Bill C-11, the Legislative Committee Has Been Struck

CCA Bul­letin 30/11

Octo­ber 31, 2011

It is Hal­loween: what could be more ter­ri­fy­ing than to speak of copy­right! So here is the bul­letin promised in our last missive.

Just the facts

Sev­eral names were cir­cu­lat­ing for a few days and as per its oblig­a­tion to name com­mit­tee mem­bers within five days of the start of the sec­ond read­ing debates, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Pro­ce­dure and House Affairs has estab­lished the Leg­isla­tive Com­mit­tee on Bill C-11. The com­mit­tee is made up of 12 mem­bers and can­not begin its work before the House passes the motion in sec­ond read­ing. By this time, the House Speaker will have named the com­mit­tee chair who will not be any of the twelve M.P.s iden­ti­fied below. Only four of the C-11 com­mit­tee mem­bers, three of whom rep­re­sent the gov­ern­men­tal party, were part of the C-32 committee.

Char­lie Angus	Timmins—James Bay	NDP                 (C-32)
Scott Arm­strong	Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Val­ley	Con­ser­v­a­tive
Tyrone Ben­skin	Jeanne-Le Ber	NDP
Peter Braid	Kitchener—Waterloo	Con­ser­v­a­tive (C-32)
Paul Calan­dra	Oak Ridges—Markham	Con­ser­v­a­tive
Andrew Cash	Dav­en­port	NDP
Dean Del Mastro	Peter­bor­ough	Con­ser­v­a­tive   (C-32)
Mike Lake	Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont	Con­ser­v­a­tive   (C-32)
Phil McCole­man	Brant	Con­ser­v­a­tive
Rob Moore	Fundy Royal	Con­ser­v­a­tive
Pierre Nan­tel	Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher	NDP
Geoff Regan	Hal­i­fax West	Lib­eral

 

Tell me more

The gov­ern­ment intends to see the law is pro­mul­gated as early as pos­si­ble in the New Year – partly to finally get this prick­led pear out of the way and because it also hap­pens to be an essen­tial piece of the free-trade nego­ti­a­tions between Canada and the Euro­pean Union (CETA) cur­rently in progress.

Since C-11 is a car­bon copy of C-32, the gov­ern­ment has decided to take up where the pre­vi­ous bill left off at the time of dis­so­lu­tion Par­lia­ment in March lead­ing to the May elec­tions. This way, the 142 wit­nesses who appeared before the House will not be recalled and the process will be con­sid­er­ably short­ened. Since only four of the 12 mem­bers of the new com­mit­tee have already stud­ied Bill C-32, one won­ders if the other mem­bers will take into account the past tes­ti­monies and if those voices won’t be lost in the race to the end.

Each of the wit­nesses who hope to be heard are pol­ish­ing their pre­sen­ta­tions and pro­posed amend­ments so that their point of view echoes the argu­ments already pre­sented, but in a alto­gether dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal con­text than the one sur­round­ing C-32. Once the com­mit­tee is set in motion, which should hap­pen within two days of the adop­tion at sec­ond read­ing, we should know who the Clerk is and where to send requests to appear at the Com­mit­tee hear­ings. We don’t know yet when the vote on sec­ond read­ing will take place, nor do we know if the gov­ern­ment intends to impose a limit to the debate, as it has done five times since the House returned on Sep­tem­ber 23rd.

The cur­rent debate is focused on dig­i­tal locks, with appar­ently very lit­tle room for any other argu­ment. Some activists (includ­ing Michael Geist) have man­aged to cen­tre on the mes­sage that the only major fault of the bill is at that level. The Lib­eral party’s spokesper­son on copy­right law, Geoff Regan, has also focused his argu­ments against Bill C-11 on the issue of dig­i­tal locks, say­ing, “It’s dis­turb­ing, but we all know why the Con­ser­v­a­tives are force-feeding us one of the most restric­tive dig­i­tal lock pro­vi­sions in the world.” When Bill C-32 was being stud­ied, the Lib­eral party pro­posed the cre­ation of a fund that would com­pen­sate artists, cre­ators and rights hold­ers. This time, the Lib­er­als have decided to demon­strate their oppo­si­tion dur­ing sec­ond read­ing and put forth an amend­ment aim­ing to strip C-11 of all con­tent. In tabling his amend­ment, Mr. Regan has stated:

“As a result of the many prob­lems in the bill, par­tic­u­larly the fact that the gov­ern­ment has demon­strated that, after hear­ing 142 wit­nesses, read­ing 163 sub­mis­sions and hear­ing from thou­sands of Cana­di­ans com­ment­ing on it online, in emails and so forth, it does not feel the need for any changes what­so­ever, I want to bring for­ward the fol­low­ing amend­ment. I move:

That the motion be amended by delet­ing all of the words after the word “That” and sub­mit­ting the following:

“this House declines to give sec­ond read­ing to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copy­right Act, because it fails to:

a) uphold the rights of con­sumers to choose how to enjoy the con­tent that they pur­chase through overly-restrictive dig­i­tal lock provisions;

b) include a clear and strict test for “fair deal­ing” for edu­ca­tion pur­poses; and,

c) pro­vide any tran­si­tional fund­ing to help artists adapt to the loss of rev­enue streams that the Bill would cause.”

The NDP issued a press release Octo­ber 26 in which they declared that they oppose Bill C-11 because it would jeop­ar­dize Que­bec cul­ture. Accord­ing to Char­lie Angus, “Bill C-11 under­mines artists’ roy­al­ties and removes rights of cit­i­zens.” This being said, there is no doubt that even if the Oppo­si­tion were to vote en bloc against C-11 on sec­ond read­ing, it would be a purely sym­bolic ges­ture as the government’s major­ity will ensure adoption.

As expected, the posi­tion of artists and rights hold­ers asso­ci­a­tions has not really changed, since the bill is the same. But strate­gies have inevitably changed and now the asso­ci­a­tions must focus on pre­sent­ing polit­i­cally accept­able amend­ments that will min­i­mize as much as pos­si­ble the neg­a­tive finan­cial impact that C-11 will have on a great num­ber of Cana­dian artists and cre­ators whose rights will be de facto expropriated.

Finally, as men­tioned above, the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Cana­dian copy­right law is piquing inter­est abroad. If Wik­ileaks has prompted offi­cials to max­i­mum dis­cre­tion, there is no doubt that the United States is pay­ing great atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing on the Hill and in the halls of power. Sim­i­larly, accord­ing to Canada’s chief nego­tia­tor for CETA, Steve Ver­heul, the Euro­peans, while “gen­er­ally sat­is­fied with C-32 / 11”, express some seri­ous con­cerns. Chief among those is the exemp­tion for fair deal­ing in edu­ca­tion and the antic­i­pated impact it will have on their own interests.

We will share our analy­sis with you through­out the process, which should be rel­a­tively short!