fundamental right for students who are so far behind in being able to access what other students take for granted. Under clause 47, the government is telling students with perceptual disabilities that they are responsible for repairing the lock.

Students who are blind have the right to access material if they need to have the print drawn up. Deaf students need the right to access material if they need something added in as a code so the subtitles can be seen. However, that can only be done if they take responsibility for repairing the lock afterward; otherwise, they are involved in a criminal activity.

Does the hon. member have any idea whatsoever about how to repair a digital lock? I know the Conservatives think of it in terms of a lock, but it is not a lock. It is a computer algorithm. Why would the Conservatives not work with us on a clear amendment that would ensure that students with perceptual disabilities are not treated as criminals for accessing material in an educational format so they can succeed?

[Ethics, June 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday you thought it was okay, but I will accept your judgment on this.

What we are dealing with is a $21,000 bill that the Conservatives claim is a non-bill. Around this bill, we have personal cheques, cancelled cheques and refunded cheques. We have an investigation, lawsuits and court files. These are serious issues.

I ask the member for Peterborough to do the right thing and stand up and say that he will step down while this investigation is under way. That is what he needs to do.