Mauril Bélanger

[Business of Supply, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is something else that we all should be concerned about. We are often called to travel abroad to encourage fledgling democracy and the multi-party system in certain countries, and even to participate in elections as observers.

Could the hon. member for Toronto Centre speak to the effect the current situation in Canada might have on our international reputation?

[Bernard Grandmaître Awards Gala, March 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the mood was festive at the Bernard Grandmaître awards gala held by ACFO Ottawa on February 23. This annual event recognizes francophones and francophiles who have distinguished themselves by their achievements, their dedication and their commitment to our community.

I want to pay tribute to Chanel Fournier, who won the young person of the year award; Kathleen Stokely, who was named francophile of the year; Najat Ghannou, who won educator of the year; and Gilles Laporte who was named citizen of the year. Congratulations also to the organization of the year, UMOJA Hope.

The Bernard Grandmaître award was presented to the hon. Jean-Jacques Blais, a former Liberal member of Parliament from 1972 to 1984 and a member of the Trudeau cabinet. He has been putting his heart and soul into the community for several decades, particularly during his time as chair of the board of trustees for the Montfort Hospital and chairman of the Heart Institute's board of directors.

Congratulations to Jean-Jacques and all of the finalists and award recipients. Congratulations also to the organizers of this wonderful evening, particularly Claudette Boyer.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, February 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1) I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association in its bilateral visits to the Republic of Kenya and the Republic of South Sudan from January 17-20, 2012. This is the first Canadian parliamentary delegation for this new country since its creation in July of last year.

I would like to thank our analyst Michael Dewing for this report, which will be his last report, which is being tabled within the regulated 20 sitting days of the House.

[Point of Order, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in response to a question from one of my colleagues to the Minister of Public Safety about a bill that was to be and actually was introduced this morning concerning police powers with respect to the Internet and the need to investigate, the minister told all members of the House—including myself—that if we do not support the bill, we stand with child pornographers.

I have three grandchildren, and I find these comments insulting and offensive. I believe that this applies to all members of this House. You cannot say to someone that if they do not support a bill, they are siding with child pornographers.

Does the minister intend to withdraw his remarks and apologize to his colleagues in the House?

We will recall that when the hon. Ed Broadbent and the right hon. Joe Clark left the House they complained about the low level of debate. It goes without saying that I have no problem debating a bill. However, in light of the dishonourable insults addressed to members of this House, I believe that you must intervene, Mr. Speaker.

[Alberta's Francophone Community, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in early February, I returned to Edmonton to meet with the francophone community. I visited the St. Thomas Community Health Centre, which serves more than 4,000 patients; Campus Saint-Jean, a beacon in Edmonton's and Alberta's francophone community; the Centre collégial de l'Alberta, an important addition to Campus Saint-Jean; and the Centre de santé Saint-Thomas health centre which was built by and for Edmonton's francophone population.

However, there is a small problem at the latter facility because only five or six of the assisted-living beds are occupied by francophones. Something definitely has to be done about this.

Lastly, I visited the Cité francophone, where many organizations work side by side, including ACFA, which speaks for Alberta's francophones and provides dynamic, effective leadership for the community.

Edmonton's francophone community is optimistic, energetic and very talented.They truly want to live their lives in French.

Long live Alberta's francophone community.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the member opposite that I did not appreciate his comment about the opposition members being honest with themselves. I would like him to know that during the election campaign in 1995, the people of my riding wanted to know how I planned to vote on the bill, which had not yet been introduced. I promised to vote in favour of it. I received a standing ovation and I have always voted in favour of it. That is what the majority of my constituents in Ottawa—Vanier want. Yet that member has the gall to say that we need to be honest with ourselves. His comment is unacceptable.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, one of the main reasons we are at an impasse is the issue of digital locks. Some very constructive suggestions were made that would deny large companies the right to install digital locks, a right that would effectively override consumers' rights and not enhance protection for the artistic community. That is one of the elements that we wanted to change.

Another suggestion was to establish a fund to offset the artistic community's reduced earnings because of the elimination of certain rights.

We thought these were very constructive amendments. They were suggested and supported by many of the witnesses who appeared before the committee. We hoped that the government would listen and make some changes to its bill, but nothing changed. They were not interested and were not swayed by the witnesses, which leads us to believe that they will not be paying any more attention this time around.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, obviously my colleague was not listening. I just finished talking about how we did substantially amend the copyright legislation in the late 1990s. Significant changes were made. New rights were introduced. New levies were introduced. I remember at the time those in the commercial radio community were saying it was the end of them, that they could not do it, that those were neighbouring rights which were being introduced. However, from then on commercial radio in our country has never done better.

The answer is we did as a government introduce legislation. It was passed. It was amended in committee, incidentally, to be more constructive and more balanced. My colleague is wrong. We did as a government at the time do what we needed to do in a balanced manner, in respect of Parliament, parliamentarians and those who testified before our committee.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, whether Quebec has had a chance to have its say is a good question. All Canadians have the right to express themselves in this country. Fortunately, the Conservatives have not managed to take that right away from us.

To express oneself is one thing, but to have an impact is another. Unfortunately, in this Parliament, the views of the parliamentarians, the public, the media and the world do not seem to have any impact on this government.

We are reduced to having to assert our opinion right out of the gate because, clearly, nothing constructive seems to come out of the work of the committees.

We have to speak out at second reading and say that we are against the bill in principle. We used to be able to say that we were not comfortable with the principle, but were hopeful that something constructive could be done in committee. That is no longer the case, so we vote against.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate on Bill C-11. This is not the first time I have had to debate the issue of copyright.

