Where Things Stand in the House of Commons

Ottawa , May 27th 2004 — The dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment for an elec­tion means that sev­eral pieces of leg­is­la­tion that impact Canada ‘s arts and cul­ture com­mu­ni­ties fall from the order paper.

C-12

CCA has been very active over the last year argu­ing against the removal of the artis­tic merit defence in Bill C-12, an Act to amend the Crim­i­nal Code for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and other vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and the Canada Evi­dence Act .   Unfor­tu­nately, the Bill passed in the House of Com­mons on Wednes­day May 12th when 154 Mem­bers voted in favour and 56 voted against.   The CCA is dis­mayed that this dam­ag­ing clause in an oth­er­wise laud­able piece of leg­is­la­tion was nei­ther deleted nor ade­quately amended dur­ing the leg­isla­tive process, as the threat this change to the Crim­i­nal Code poses to free expres­sion and exist­ing cre­ative works is great.   How­ever, it is some small con­so­la­tion that the Bill has died in the Sen­ate with news of the elec­tion call.

C-8

Bill C-8, an Act to estab­lish the Library and Archives of Canada , to amend the Copy­right Act, and to amend cer­tain other acts in con­se­quence, was given Royal Assent on April 22nd.

Under Bill C-8:

•              a new insti­tu­tion, the Library and Archives of Canada, is cre­ated by merg­ing the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada into one body.   This uni­fied insti­tu­tion now has a wider man­date than the two pre­vi­ously exist­ing bod­ies, with the stated goal of “bet­ter pro­vid­ing easy and inte­grated access to Canada ‘s knowl­edge, infor­ma­tion and doc­u­men­tary heritage”.

•              Copy­right: as orig­i­nally dr af ted, Bill C-8’s pre­de­ces­sor (Bill C-36) pro­posed extend­ing the term of pro­tec­tion for unpub­lished works whose authors died af ter 1929 but before 1949. This was com­monly referred to as the “L.M. Mont­gomery clause”, as the heirs to her estate were vocal in their sup­port of this amend­ment.   This aspect of the bill, how­ever, gen­er­ated a great deal of debate and proved con­tentious enough to imperil what many felt was an oth­er­wise laud­able bill. A com­pro­mise was reached, result­ing in an amend­ment made imme­di­ately prior to the Bill being read a third time in the House of Com­mons. This amend­ment pro­vides for a sin­gle term of pro­tec­tion — until the end of 2006 — for all works that were unpub­lished on 31 Decem­ber 1998 and whose authors died at least 50 years before that date; that is, who died before 31 Decem­ber 1948 . This means that no unpub­lished works will fall into the pub­lic domain by the end of 2003. Copy­right will now sub­sist in such works until the end of 2006, irre­spec­tive of whether the author died before 31 Decem­ber 1929 or between 31 Decem­ber 1929 and 1 Jan­u­ary 1949 , and irre­spec­tive of whether or not the work has since been pub­lished. Once this revised term of pro­tec­tion expires, the works will fall into the pub­lic domain.

C-10

On a higher note, Bill C-10, an Act to amend the Con­tra­ven­tions Act and the Con­trolled Drugs and Sub­stances Act, did not pass into law.   Com­monly referred to as the “mar­i­juana bill”, the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would have decrim­i­nal­ized the pos­ses­sion of small and inter­me­di­ate amounts of cannabis, through des­ig­nat­ing such pos­ses­sion as a con­tra­ven­tion, and would have reformed crim­i­nal pun­ish­ments related to the pro­duc­tion of mar­i­juana.   It remains hazy whether this Bill will return in another form in the 38th Parliament.

Interim Report on Copy­right Reform

Finally, the Interim Report on Copy­right Reform, released by the Stand­ing Com­mi­tee on Cana­dian Her­itage in the final days of the 37th Par­lia­ment, war­rants a men­tion.   It makes sev­eral strong rec­om­men­da­tions, includ­ing that Canada should intro­duce leg­is­la­tion before this com­ing Novem­ber 15th to per­mit the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of two World Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Orga­ni­za­tion (WIPO) treaties from 1996.   A gov­ern­ment news release about the report, includ­ing a link to order­ing an elec­tronic copy, can be found at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoCom/PubDocument.asp?Language=E&DocumentID=1346953

The cur­rent Min­is­ter of Cana­dian Her­itage has stated pub­licly on more than one occas­sion in the past month that, fol­low­ing the land­mark court deci­sion in late March   that upheld the legal­ity of online file-sharing, she and the Depart­ment will work hard to table leg­is­la­tion that bet­ter pro­tects cre­ators’ inter­ests.   Obvi­ously, an elec­tion call puts this agenda in limbo, as it remains uncer­tain whether Madame Scher­rer will even be re-elected, let alone re-appointed as Minister.

ELECTION ASSISTANCE — HELPING YOU MAKE THE CASE FOR THE ARTS

CCA has had excel­lent response so far to its 2004 fed­eral elec­tion advo­cacy mate­ri­als, from both our mem­bers and the gen­eral pub­lic.   More infor­ma­tion is being added week by week, so don’t for­get to check in for the lat­est updates.   (If you do not receive CCA bul­letins, you might want to take out a mem­ber­ship imme­di­ately in order not to miss any impor­tant infor­ma­tion dur­ing this elec­tion cam­paign — go to www.ccarts.ca .)

The CBC’s web­site has a new sec­tion called “Canada Votes”, devoted to elec­tion cov­er­age with a spe­cial sec­tion on the arts ( http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/politicalcanada/redbook/arts.html ),

part of which refers to CCA ‘s 2003 pre-Budget sub­mis­sion “Feed­ing the Cana­dian Spirit”.

Canada Coun­cil for the Arts will be launch­ing a new advo­cacy sec­tion next Mon­day on its recently ren­o­vated web­site.   Under “Mak­ing the Case”, Coun­cil will pro­vide insight and real­ity checks into the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in the arts and her­itage sub-sectors and the cul­tural indust.   More mate­r­ial will be added over the com­ing days and weeks.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion

Bul­letin 24/04 stated that ” CCA can pro­vide you with infor­ma­tion regard­ing cul­tural grants that have been awarded in your rid­ing over the past year (using the old rid­ing bound­aries)”.   Miss­ing from this state­ment was the caveat that this refers only to grants awarded by the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts in the first three-quarters of the 2003-04 fis­cal year. CCA apol­o­gizes for any con­fu­sion this may have caused.   Please con­tinue to direct your enquiries to James Mis­sen or Philippa Bor­gal .

Stay tuned for CCA ‘s com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the major par­ties’ 2004 cul­tural plat­forms as they’re released in the com­ing weeks!