CHER Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, February 12, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.)): I'd like to call the meeting to order.

[Translation]

I would like to start this meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Today we will be holding a round table on Canadian Content and Copyright on the Information Highway,

[English]

a panel on Canadian content and copyright on the information highway.

But before we start I would like to recognize the vice-chairman of the committee, Monsieur Bélanger, who wants to make a very short statement.

[Translation]

Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa-Vanier, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

I just wanted colleagues to be aware that we have in our midst, as we probably all know, a playwright, Ms. Lill, and more importantly, that one of her plays will be produced at the Great Canadian Theatre Company here in town on February 25. I'd encourage members to be present there. We're advised that the entire NDP caucus will show up, and that of course won't fill the room so there will be plenty of seats left.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

An hon. member: Good shot.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: But congratulations, and I look forward to seeing it.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Thanks a lot.

The Chairman: Are you nervous?

Ms. Wendy Lill: Not right now I'm not, but I will be on opening night.

An hon. member: We'll clap for you.

The Chairman: I would like to introduce the three panellists.

With us we have Ms. Wanda Noel, who is a consultant as well as a lawyer specializing in copyright and copyright legislation. Some members of the committee who were with us during the last Parliament will recall that she acted as an expert consultant to the committee when we discussed and went through the examination of the legislation on the amendments to the Copyright Act.

We also have Mr. John Gray with us. There's so much to be said about him, but I can do no better than read the first paragraph of his resumé, which I think describes him. I think quite a few of you will know him from his work on the CBC. He's a writer, composer and performer for stage, television, film, radio and print.

Do you sleep at night, Mr. Gray?

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He's best known for his stage musicals, for his work as a satirist on CBC TV's The Journal and Midday, and as an author, speaker and social critic on cultural-political issues. For several years he served on the Information Highway Advisory Council—which is the reason why we felt that you would have a special input to share with us, Mr. Gray—and was instrumental in producing its report on culture and content. He currently writes a weekly column for The Vancouver Sun. We're very pleased to have him here today.

[Translation]

Finally, we have Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the “Centre international pour le développement de l'inforoute en français”. From 1990 to 1996, Mr. Nadeau was responsible for networking at the Edmundston campus of the University of Moncton. From 1996 to 1997, he chaired the “Culture and Communications” task force with respect to the Quebec policy regarding Francophone and Acadian communities in Canada. He has sat on several provincial and international committees and task forces, including CANARIE, and others.

We are very happy to welcome these panellists who will undoubtedly shed some light on the issue we are here to discuss today.

[English]

Who wants to start?

Ms. Noel, we'll start with you.

Ms. Wanda Noel (Consultant, Barrister and Solicitor): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

To conceptualize in my own mind how copyright applies on the information highway I often think of a toll road. A toll road permits a traveller to use a highway but he must pay a toll to do so. Using this analogy, my imaginary traveller does not drive a car or a truck but navigates on the information highway. The toll-booths on this highway are the legal rights provided by the copyright law.

The Copyright Act protects what this committee refers to as “content”. In copyright jargon, “content” is a work protected by copyright. Protected works include most of the content that appears on the information highway. Books, magazines, periodicals, art, music, films, video games and computer software are some examples.

The Copyright Act functions by giving those who create content the legal right to control who may use a work, when it can be used and at what cost. This control extends to use on the information highway. The legal rights provided by the Copyright Act are subject to some exceptions that permit certain uses that otherwise would infringe upon the legal rights provided under the copyright law. An infringement is subject to criminal and civil consequences that are also set out in the Copyright Act.

To come back to the toll-booth analogy, the legal rights that are provided under the copyright law are the toll-booths located on the highway. The traveller on the information highway must pay a toll for the right to use content.

For example, to download copyrighted video games or music usually requires a toll to be paid. This is because the Copyright Act gives to creators and producers of content the legal right to control downloading. This legal right is used to collect a toll whenever downloading occurs. To download without paying the required toll is an infringement of copyright. There are a number of legal rights provided under the Copyright Act. Together, these legal rights form a series of toll-booths that appear all along the information highway.

There are many copyright issues associated with the information highway. In the brief time that I have this morning I'd like to mention three of the most important.

Issue one, is the legal protection provided by the copyright law sufficient to protect the use of content on the information highway? To come back to the analogy, are there enough toll-booths on the highway? This issue was first considered by the Information Highway Advisory Council in 1995. Recognizing the importance of copyright on the highway, the advisory council formed a copyright subcommittee. This subcommittee concluded—and I'm quoting from their report—that the copyright law “provides sufficient protection for existing and new works”.

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This report was referred to a joint committee of the Canadian Bar Association and the Patent and Trademark Institute of Canada, which I had the great privilege of chairing. Our task was to assess the legal opinions expressed by the advisory council's copyright subcommittee. We endorsed the opinions of this copyright subcommittee in many important respects. In others, we were more cautious. We were of the opinion that the existing copyright law in certain aspects relevant to the information highway needed clarification by the courts. This process is now under way.

For example, a hearing will begin next month before the Copyright Board to determine how the rights provided by the Copyright Act apply to the transmission of musical works to the subscribers of a telecommunications service. It's widely expected that regardless of how the Copyright Board frames its decision, it will be appealed to the Federal Court, and probably to the Supreme Court of Canada after that. The reason? There is a need for an authoritative judicial interpretation of exactly how copyright applies to the use of content on the information highway. This is considered to be essential for the orderly economic development of the information highway.

I'd like to come back to the toll-booth analogy for a moment. The issue that the Copyright Board will be considering is whether the existing toll-booth in the form of the legal rights provided to the owners of musical works are sufficient to protect the exploitation of those works on the information highway.

Issue two, if the protection afforded by the Copyright Act is sufficient, is that protection enforceable? Can a traveller on the information highway circumvent the toll-booths? It's not sufficient for legal rights to simply exist. It's also necessary for those rights to be enforceable in a practical way.

Now, this is not a new problem in the copyright law, and an historical example will illustrate the importance of being able to enforce rights that are already provided in the Copyright Act.

Twenty-five years ago, when photocopiers came into common usage in offices and schools and libraries, authors and publishers could not control the duplication and reproduction of their books, magazines and periodicals. Even though there was sufficient legal protection in the Copyright Act, that protection was of little practical value to those who needed it. The problem was not with the sufficiency of the protection; the problem was with an effective means of being able to enforce that protection.

Eventually, this legal situation required amendments to the Copyright Act to allow for the formation and operation of collective societies to license school, library and government photocopying on a national basis. It's too soon to say whether amendments to the copyright law will be required because of the information highway, but in this area some very interesting issues are being debated right now, not only in Canada but also around the world.

One of the most controversial copyright issues is whether service providers on the information highway should be made liable for what travels on their server. This issue has given rise to extensive debate and polarized views. Service providers have argued that they should be exempt from copyright liability on the ground that they don't know, and have no knowledge of, whether or not the content that's on their servers is infringing.

The current Copyright Act exempts a person from copyright liability when that person only provides a means of telecommunication to another person. The issue is whether this so-called common carrier exemption should be extended to carriers on the information highway.

Now, the appropriateness of creating such an exemption is hotly contested by copyright owners. Two polarized views have emerged. One view supports an exemption from copyright liability for service providers, and the other supports making service providers liable for what travels on their servers.

