The Canadian Copyright Institute today released A Fair and Better
Way Forward, an analysis and policy statement outlining how some changes to
Canada’s Copyright Act are resulting in an unfortunate expansion in educational
copying in Canada -- on an industrial scale and without payment.

The CCI document acknowledges that the legal provision of fair dealing has been
slightly expanded as a result of recent changes to the law while emphasizing that this
change by no means eliminates the need for collective licensing in educational
institutions. “It certainly does not justify copying practices that are bound to have a
devastating impact on the market for published materials,” noted CCI Chair, Jacqueline
Hushion, who pointed to the recent announcement by Oxford University Press of the
closure of its K-12 publishing division. “That announcement underlined the influence
that changes to Canadian copyright law, as well as the decision by provinces and
school boards to opt out of Access Copyright licences, had on the company’s decision.”

CCI believes many of the revised copyright guideline documents currently being used
in Canadian post-secondary institutions and K-12 school boards are overly aggressive
in their expansion of fair dealing territory. This aggressive expansion is unsupported by
either the changes to the Copyright Act or recent decisions at the Supreme Court of
Canada. John Degen, Executive Director of the Writers’ Union of Canada, explained
that “A Fair and Better Way Forward was published with the intention of opening a
new dialogue between Canada’s writing and publishing sector and the educational
institutions who copy our work for use in their classrooms.”

CCI is extremely disappointed that its invitation for dialogue has been rebuffed by the
administrations and organizations to whom this paper was sent last year. “We release
it now publicly,” said Gerry McIntyre, Executive Director of the Canadian Educational
Resources Council, “in order to raise awareness of the institutional intransigence with
which we have been struggling --- and to shed greater light on this fundamental issue
before further damage is done.” CCI is concerned that – as a result of the education
associations’ unwillingness to engage in a constructive dialogue on the matter,
teachers and their employers will now be exposed to expensive litigation, since no
reasonable avenue for negotiation remains for educational content providers. CCI is
greatly concerned that, as a result of this lack of dialogue, Canadian educators and
Canadian writers and publishers – two groups with much in common -- have been
irresponsibly placed in legal opposition to each other.

Keywords

educational institutions · K-12 · Alberta · Copyright Act · copyright policy · fair dealing