Back in the 1990s, which dates me somewhat, because some people would say I am a veteran as I have been here for awhile, we dealt with copyright law. I think it was Bill C-32 at the time, although I would need to verify that. We were confronted then with the same things that Bill C-11 confronts us with now, which is the necessity for balance between the rights of consumers, of artists and of the creators of the material that is consumed, to put it crassly. Unfortunately, it seems to us that we are not striking that balance right now.

There is no denying that there are some good things in the bill and that there is strong support for it in certain quarters. However, the reality is that it is the same bill that was before the House in the previous Parliament. A number of people who came before committee at that time indicated a desire for changes. We thought there was substantive progress in terms of where we could effect some change to strike a better balance within the bill and yet we are now confronted with the same bill without any changes whatsoever.

Perhaps the most popular provision of the bill is the one that would allow Canadians to transfer the material they bought from one platform to another. In layman's terms, it means that when people by a CD they can transfer it onto their iPod or computer as a backup and not be faced with criminal charges. That is appropriate because I would suspect that in this day and age that is what most people do. People transfer their music to their computer so that they can transfer it to their iPod and manipulate it to have playlists and whatnot. Personally, I think it is quite appropriate that Canadians who are paying for copyrighted material should be able to use it on their own platform, but not for the purposes of transferring it to friends, selling it or whatever. The bill recognizes that, as it should, and, therefore, we would be tempted to support the bill on that basis alone.

However, out comes the digital lock. The way it came about is, to say the least, very troubling. We now have good evidence that this is as a result of pressure from our neighbours to the south. We even had evidence that two government ministers had asked the United States' authorities to put Canada on the list of piracy to put greater pressure on parliamentarians to adopt the bill back then and to justify the existence of the digital lock. That adds a major sticking point and one that causes great imbalance. If we give anyone the right to prevent owners of copyrighted material to use it for their personal pleasure and benefit, we give that right away to large corporations because they put a digital lock on works that have been purchased and paid for legitimately. It skews the bill entirely and destroys whatever balance might be there. On that basis alone, it causes a great deal of difficulty.

There are other difficulties. We might be going a little too far with the exceptions on education. We have heard a number of artistic groups say that they were concerned and worried about that.

We thought that the amendments that were introduced might perhaps be woven into the Bill C-11 edition of the bill but that seems not to be the case. Therefore, we have another imbalance that has been created here that we had hoped would have been addressed but has not been.

I will tell the House a bit about what happened back in the nineties with that bill and why I would be opposed to it now.

I was on the government side. We had the bill before us. We had over 50 witnesses come forward. It was obvious that this chasm, which we are seeing again, was prevalent then between the distributors and the creators of copyrighted material. We were rapidly going into a logjam. I became very sympathetic to the plight of the artistic creators, those who were creating this material, because, without them, the entire industry would not exist. We need to protect the rights of the artists in our country.

To break the logjam that seemed to be coming, I introduced from the government side, imagine that, four amendments to my government's legislation. It did not sit well with everyone, and I recognize that, but the four amendments were actually carried at committee and became part of the bill.

One of the amendments was to change the definition which ever so slightly tilted the legislation at that point in favour of the creators. It was to define what a reasonable effort to find the owner of the copyright would be. In the first definition, it was that one went to one or two stores to find the owner of the copyright. That would be very easy to do, but not really fruitful in terms of a real search of who owned the copyright.

I introduced the motion that a reasonable effort to identify and find the owner of the copyright would be to refer to a collective. A collective, of course, is the creation of artists and artistic communities to defend their rights, to defend their copyright. By the way, I know it has been said and I will repeat it, copyright is not the right to copy. Unfortunately, too many people see it that way.

To defend the rights of the copyright, the right of the owner, the creator, we said that a reasonable effort would be to go to the collectives that represent that group of artists. That definition was accepted. It is in the law now and it is what protects.

I am saying this as an example that at the time we had a committee that could and would change the government's legislation, even amendments coming from the government side. I do not think we will see much of that in this Parliament, unfortunately. If I thought we could see some of the government members willing to put amendments forward, say, to get rid of the digital locks, then I might be tempted to support sending the bill to committee so that we could see the constructive work of committees at play, but we are not likely to see that.

My experience, unfortunately, in this Parliament is that the government's majority shuts down anything coming from the opposition side. We have seen it with Bill C-10, so much so that now with Bill C-10, the Senate has had to correct the lack of appropriate dealing with bills in this House.

I have seen it in my own committee where every constructive suggestion coming from either the NDP or the Liberals is automatically shut down. Not seeing any willingness on the government side to be constructive in terms of real work at committee stage, I am reluctant to support sending the bill to committee, because there is this digital lock and there are other provisions.

The bill eliminates ephemeral rights, an important source of income for artists. Given this government's obstinacy, we have no choice but to challenge it.

I will give another example which is a little bit off topic, but I think you will see the relevance, Mr. Speaker.

In the Liberal minority government, we introduced a notion that we would refer bills to committee before second reading so that committees had a chance to work at the bill constructively. The government always had the ability to stop anything that came forward that was way out of line by just not going any further with the legislation.

Two-thirds of our legislation was referred to committee before second reading. It gave the opposition side of the House, at the time the Reform Party, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, a chance to really exercise their craft as legislators positively and constructively. It worked, and by and large, it worked well. Parliamentarians did their job properly. The committee engaged in real work. The witnesses knew they could come to committee and offer constructive suggestions, positive amendments, and that they would be considered.

The Conservative government never does that, not even when it was in a minority situation. Therefore, given all of that, we cannot help but vote against the bill.