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In Canada, between these two views is a middle ground that would give service providers a legal defence to escape liability for copyright infringement if they could demonstrate they had no knowledge the content was infringing. To bring this back again to the toll-booth analogy, the issue here is whether those who provide the information highway to travellers should be responsible for what those travellers do while they are on the highway.

The third and final issue is whether the nature of copyright protection should be changed to accommodate the use of content on the information highway. Using the toll-booth analogy again, should some of the toll-booths be removed?

For content providers the information highway is a great opportunity to distribute content; but it's an opportunity that is fraught with danger. Content providers are increasingly concerned about being paid for the use of their content on the information highway. On the other side of the coin, the traveller on the information highway is equally concerned that payment will be required even when content is accessed temporarily or accessed only for the purpose of deciding whether the traveller would like to use or buy the content.

In copyright jargon, this is called “browsing”. Travellers on the information highway liken browsing to looking through books on a library shelf. They argue there's no copyright liability for looking through books when they are on a shelf, so there also should be none for browsing on the information highway.

When the joint Canadian Bar Association and Patent and Trademark Institute committee that I chaired looked at this issue, we concluded that with one very important exception, content seems to be made available on the information highway in the hope that the traveller will seek to obtain the whole work in permanent form; in simple terms, that they will buy it. An example is video games. A browser on the information highway can play small parts of many different games. To play the whole game the browser must purchase the game. Allowing users on the information highway to browse a small part of content—in this case, a game—without charge is a marketing strategy to entice the browser into purchasing the content.

The one important exception occurs where the content is placed on the information highway without the permission of the copyright owner. To continue this game example for a minute, if someone, without the permission of the owner of the game, placed an entire game instead of this small enticing part onto the information highway, millions of people could have the game without payment. This is an area where some changes to the copyright law may be required. Our committee recommended that the copyright implications of browsing required more detailed study before it could be decided if amendments were really necessary. To come back once more to the toll-booth analogy, the issue here is whether the toll-booth that controls browsing should be removed or altered in some way.

In conclusion, as more and more Canadians travel the information highway, there are going to be polarized views on the existence and location of many of the toll-booths. There will be Canadians who will ask Parliament to remove some of them or to reduce the amount of tolls that must be paid. There will be others, consisting of content producers and creators, who will want to ensure that there are a sufficient number of toll-booths and that they are strategically placed in the right locations on the information highway. At this point it's very hard to predict with any degree of confidence how these issues will be developed, but it clearly is an important issue not only for those who create and produce content but also for the 5.2 million Canadians who are going to travel on the information highway on a regular basis this year.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms. Noel, for your very clear explanation of a very difficult subject.

Mr. Gray.

Mr. John Gray (Writer and Composer): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We spent an awfully long time on culture and content; a good three years. Not knowing my audience, I'm a little afraid that what I'm going to give you is Dr. Seuss, but I'll do the best I can, a kind of little primer on where we ended up.

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First of all, I think I want to thank the committee for existing, because we're approaching what we call the age of information, which is also the age of misinformation and disinformation. So it's very important that we identify which assumptions are going to be useful in the 21st century and which ones are holding us back, which ones belong in the future and which ones hearken back to the colonial era in which Canada traded its natural resources in exchange for the cultural products of Britain, France, and the United States.

I want to begin with the obvious distinction between two senses of the word “culture” as a product on the international marketplace and as a social process. As a product, culture operates under the same rules as any other consumer item: supply and demand, marketing, economies of scale, and increasingly the global marketplace.

As a process, however, culture functions quite differently. All organisms, especially social organisms, require feedback mechanisms if they are to adapt and survive. Culture, in this sense, is a country's or nation's means of attaining social cohesion and ameliorating conflict.

For example, it's no accident that support for separation in Quebec is strongest in Quebec communities whose citizens experience the least cultural interaction with English Canada. It's no accident that the intolerance toward Quebec is strongest among communities that have never encountered the Québécois.

Among cultural superpowers like the United States and imperial Britain, these two functions of culture work together as one and the same; in a traditional colony like that of Canada, they're mutually exclusive. In other words, the more successful a cultural product is in the international marketplace, the less likely it is to reflect and communicate issues peculiar to Canada. This is not true of the United States any more than it was true of imperial Britain.

Canada has responded to this fact of life traditionally by separating and supporting the internal cultural process while allowing the international market in cultural products to prevail.

Now, global conditions make it increasingly difficult for us to maintain this distinction. Economic realities are leading Canadian cultural producers, especially in the mass media and new media, to market their products primarily to Americans and to regard Canada as a secondary marketplace. In other words, Canadians are on the road to becoming producers of American cultural products at home and abroad.

The situation is made worse by the fact that the United States refuses to recognize the distinction at all, which is only natural for an imperial country. Like any imperial country, American culture is perceived within the United States not as American but as normal. This was also true of Britain and France in their imperial heyday. Thus, to America, culture is neutral product even if it reflects and promotes American laws, social conditions, and values. Meanwhile, contemporary Canadians demand and support both the product and the process as never before.

This cultural paradox arises from the fact that although Canada has moved steadily to the right economically and socially throughout the 1980s, in the United States that movement has been more rapid and extreme. So today the cultural gap between the two countries has never been greater.

Paradoxically, Canadians may consume more American culture than ever before, but we have never been more aware that it's American culture we're consuming. This increasing awareness by Canadians of our cultural distinctiveness and the simultaneous development of new communications media have provided a new opportunity to turn the corner on an old problem and to move solidly into a post-colonial era, provided we design our cultural legislation for the new era, not the old one.

We made many recommendations. I want to give two personal recommendations that are my own conclusions from months and months of discussions on this matter. My first recommendation is: regulate foreign content, not Canadian content. Traditional Canadian content regulations depend upon outdated assumptions that are unenforceable. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

While Canadian content legislation has worked well in many ways and in many areas, it has been at the cost of making Canadians appear artificially induced in their own country and of creating the false impression of an insular culture that is afraid to open itself to the world, when in fact the opposite is the case.

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However, without ground rules and guidelines, global trade will become increasingly a trade in the product and not the process. In other words, it will become increasingly monopolistic and monocultural as cultural content conforms to global economies of scale.

Therefore I suggest that we need to phase out Canadian content guidelines and replace them with foreign content guidelines, whose purpose is the very opposite of protectionism: to ensure that our movie theatres, our television outlets, and our new media are not dominated by the content of any one foreign country, and that Canadians compete with and experience a broad range of products from all over the world.

If we don't replace one with the other, we run the risk of wasting resources on a losing battle and of losing the field to a monolithic, monocultural producer. In other words, the danger is that we could revert to the pre-colonial era and its assumptions, in which case Canada will not be a player in the global trade in content and culture, either at home or abroad.

My second recommendation is replace protection with promotion. We need to use the proliferation of new media internationally as a tool for the marketing of Canadian culture abroad by identifying and accessing an emerging three-tier marketplace.

