Liberals prepared to sit through the summer to study copyright

The Liberal party is prepared to sit on a special legislative committee throughout the summer to study a contentious and divisive copyright reform bill the government is expected to table Thursday. “There’s no question that it’s an issue that is important to Canadians. From our perspective we’re willing and ready to work on this, even if it is during the summer,” Liberal industry critic Marc Garneau told The Wire Report in an interview. The Canadian Press reported last week that the Conservative government is considering proposing a legislative committee to study its copyright reform bill, expected to be introduced Thursday. The committee would sit over the summer to hammer out a consensus on divisive items in the bill and emerge with legislation that a majority of the parties can agree on. Creating a special legislative committee enables the parties to make significant amendments to legislation. The Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee would agree on up to 15 members from all House parties to sit on the committee. It’s expected those members would be picked from the existing Commons industry and heritage committees to balance the interests of industry, consumers, creators and copyright owners. “I’m not coming down from the mountain with this chiselled in stone,” Clement told CP regarding the coming legislation. “This bill may have elements in it where we could seek some consensus and there could be some positive amendments to this bill. That’s certainly in the realm of possibility too, and let the process begin.” Reports and leaks say the Conservatives are poised to reintroduce a similar version of Bill C-61, which died on the order paper in 2008 due to an election. Sources say Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore disagreed on the substance of the new legislation, and that the Prime Minister’s Office had to step in to make a decision—supporting Moore’s side of the debate. Critics say a repeat of Bill C-61 would not represent public input the government received last summer during its national consultation on copyright reform. NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus said it would be difficult to draw witnesses during the summer, and MPs often need to take care of constituency business during the summer months. Angus said the Conservatives are suggesting the committee as a “trial balloon” so that they can create an opportunity to accuse the opposition of rejecting consultation. He added that he’s been waiting for a bill for too long, and it’s unfair now for the government to ask the opposition to rush it. “It would be difficult to get some of the witnesses, and I think there would be an attempt to move it along quickly, to shut down,” he said. “It wouldn’t be good for the bill.” Bloc Québécois MP and heritage critic Carole Lavallée told The Wire Report Monday that she supports the creation of a legislative committee, but said it’s too soon to say whether the party is ready to sit through the summer to study the bill. “We’ll see,” she said, adding: “I think it’s the best idea, to create a legislative committee.” Angus, Garneau, and Lavallée all said they were not aware of any discussion between parties to create a legislative committee to study the legislation. The bill is expected to take an American-style approach to digital rights management—or “digital locks” on programs and software—proposing anti-circumvention provisions aligned with the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The former Liberal government’s Bill C-60 in 2005 proposed conditional anti-circumvention provisions that tied liability to the intent to infringe copyright. Bill C-61 is expected to reject flexible fair dealing—considered an illustrative approach to fair dealing—for the existing “shopping list” approach. The fair dealing provisions in the Copyright Act currently create exceptions for private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting, as specified in the act. The new bill is expected to create exceptions for “format shifting” (copying content from one medium to another) and “time shifting” (storing content for later use) to the Copyright Act to make them legal. But sources say the bill’s proposed anti-circumvention provisions would trump the exceptions, so that they will not be legal if users have to circumvent a digital lock to exercise them. Clement told CP that he wants the legislation to balance the interests between copyright owners and users. “Any bill worth its salt in this is going to have elements that strive to balance those interests, and not everybody’s going to like where the balance is going to be struck,” he said. “That’s why this bill is going to be thoroughly discussed and debated.” Garneau said the Liberal party’s positions are not the same as the policy proposals made in Bill C-60. “We’re five years later, and technologically, there have been huge changes,” he said. “I’m in favour of a made-in-Canada bill. We’ll have to see what it looks like when it does come out.” Garneau said the Liberals haven’t yet reached a position whether they support a proposal to extend the existing current private copying regime to digital music devices to compensate artists for digital copying. “We want to try and find better, alternative mechanisms to compensate creators. If there aren’t, it’s not off the table,” he said. sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Liberals prepared to sit through the summer to study copyright

Broadcast | May 31, 2010

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