The first tier is our traditional market, which is Canadians living in Canada. The second tier is Canadians living abroad with a continuing interest in the history, culture, and current issues of their native country, now accessible with new media as never before. Tier three, which is even more interesting, is the growing number of non-Canadians who regard Canada as an alternative North American democracy, as a model for other countries facing the multicultural facts of life in the post-colonial era, as a relatively egalitarian middle power with a sense of social responsibility and an interest in conciliation and peacekeeping.

The paradox of the global village, so-called, is that as borders fade, no indigenous culture will survive without support from outside that culture. That's the key to Quebec's role in Canada and it's the key to Canada's future existence as a distinct society, as a distinct culture, in North America.

Thanks for inviting me.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Gray. That was extremely challenging. It gives us a lot of food for thought.

Mr. Nadeau.

[Translation]

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau (Chief Executive officer, Centre international pour le développement de l'inforoute en français): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for giving me this opportunity to share my views on Canadian content in French on the information highway.

Through my work at the Centre international pour le développement de l'inforoute en français, I am called upon to closely monitor the evolution of French content on the information highway. In my comments, I will cover French content on the information highway, primarily in Canada. I will then recommend some guidelines for implementing a cultural policy.

Having said that, I will be using the term “information highway”, which is defined as the “technology and services required to transfer various databases, images, conversations, multimedia files and other digital signals.” Today, the Internet is still the most concrete example of an information highway. Other models are being developed, but none is able to rival the Internet at this point in time.

Established in New Brunswick, the Centre international pour le développement de l'inforoute en français, the CIDIF, is a non-profit organization responsible for consolidating French content on the information highway.

It focuses on issues regarding the development of the information society for French-speaking countries. It has acquired unquestionable expertise in the development and use of the information highway by the French community worldwide and in the development of French content for the information highway. It has a resource centre for individuals and organizations that want to contribute to expanding the Internet and related technology into the Francophone world.

In carrying its mandate, the CIDIF actively monitors the development and use of the information highway in the Francophone world. This activity has already resulted in the publication of a status report for the Conference of Francophone Ministers responsible for the information highway. The document was updated for the 7th Francophone Summit that was held last November in Hanoi. A copy of it was sent to you.

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Evaluating how much French content the information highway contains requires dealing with the difficulty of finding reliable sources of data and statistics. Moreover, the analytical methods available to us do not allow us to reach precise conclusions. I will nevertheless try to give you a general idea as to how much French content there is on the Internet as compared to English content by using data from various sources that has been processed by the CIDIF as part of its active monitoring work.

Before examining French content on the Internet, let's look first of all at the scope of Canadian presence on the Internet in terms of the number of surfers and host computers in the country.

A study conducted by AC Neilson estimates that there are 8 million Netsurfers in Canada, which represents 28% of the population. In comparison, Netsurfers represent 0,7% of the population in France and 2% of the population in Belgium.

However, since the study does not take into account the Netsurfers' linguistic profiles, I have broken down the number of Netsurfers in proportion to the number of Francophones in these countries according to figures from Statistics Canada and Ethnologue. The proportion of French-speaking citizens in Canada has been set at 23 per cent. Twenty-three per cent of the total number of Netsurfers in the country means that there are 1.84 million Francophone Netsurfers in Canada. Based on the same calculations, there would only be 365,000 Francophone Netsurfers in France and 80,000 in Belgium.

The number of host computers connected to the Internet in a given region provides us with another way of evaluating the presence of the people living in these regions on the network. Thus, in January 1998, there were 839,141 host computers connected to the Internet in Canada. This number, again broken down according to the proportion of Francophones, would mean that there are 193,002 host computers used by Francophones in Canada. The same calculation shows that there are 296,642 host computers for France and 35,175 for Belgium.

It is very difficult to accurately measure how much French content or any other language content there is in the Internet. How can we calculate how many French messages there are among all the messages circulating on the network via mail or news servers? Apart from intercepting these messages one by one and identifying the language in which they were written, which would be very arduous to say the least, there is no proven method.

To show the relative weight of Canadian content in French on the Internet, I will use the results of an analysis prepared by the CIDIF, based on a method proposed for the first time in 1996. This method gives us a broad estimate of the presence of French content on the Web. I will spare you the methodology. It consists of using an Internet search engine and in putting a list of words in French with their equivalent in reference language, which is English in our case. The frequency at which the chosen words occur allows us to then establish a ratio between the chosen language and the reference language.

The analysis was conducted by the CIDIF between February 2 and February 10, 1998, which is quite recent. A list of 50 words was fed into several Internet search engines, including one that contains an index of Web pages found in Canada.

The results show that the ratio of French to English on the Internet is 5.87 for Canada and 36.28 for the world. We must however point out that these results vary greatly from those obtained in two other similar studies conducted in 1997. These gaps can be explained mainly by the choice of words and the approach used.

These results show that there are six times as much English content on the Web in Canada than there is French content. Knowing that the ratio of Anglophone to Francophones in Canada is 2.99, we can conclude that French content on the Web in Canada does not reflect the linguistic reality of this country. Francophones lag behind Anglophones in this area. At first sight, this situation does not seem overly worrisome, since Anglophones are not the only ones producing English content nationally and internationally. In fact, in order to broaden their audiences as much as possible, many Francophones and other non-Anglophones are choosing to publish in English on the Internet.

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Take for example the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where scientists rarely publish in any language other than English. This practice, I might mention, is not limited to France: it has become a generalized worldwide phenomena. By the same token, Francophone companies often have no other choice but to advertise in English on the Web in order to be competitive on world markets. In doing so, Francophones are making a direct contribution to the expansion of English content on the Internet.

Up until now, I have focussed on a strictly quantitative analysis of French content, with all the difficulties involved. You can see that it would be even more difficult to carry out a qualitative analysis of the same content. I can however use my vast surfing experience to state that at present, one of the main problems which French content on the Internet is the lack of quality. By quality content, I mean the quality of language and accuracy of the information. Quite often, the quality of the text on the Internet leaves a lot to be desired, and not only in French. You just need to consult the site of François Hubert, who is called a huntsman of mistakes, to be convinced.

With respect to information, the very nature of the Internet allows all users to be both information providers and consumers. By the same token, any information provider can claim to be an expert in a field without the consumer necessarily realizing it. That is more or less what Mr. Grace said earlier. Are we entering a misinformation society instead of an information society?

In December 1996, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada tabled a report on Internet used by 20 federal institutions. Several shortcomings were highlighted with respect to the use of French on the Internet and several recommendations were made. Implementing these recommendations seems difficult. There are still differences in the quality and quantity of information available in French and English on the Web sites of various federal institutions. Moreover, it is sometimes difficult to communicate in French with some correspondents. They claim that technical reasons prevent them from using accents, or simply do not take the time to write their message using accents.

Using technical problems to explain the absence of accents is no longer acceptable today: all Internet, Web, E-mail, and other services accept all diacritical signs inherent to the French language.

In 1995, Patrick Andries and François Yergeau of Alis Technologies came out with "40 ways to increase the presence of French on the Internet." Three years later, we have no choice but to note that very few of these approaches have been used. As a result, in Quebec, we still have to pay to obtain pieces of legislation, which are nonetheless public documents, whereas Canadian texts can be consulted and downloaded free of charge.

As for France, it has just woken up to the new reality of an information society. In fact, on January 18th, the French government presented its government action plan to "prepare for France's entry into the information society."

Several committees and task forces have studied the issue of Canadian content on the Information Highway. Namely the Information Highway Advisory Council of Canada. I do not in any way plan to act as a substitute for them. Nevertheless, I will now recommend some guidelines for developing a cultural policy.

This policy should set out mechanisms to promote the creation of French content on the Information Highway, while taking into account requirements in this area.

Canada currently plays a leading role in the French speaking world with respect to using the information highway. It is even a world leader. A cultural policy would enable it to continue to contribute to enhancing French on the Internet and on the Information Highway, particularly in the creation of multimedia content in French and in access to technology.

This policy should target several areas of action. I will just mention a few: support for the creation of multimedia content in French; training in information technology and communications; digitization and dissemination of cultural heritage; and access to technology.

Thank you for your attention.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Nadeau.

[English]

We'll start with questions. Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay—Columbia, Ref.): Thank you to all three witnesses. Your presentations have been very thought-provoking. For the sake of time, I'd like to address three observations to the three witnesses and perhaps they would like to respond.

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The first is to Ms. Noel. On page 3 of your presentation, you say, “Between these two views is a middle ground which would give service providers a `defence' to escape legal liability”. That really is a major concern to me. Maybe you could help me with it, because it sounds as if they're guilty until they can prove themselves innocent, which goes against everything that I think our judicial system stands for.

Secondly, you say:

To return to the toll-booth analogy the issue is whether those who provide the Information Highway to travellers should be responsible for what those travellers do while on the highway.

That makes me think of private ownership of a highway, where the private owner is somehow made responsible for cutting people off and pushing people into the ditch, or indeed for wheels flying off trucks and killing someone and so on, the things that happen on the highway while someone is there. I don't see it as being the responsibility of the highway owner. Perhaps you would like to comment on that.

Mr. Gray, yours probably was the most challenging to me. On page 3, you state that “Canada moved steadily to the right economically and socially throughout the 1980s”. I guess you have a fairly broad assumption on the wonderful world of socialism in Canada, so maybe that's why I have a little difficulty.

Coming to your recommendation to “regulate foreign content, not Canadian content”, that strikes me as being the same thing. What can we say about technological convergence? Unless we're going to throw iron curtains over satellites, the realities are that people have access to all sorts of foreign content, and the technological difficulty of maintaining Canadian control.... I wonder if you could help me to understand the difference between regulating foreign content and Canadian content.

Finally to Mr. Nadeau, I realize the web is significantly different from the telephone; however, there is a small parallel there. It would concern me greatly if we were to embark on anything that would seem to say—to go to Ms. Noel's analogy of a highway—that we've had all the English cars on the highway that we are going to permit, so now we're going to wait for 25% of the cars coming on the highway to be French. That would be a big concern to me, as I'm sure it would be to any who is a German, Italian or some other, and who wants to communicate in other languages. I wonder if you could help me understand that.

I think you were saying there should be more promotion of French on the Internet, and I would agree with that. I would just like you to confirm that. I'm sure that's what you were saying, and I wondered if you wanted to expand on it.

The Chairman: Madame Noel.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: That was a virtual iron curtain over satellites?

Mr. Jim Abbott: That's right.

Ms. Wanda Noel: I've just been having a discussion with Mr. Gray about the second part of your question, and you've zeroed in on one of the most controversial issues that's arisen. There has been an enormous campaign in the United States, where a bill was introduced in the American Congress to deal with liability of service providers. That bill has not made its way through the House of Representatives in the United States because of the controversy associated with it.

What we've come up with is an analogy whereby the owner of a highway is responsible for painting lines on the highway, for example, although that owner may not be responsible for wheels falling off the truck while the truck is on the highway. So I think the first point we would make in response to your question is that there is a distinction there between the maintenance and creation of the lines on the highway, and negligence that would take place on the highway itself.

The second point I'd like to make is that amongst lawyers, we often smile to ourselves and say that we've come up with a typically Canadian solution, which is a compromise between the two extreme views: at one end of the spectrum you have full liability being imposed on the service provider, while at the other end there is no liability at all. The third option in Canada is that this defence mechanism be put into the copyright law, which would allow a service provider to say they had no way of knowing, they didn't know, they had no actual knowledge, therefore they are not responsible for what takes place.

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Mr. Jim Abbott: Would it be better if it were put in the positive so it says, “If someone can prove they had knowledge of” or whatever? That would change the onus I was concerned about.

Ms. Wanda Noel: That's a good question. I'm not sure. I don't think I would want to take a position on that until I could see exactly how it would develop in practice. There has been some litigation on the issue in the United States where full liability has been imposed.

The second thing I think I should make clear is that the liability I'm talking about here is not a criminal liability. The wheels falling off the truck is a criminal matter. This would be civil responsibility, which would give a legal right to the content provider to be able to say you've used my material and you should be responsible for that use.

Mr. Jim Abbott: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Gray.

Mr. John Gray: At the last GATT conference, while I was serving on the committee, for the first time the issue of cultural diversity was put on the table. This has also been an issue on the part of UNESCO and of other international groups.

The concern here is that as ownership and control coalesce into fewer and fewer players and from fewer and fewer identifiable cultures, in fact what we are losing is cultural diversity. This is a tremendous concern in the United States, in Europe, in Africa, and in South America. In other words, when it comes to Canadian content regulations we are on our own because it is us we are worried about. When it comes to foreign content regulations, we have a great deal of support and we have many other countries who are in the same boat as we are.

When I said that in the coming year a culture will not be able to survive without support from outside this country, that's specifically what I was referring to. We cannot stand on our own and say this is Canadian content and we have to have this much Canadian content in our culture. It's unenforceable and it's a position that robs us of the ability to make the necessary alliances so that we can ensure that the world is as diverse a place in the next century as it has been in this one. That's really the concern.

In other words, it's exactly the opposite in many respects. It may seem like it's the same to regulate foreign content as opposed to Canadian content. In fact, many other countries do that. In Canada we talk about regulating, but that's an anomaly. Australia doesn't regulate Australian content, it regulates foreign content, because the objective is different. We are not attempting to protect Canadian content, we are attempting to ensure diversity. The objectives are completely different.

[Translation]

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau: Just to reassure you, I am not proposing that a policy promote French content to the detriment of English content. However, as I mentioned, Francophones automatically produce English versions of all texts that exist in French and sometimes don't even produce them in French and use English directly.

So this policy should inform Francophone users of the importance of publishing also in French and in French first. I think that is the aspect that must be retained.

The method used to verify how much French content there is as compared to English content is not precise. It uses a number of variables that cannot be controlled. It simply gives us an idea of the Francophone presence. There again, we cannot distinguish which Francophone organizations publish in English and vice versa.

So it should not be seen as a way of stopping development or support for English content in order to provide support solely for the development of French content. We have to continue promoting both, but French content is a specific area that must be dealt with in a specific way.

The Chairman: Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Mitis, BQ): Thank you to our three presenters. Every time we meet I discover that I know less and less even if I am informed. I wonder if we will ever end up covering a topic like this one.

• 1205

Your presentations have raised several questions, of course, among others yours, Ms. Noel.

In the area of patents on pharmaceutical products, the fact that steps were taken to guarantee patent holders that their patents would be protected for 20 years has made it possible to set up centres of excellence throughout the country, so that people can invest in them and that others can be sure of keeping their jobs, and being motivated, etc.

If we try to draw a parallel with the information highway, how could we link the protection of copyright to economic development using the information highway? Could it help economic development?

[English]

Ms. Wanda Noel: It's very interesting, Madame Tremblay, when you look at the statistics dealing with how much economic activity is associated with the creation, the production, the distribution and the consumption of what this committee calls content. Really, the content is films, magazines, movies and books, and there's an awful lot of productivity associated with that content production.

From where I see the highway going in the future, I think the method of distribution of a lot of this content is going to be through the information highway. It's going to be like another economic avenue, and possibly in our lifetime it will be the method that we will consume cultural products by. So in that sense it's very important that at the very beginning of the chain, when the creator creates the book, the magazine, the movie, he or she has enough legal protection to be able to generate that economic return back through the chain when that is distributed through the information highway.

I think the linkage is critical, and certainly the Information Highway Advisory Council agreed with that, because they saw it as the cornerstone or the building block upon which the economic development of the information highway would proceed.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would like to use a concrete example to understand how it could work. Let's take the example of Mr. Mitterand's doctor who published a book. In France, they consider that he violated doctor-patient privilege. So a publication ban was slapped on the book. It was even taken out of bookstores where it had already been on sale. A Swiss café decided to publish it on the Web. You could download it anywhere in the world. As for the author, he didn't make any profit, and everyone read his book.

How could we take steps to prevent something like that from happening?

[English]

Ms. Wanda Noel: There have been a number of solutions put forward around the world. To date, because the web is new, the solutions have come in the form of trying to deal with pornography. I think that's the first threshold where control of distribution on the web is going to take place. I can give you some examples.

In Singapore, which has a fairly strict society, they require the people who provide the highway, the ability to put things on it and to download from it, to register with what would be the equivalent of our broadcasting authority. That was one way in which it was done.

In Germany, criminal charges have been laid against certain service providers because they provided the ability for pornographic material to be distributed on the web in Germany. That has become a major international piece of litigation now, of course, because the uplinking of the pornographic material takes place in Ohio in the United States and the criminal charges have been laid against providers in Germany.

Recently in the United States a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down as unconstitutional a law that made it a criminal offence to distribute pornographic material on the Internet in the United States. That was found to be an invasion of the freedom of speech under the U.S. constitution.

• 1210

That's a convoluted kind of answer, but there were three different ways. One was a regulatory way in Singapore, where they used a broadcasting authority; the second was a piece of legislation in the United States.

Ultimately, on the control issue, in this case it was control by the state, but the same issues arise with control by the individual. So if someone took the book you gave as an example, you would make it an illegal thing, civilly, probably, not a criminal offence. But you're absolutely correct that the control of material on the Internet is another very important issue. It has been tackled in different ways in other countries, and I don't think any one country has come up with a satisfactory solution yet as to how to deal with it.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I have another question. You say that the courts rather than parliamentarians should rule on copyright on the information highway. I know that parliamentarians spent a long time thinking about the Copyright Act between the first and second phase of the study. But if we want to do something to protect the information highway, there would have to be a third phase.

How could the courts render a decision if they do not have a legislative frame of reference? Normally, we turn to a court because we cannot agree on the interpretation of an act. That is very often the case. How could you say that this is the responsibility of the courts and not the responsibility of parliamentarians?

[English]

Ms. Wanda Noel: I think both Parliament and the courts will have a role to play in the development of the information highway.

In the first place, the rules of the game, the laws, are set by Parliament, and one of the issues that has been discussed now since 1995 is whether those rules are fine the way they are or whether they should be changed. That, of course, is a function of Parliament. The courts will be asked to interpret those rules that are set by Parliament.

The Chairman: Ms. Lill, if you don't mind, could I recognize Mr. Bélanger? He has to leave early.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Chairman, I have a quick question and a thank you to Mr. Gray.

Thank you for having put those thoughts so well. They're challenging thoughts, and we'll have to deal with them. You've taken months and months to come to those, so I hope—

Mr. John Gray: I'm still dealing with the idea that the move from Trudeau to Mulroney was a move to the left.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: We'll have to mull over that one for a bit.

[Translation]

Mr. Nadeau, I am astounded to learn that the ratios do not correspond throughout the world, throughout the entire French-speaking world. This is apparent in Canada as well as internationally. Are there any ideas emerging on the international level as to how this can be resolved, perhaps even technically? For example, is there some type of software that could translate texts on the Internet?

Are these the sorts of things that are being considered or not? I imagine that this will come at a cost and that Francophone governments, or the French-speaking world in general, could get involved. How far have you looked into the future?

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau: Machine translation is a field where progress is currently being made, but it has not yet been perfected. For example, Alta Vista, an Internet search engine, currently translates Web pages into several languages. However, we tested the machine translation software by asking it to translate “Super Bowl”, which exists as an expression in a context we are all aware of. The translation proposed was “cuvette spéciale”.

There is an obvious problem: many words have more than one meaning. So a word must always be put in context. The problem that arises which machine translation is that of the context. A statement as simple as “he dropped a glass on the table and it broke” is transformed through machine translation into a statement that states that the table broke and not the glass. A human being would of immediately understood that it was the glass that must have broken.

• 1215

So progress is being made and we are continuing to work on it. Canadian companies, like Alis Technologies Inc., are spending a lot of time working on linguistic aspects and on the Internet, through the navigational tools that they have developed and that allow us to view the multilingual yellow pages as well as through the machine translation tools.

[English]

The Chairman: Ms. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you. I really am very pleased to be here. I must say that a lot of this stuff is just murky...

[Editor's Note: Technical difficulty]

I have felt, in the last couple of months I've been here, that there is a sense of absolute impossibility about the Internet—that in fact we just have to roll over and accept whatever is coming our way because it really is absolutely an impossible thing to moderate or regulate. So I just love hearing what you have to say—very intelligent, critical thoughts on the nature of this beast, and that in fact it is similar to other forms of broadcasting, in fact is a broadcaster, and that it potentially can be regulated. That just liberates me in terms of my thinking on this.

I also really like the idea of changing the focus from limits to Canadian content to limits to foreign content. Instead of having the sense that Canadian content is something we have to endure, it is in fact the bedrock of what we are, and the foreign content is a top-up and something that we get to enjoy on top of what we already enjoy, which is ours. So those are comments, and thank you for giving those insights to me.

I was involved in the whole issue of CANCOPY, the development of getting moneys to writers who have their materials in libraries and stuff like that—a very long haul and very difficult to do. I'd like to know how you see this process actually happening on the Internet with people like journalists. I know there are test cases going on right now regarding such things, and I'd be interested in your comments.

Mr. John Gray: If I could just refer.... We spent ages on this with the information highway. The seeming impossibility of the Internet is really an illusion, because what is really necessary is a combination of national action and international agreements very much like the Geneva Convention. There is a necessity for these agreements and for agreements on encryption and all the other mechanisms by which you regulate the information highway.

It's in a sense self-regulating, because without ownership and without responsibility you have no value. If it is impossible for me to be paid for what of mine goes on the Internet, I will not put anything on the Internet. What you will have is a trade really in junk and thievery, and it will be a useless and valueless instrument. So it's in a sense self-regulating, but a combination of international and national action....

Ms. Wendy Lill: Okay.

Ms. Wanda Noel: I guess my analogy was very appropriate when I picked the photocopying example, because you fully can appreciate that the problem was not with the sufficiency of the protection but with how it was going to be enforced.

At this point in time we will see enforcement issues arise, I think, where there is an economic threat sufficient to be able to challenge the enforcement mechanisms on the information highway. The government was fairly quick to respond in terms of providing the legislation that allowed CANCOPY to form and to operate. That bill was only proclaimed in 1988, and CANCOPY's revenues now, 10 years later, are in the multimillion dollars. So if amendments are required, I think the law can respond to provide infrastructure that will allow collection to take place for use on the Internet.

Ms. Wendy Lill: May I ask just one brief one?

The Chairman: Very brief, please.

Ms. Wendy Lill: You mentioned the idea that ownership and central...you know, everything is coalescing into fewer and fewer players. It's such a David and Goliath kind of thing. You have one journalist in the middle of Canada who says “Wait a minute, that's gone on the Internet and that's my piece of writing. I wrote that, I own that, and you have no right, as an international news body, to put that out like you have and not pay me.”

• 1220

What happens here? What is going to happen, in your estimation, to test cases such as that of Heather Robertson's?

Mr. John Gray: First of all, copyright has always been up to the aggrieved party to enforce. If somebody puts on your play without your permission, it's up to you to bring about an action of some kind. The police aren't going to do it for you. So that really is what's in force here.

What is going to back up the individual? Is it going to be the same thing that backs up the individual copyright owner with books, an international convention such as the Geneva Convention, by which a person who delivers cultural products will find themselves significantly blacklisted by violating international agreements?

The Chairman: Thank you.

I'd like to pass to Mr. Muise.

I'd like to ask him after the meeting, Mr. Gray, whether he agrees with your definition that he's a left-winger.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

[Translation]

Mr. Mark Muise (West Nova, PC): First of all, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, without adding to your comments for the time being.

Secondly, I would like to thank the witnesses who are with us today. As Ms. Tremblay pointed out, each time we hear a new presentation, it reveals the complexity of the issue to us. It is always difficult, but it is good to hear all of these different points of view in order to understand the phenomenon.

[English]

A comment was made earlier about the courts deciding what would happen. It's up to parliamentarians to basically make those laws so that the courts can decide. I'd like to go there, if I could, and ask, if the Copyright Act should be changed, especially as Mr. Gray said, what's the value of having the Internet if you can't put things that will have value in order for you to be compensated for it? I'm wondering if changes should be made to the Copyright Act for that to happen. If so, what kinds of changes?

Second, what other support measures could the federal government put in place that could help protect copyright material on the Internet?

Ms. Wanda Noel: What kinds of changes should be made? At the present time there's an enormous amount of work going on in the federal government, at both Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage, to decide whether changes are necessary. As I explained in my presentation, there are extremely polarized views. Members of this committee who sat through the copyright bill know exactly how polarized those views can be. It's very controversial, because you have two vested interest groups that are polarized.

At this point in time there have been no decisions made on whether or not changes are necessary. My own view is that when an economic ox is gored sufficiently, there will be momentum then to deal with the wounds inflicted by that, but at the present time—in Canada, at least—there has been no economic ox gored to the point where the government has received enormous pressure to make changes in the Copyright Act. My draw from that is that protection at the present time is not a problem.

Mr. John Gray: If I may, many of the assumptions we have to watch ourselves about is that very often we make assumptions about the Internet and about regulation that are really American derived. America does not have a right to broadcast. There is no blanket right to broadcast in America. In Canada, there is a right to broadcast, which would cover any communication to more than one person other than private communication.

So we have very many laws in place right now that are perfectly applicable to the new media. It's not as bad as it looks.

The Chairman: I have a request from Mr. O'Brien, followed by Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Bonwick, Mrs. Bulte and Madame Tremblay.

Mr. O'Brien.

• 1225

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank the witnesses. Ms. Noel has reminded us of our discussions on copyright, and those of us who went through them will not forget them. I appreciate your information today. It was very stimulating.

Ms. Noel, I'd like to go back to Mr. Abbott's concern because I share it as well. I didn't really hear it fully addressed, or at least maybe we can probe it a little more.

On page 3 of your brief you talk about compromise and the legal onus on somebody to prove he or she is not guilty. I guess I share the fundamental concern about that. I know we're breaking new ground here in terms of the Internet and so on, the highway. Can you help us out a little bit more with that? It seems to me, as a non-lawyer, it would be a pretty challengeable or actionable type of decision. Is that really the best way to go? Won't that open up a legal quagmire?

Ms. Wanda Noel: The concept of providing defences for copyright infringement is not new in the Canadian Copyright Act. In a simple example of that, there's a phrase that's like a safety valve and says that users of copyright material can deal fairly with works. So what happens in a piece of litigation is a copyright owner challenges and says “You infringed my copyright.” but the person who is sued for that says, “Mr. Judge, what I did was fair.” That is like a defence. In your defence you'd say, “Yes, I did that, but it's defensible because I had no knowledge of what was happening.”

In terms of the structure of the Copyright Act, it's not such an aberration. I agree that if it were a criminal issue it would be very different because that principle doesn't apply at all in criminal law.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Thank you.

Mr. Gray, I think your idea, on page 3 of your brief, of regulating foreign content rather than Canadian probably caught all of our attention. It's a very interesting approach and I'd like to explore it with you briefly.

I'd hearken back to FIRA and the economic sphere. As much as I'm a big “L” Liberal and small “l” on some issues, I supported FIRA. I'm not sure it was terribly successful or as successful as some hoped it would be. I think I could concede that point maybe.

Given that economic attempt through FIRA—I like your idea, but I'm not sure how we would really do it.

Mr. John Gray: The difference between the Foreign Investment Review Agency and what we're suggesting here, first, is that the Foreign Investment Review Agency was unilateral. No foreign content rules could be unilaterally applied. We can only do it in conjunction with other countries in similar cultural situations.

Second, on the purpose of the Foreign Investment Review Act, in a way you're right that it is very similar, except we eventually came around to the notion it didn't really matter where the money came from, as long as we had some control of it once it got here. That was basically the consensus when we phased out FIRA.

With culture that's not quite true. I'll give you an example. Let's take CBC radio versus CBC television. That would be a good example. CBC radio came from a pre-existing system from the CPR, which had a coast-to-coast radio service, so it came out of an existing demand. CBC radio came out of a demand from regions, so it has historically tended to reflect the regions in a greater way than CBC television, which arose because Canadians by the thousands were buying Canadian television sets and tuning them into American stations.

The first distinction you have here is that CBC radio existed because Canadians asked for it. CBC television existed not to reflect Canadian culture but to protect British culture against American culture. Of course, we lost because there was no public support for it.

• 1230

What do we have now? We have CBC radio, and CBC television moulded on not just the American content but also on the American idea of what television is. In culture, you don't just import culture; you import the criteria by which you evaluate that culture.

In terms of Canadian television, what we now have, instead of a public broadcaster with CBC television, is an ersatz private broadcaster—i.e., a broadcaster whose purpose is not to deliver programs to audiences but to deliver audiences to advertisers, which is surely the difference between a public and a private broadcaster.

So that is what has in fact occurred. We imported not just the American programs but also the American criteria.

The third thing I want to point out is that although we didn't get together on this, there is a through-line in what's being said here in that there seems to be a theme that ensuring diversity is the single biggest content issue facing the new media.

Second, it's an international issue that cannot be unilaterally handled but requires national input.

Third, it is at the heart of the notion of responsibility for content. Without responsibility, you don't get value.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I have—

The Chairman: I have other requests. I'll come back to you, Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Godfrey.

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.): I must say, this has been a terrific session.

I'd love to mix it up with you, John Gray. There was some great stuff in there. I wish we had lots of time. I hope you come back.

In the interests of some kind of discipline, and at the urging of the chair, I'm going to ask questions of Wanda Noel, questions having to do with the technical nature of the Internet.

Now, the problem with asking the questions is that it's such a moving target. The three things I want to ask about are, I understand, dynamic issues. The three things are basically access questions, technical ease questions, and what I would call “most affected rights holders” questions.

First, access. You've contrasted the Internet with the use of blank tapes, Xerox machines and all the rest of it. I guess the issue is how many Canadians have effective and constant access to the Internet as opposed to those who are technically hooked up and occasionally use it, and also have machines powerful enough to download significant amounts of material as opposed to just drifting through it.

If you were to compare, for example, the number of video cassette owners with the relative ease of using video cassettes, except for the time function, you would find there's a huge disproportion. A whole bunch more people are there. When do we get to the point—and this is the question—where there is a similar kind of access for Internet folk? What are the best thoughts on that?

Second, technical issues. Mr. Gray referred to the kinds of protection issues that can be covered technically. In the most acute form, we think about those in commercial transactions. Is it safe to use your Visa and order stuff without somebody tapping into it? Where are we with that in terms of safely protecting a book, say, or a play on the Internet? Is there some sense that the technology may help us out in the not-too-distant future?

Third, the issue of the most-affected rights holders. What I mean by that is that right now, I would assume that the people who are most threatened in their rights are people who are dealing with textual things—that is to say, books, magazines, plays, or anything you can render into text—because that's the easiest thing to get off and download. While it's technically possible to download music, television and everything else, heck, if you really want to rip off somebody's song, you just have to go to the radio, turn on your cassette player, and away you go. As well, there are much easier ways of getting film than through the Internet. Again, this is a dynamic situation.

This may change, but I want a sense of whose ox is currently being most gored and where we can see that process going in terms of rights holders.

Ms. Wanda Noel: I'll get out my crystal ball and look into it. It's hard to predict where it's going to go. All I can give you are my personal thoughts on it.

With regard to predictions for the future, I personally have been amazed, in my own working life, at how quickly technology has advanced. Without wanting to put time limits on it, I don't think it's very far away that we will be able to access, in real time, both music and film through an Internet connection.

• 1235

We have a technical expert here who probably would be—

Mr. John Godfrey: With quality, too.

Ms. Wanda Noel: With quality, in real time, so that when you download the image you don't get it line by line, you get it in real time, just like you would on your television.

I have an image in my own mind where I no longer have my PC in my home office and my television; I have one screen on which I do everything. My telephone service comes in, all of it comes in, and I have one screen that does all of it. I buy books and music through there. I access movies through there and I send my e-mail through there. This is the picture that's being drawn by the technocrats for the future, and they're telling us it's not very far away.

From a legislator's point of view, there may be things that have to be done to prepare the legal infrastructure in this country for that event. My own view is that I like to see it develop before I take positions on what the legal infrastructure should be, but it's developing quickly and it's very important that the ongoing work be done.

The second issue was whether or not technology will provide solutions to the problems the technology has created. My answer to that is yes, I think so to a great extent. Encryption devices on the Internet are very effective and they're being used now. One of the issues in copyright law is whether or not reverse engineering of those encryption devices should be allowed or not allowed, or allowed to some extent. This is an issue that will come before Parliament, I expect, when the electronic set of amendments to the copyright law comes forward.

Mr. John Godfrey: It will be like grey market satellites sorts of issues.

Ms. Wanda Noel: Exactly. They're not easy issues to tackle, because you have two very important social goals in conflict with each other, so you have to balance them—one in terms of access, and the other in terms of providing the protection.

The third is what right holders are most threatened by the advent of this technology. To date, I would agree with you that it is textual material that for the most part has been threatened by photocopiers and now by the ability to download and access databases of entire literary collections and being able to do articles and things.

But there were provisions put into the Copyright Act in 1988 that have allowed collective organizations to form and operate. Presently, they deal with photocopying only, but it is being undertaken at the present that electronic rights be given to these collectives so that when there is an electronic use a payment will flow, just like there is a payment when a photocopy is made.

Mr. John Godfrey: Will it be easier, technically, to monitor?

Ms. Wanda Noel: It could very well be, because you do have the record through the electronic transmission.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Nadeau.

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau: As Ms. Noel mentioned, as soon as a requirement develops, technology evolves. A few years ago, people were saying that by 1996-97 the Internet would be saturated, that nothing more could circulate on it. There is two to four times as much information circulating on it as there was then, and the band width is even freer than it was at that time. So technology continue to evolves in this area.

With respect to controlling access to information, to works by authors and creators, we must point out that there are two types of works. First of all there are those works that are public and free of copyright. There's not really a problem on that side.

There are also works that people would like to distribute on the Internet and where they would like to control the rights. I think that the ideal solution, that is currently being put in place, is the one CANCOPY adopted, involving micro-purchases or micro-credits on the Internet. The problem is that it is currently very costly to charge 10 cents, for example, to read a document. But there again, technology has progressed rapidly and we will soon be able to use micro-credits.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[English]

If I may ask members and witnesses, we have about 15 minutes left because there are a few other items of business to complete at 12.55 p.m., so we haven't much time. I have three more requests from Mr. Bonwick, Mrs. Bulte and Madame Tremblay, so could we make the questions brief, and the answers as well in fairness to all the members.

Mr. Bonwick.

• 1240

Mr. Paul Bonwick (Simcoe—Grey, Lib.): Mr. Chair, my question is in the same vein as Mr. Abbott's, but perhaps somewhat different. That was on promotion or enhancing the level-of-access quality or clarity of francophone versus anglophone on the Internet. I envision government's role somewhat differently, of course, and that is if there are inadequacies in one of the official languages—I don't mean who gets equal amounts but how in fact the government supports it to raise the level of the inadequacy.... That is more my question: ways we are not doing it now. How can government specifically assist in enhancing the quality and accuracy, and equally important, the ability to access that information in francophones?

[Translation]

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau: Yes. Like I said, one of the most important aspects is access to information. The Community Access Centres are helping solve this problem to some extent. The problem with Francophones is that they are often spread out in small communities.

[English]

Mr. Paul Bonwick: Solutions, though?

[Translation]

Mr. Jocelyn Nadeau: The solution to that is obviously training. It means getting people to understand technology. And as I said, any Netsurfer can be an information provider and a consumer. Producing information on the Internet is not difficult; it is not difficult to do things as long as you know how to do them and as long as you have access to technology. So we should promote those things.

I do not know if that answers your question.

[English]

Mr. Paul Bonwick: No. Maybe it's specific strategies on how government can assist. Perhaps I'm looking for a recommendation from you. Time is tight.

Mr. John Gray: I think we do need an international convention on promoting cultural diversity both between countries and within countries. It isn't simply a matter of countries sticking up for themselves but actually of sticking up for pockets of their own citizenry, so people are recognized. These are issues that can only be partially addressed unilaterally. We don't have a magic law that is going to do that. We need international agreements.

Canada has the advantage of being able to be a leader in this, because not only do we have a lot of credibility but we know an awful lot about what it's like to be a colony of another country.

The Chairman: Ms. Bulte.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte (Parkdale—High Park, Lib.): This question is for Mr. Gray. It's about his whole idea of a paradigm shift here, as opposed to regulating foreign content.

I'll tell you where I'm coming from. I believe the creation of original Canadian artistic product, no matter what, has to be foremost and forefront in what we undertake. Without that product, as without the product in the French language, we risk losing the quality.

My concern is when we talk about regulating foreign content, we do so at the risk of almost saying Canadian content...we don't need those regulations, that promotion, to ensure there are certain times on our radio and on our public broadcasts, and certain things, which are Canadian. If then we concentrate on regulating, not wanting to concentrate on the creation, and the more we create the better the quality...how do we lose that? When you talk about replacing protection with promotion, we're not going to be able to promote anything unless we have an environment that promotes creation of Canadian content. So I throw that back to you, with your two ideas.

Mr. John Gray: Canada hasn't had a production problem for 20 years. We have a distribution problem. That is our primary problem. It is not producing. Canadians are, for our population, producing enormous amounts of material. Our problem is distribution. Our problem with movies is not that we don't make movies; it's that we can't get any theatres to show them.

One of the great cons, one of the great ways of begging the question—and I use that in its actual sense and not in the sense used by the Leader of the Opposition, to mean avoiding the question—is that instead of actually addressing the notion of the complete American dominance, for example, of our cinemas, we abrogate any.... Flora MacDonald's initiative is an example. That was dropped in favour of saying let's throw some more money into production. So we keep the production going. Meanwhile, we have this monolithic distribution system, with vertical ownership; and it becomes a kind of a con.

• 1245

In addition, if we are having production problems, none of these things are reversible. It's not the end of the world to start to phase out and say we're going to start to concentrate just a little bit more on making sure that Canadians see Canadian content in the context of the world, and not just up against American content. There's nothing wrong with that.

I don't see any reason to assume that Canadians are not going to consume Canadian content. Do you know that Canadians consume as much Canadian poetry as Americans consume American poetry, not for our population but in absolute numbers? It's astonishing what Canadians are actually consuming and producing.

Our problem is a distribution system.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: One very quick question, then I'm going to ask the same question that Mr. Bonwick asked you. What do you recommend we do for promotion?

Mr. John Gray: First of all, we have to begin with a paradigm shift. I don't have a list of legislation at the moment.

The second thing is that we need a combination of national and international action, both in terms of formulating our own distinct problems and dealing with them but also in forming alliances with countries who have the same concern. Take Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Scotland. You name it, they all have the same problem. They're all talking about the same thing.

Ms. Sarmite Bulte: Thank you.

The Chairman: Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Mme Suzanne Tremblay: I'm going to ask a rather quick question. I see all the problems we have trying to negotiate the Multilateral Agreement. There are international conventions that protect copyright, but I'm afraid that with the Information Highway we will perhaps one day end up with virtual heavens, like the tax heavens that exist. I do something illegal in Canada, you take action against me, and I move to the United States; you take action against me in the United States, and I end up going to the Bahamas, because we weren't able to sign an agreement with 180 or 190 countries, and I end up in a virtual haven and you can't do anything because my site has been moved. I think that Mr. Gray's ideas are very interesting, but when I see the trouble we are having with the MAI, I wonder how we could end up with something like that for the Information Highway.

[English]

Ms. Wanda Noel: The legal protection provided by Canadian copyright law exists all over the world. This is how it works. Canada is a member of several international agreements. Those agreements work on what's called the principle of national treatment.

Canada promises to protect the nationals of all countries that are members of those conventions—there are 112 member countries in these conventions—in exactly the same way we protect Canadian creators in return for those countries protecting Canadians in their countries in exactly the same way.

Let me give you an example. Margaret Atwood writes a book in Canada. Margaret Atwood has the protection of Canada's Copyright Act. She also has the protection of the copyright laws of France, Germany, etc. There are 112 countries.

Similarly, the reverse works. So when French nationals comes to Canada, they receive the protection of our act.

There are minimum standards in these conventions. International work is under way to ensure that uses and exploitation on the information highway is one of the minimums that's provided under these conventions. So that which we call the sufficiency of protection, the ability to have a legal protection, will exist.

The next issue we have to cross is whether that protection is enforceable in a practical way. That will come as the information highway develops.

So my answer to your question is yes, the legal protection, if it doesn't exist in an international amendment to treaties, will come into existence or be modified or adjusted so that it does. Then we will see if we have enforcement problems under it. I don't think it's impossible. I think it will work.

[Translation]

Mme Suzanne Tremblay: It would be real for the 112 countries that signed the treaties, but the virtual heaven is still possible.

[English]

Ms. Wanda Noel: Yes, it is, but the reality is that most of the important economic countries of the world are within that group of 112. So it's conceivable we could find one.

A voice: North Korea.

The Chairman: If there are more questions, I would like to suggest, if the members of the panel are free, that the members of the committee would like to be your hosts for lunch. They found it so interesting that they want to continue the discussion and pick your brains. I won't be able to be there myself.

• 1250

Ms. Bulte, Mrs. Redman, and I hope, Madame Tremblay,

[Translation]

Can you help?

[English]

And Ms. Lill?

Ms. Wendy Lill: I have House duty, I'm afraid.

The Chairman: Yes, you're still in the House. If you go to the committee, don't worry, we'll talk to your whip.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I don't know.

The Chairman: Mr. Muise.

Mr. Mark Muise: I have a couple of other things that are going on at the same time.

The Chairman: Anyway, whoever wants to, if you would be free, the clerk will organize it.

Just before we leave, there are two letters. One is from the chair of the Standing Committee on Industry regarding the year 2000 and the need for our committee to look at the changing of computers, which is a big issue.

There's also a letter from Mr. Kelly, following his appearance before the committee last week. He issued a correction to some of the statements he made. We will circulate those letters through the clerk. A lot of the members are missing. We'll circulate the two letters. If you want to have any discussion on them, when we meet the next time, we'll do that.

The last item is this. I remind you once again that today we circulated, in your package, the agenda of the visit to the CBC next week. I think there's something in there that would be particularly interesting to the members. Convergence will be illustrated by integrated collectivity and specialty sites. In other words, it's integrated media. So it might be very interesting.

Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Have you received an answer from the CRTC as to their availability to meet with us?

The Clerk: I contacted the CRTC yesterday and I'm waiting for an answer.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Okay, thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: If there's no further business, the meeting is adjourned.