CHPC Committee Meeting

    I call this meeting to order.

    Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 12 of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

    Before we begin, I would ask all in-person participants to read the guidelines that are written on the updated cards on the table in front of you. They are measures in place to help prevent audio and feedback incidents and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters.

    You will also notice a QR code on the card. It links to a short awareness video, if needed.

    Pursuant to the routine motion adopted by the committee, I can confirm that all witnesses are completing the required connection tests in advance of this meeting. I believe we have some issues online right now, but we'll move forward. Hopefully, those issues will be resolved before we get to our online participants.

    Please wait until I recognize you by name before you speak, and all comments should be addressed through the chair.

    Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, September 22, 2025, the committee is meeting today to study the effects of technological advances in AI on the creative industries.

    With us today we have Stephanie Enders, chief delivery officer at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.

    We have Pierre-Philippe Côté, entrepreneur and founder of Orio.

    From Rezolution Pictures International Inc., we have Archita Ghosh, president.

    Union des Artistes is represented by Tania Kontoyanni, chair of the board of directors.

    From the Writers Guild of Canada, we have Victoria Shen and Neal McDougall.

    Each of you, or each organization, will have five minutes for opening remarks.

    We will start with Stephanie Enders. You now have the floor for five minutes.

    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

    I am Steph Enders, the chief delivery officer at AMII, one of three national institutes for AI excellence in Canada established as part of the pan-Canadian strategy in 2017.

    It is vital to begin by recognizing Canada's unique and rich history in this field. Canadian researchers, including AMII's chief scientific adviser, Dr. Richard Sutton, as well as Dr. Geoffrey Hinton and Dr. Yoshua Bengio, are often referred to as the godfathers of AI. They laid the foundational theoretical groundwork for modern reinforcement learning and deep learning, fields at the heart of applied AI that you use each day.

    With Dr. Sutton's recent Turing Award, our national institutes are now guided by three Turing laureates. This legacy gives Canada global leadership and an ongoing responsibility to define the ethical and innovative path forward for this technology.

    At AMII, our mission of AI for good and for all is fundamentally built on three interconnected pillars: invention, innovation and diffusion. Invention is our commitment to fundamental research. Innovation is the adoption and commercialization of this research, and perhaps most crucially for this committee’s mandate, diffusion is the broad transfer of knowledge, training and workforce upskilling.

    To truly advance the field responsibly, we are making targeted research investments in a new generation of bilingual researchers. These are individuals advancing not only AI methodologies but also deep domain knowledge in fields such as space, health, chemistry, biology and the creative industries. This expertise uniquely positions our next generation of talent to advance the field with encouragement, but it also ensures that AI serves the domain and not the other way around.

    While public discourse is currently dominated by generative AI—the tools that create images, music and text—I want to stress that the impact of machine learning extends far beyond novelty outputs, also known as AI slop. We must consider the other forms of AI that offer tremendous, often overlooked opportunities, from recommendation engines that help audiences find local artists to predictive analytics that can help with tour scheduling to tools that optimize production pipelines. AI has the potential to support the business of the creative industries, not only the creative outputs themselves.

    The productivity potential leading to incredible gains in creativity, productivity and new business models is real. However, it must be matched by responsible AI practices that prioritize privacy, security and fairness, along with the necessary mitigation steps to reduce risk.

    Canada has been slower than our G7 counterparts to adopt AI and to build the scaling companies that will ultimately have the greatest impact from this research. The creative industries have the opportunity not only to adopt these technologies but also to commercialize them through AI-first start-ups. Think of companies like Artificial Agency. Canada can rapidly increase this opportunity for the creative industry by focusing on levers to increase access to capital, compute and customers for these AI-first start-ups.

    In addition, we must address human capital. We believe that AI literacy, aligned with established frameworks like the UNESCO's AI student competencies, is not a niche skill but a fundamental requirement for all workers, including those employed by the cultural industries. If you work with content, you must understand the technology and tools for generating it or advancing your practice.

    AMII has already achieved success in this field through specialized programs for K-to-12 teachers, post-secondary students and energy workers. They are slated to reach hundreds of thousands of Canadians in the year ahead.

    This brings us to a profound opportunity inherent in play. Think of how community sports create lifelong patrons of professional games, like baseball, because participants build muscle memory—a tangible connection to the effort required. The arts work in a similar way. Creativity assisted by generative AI can be another powerful gateway, allowing citizens to engage directly and playfully with the creative process, thereby increasing their love and appreciation of the arts as a whole, but only if AI literacy accompanies access to the tools.

    The immediate application of AI, particularly generative models, raises real ethical considerations regarding the use and provenance of data. We must be clear about what ownership means in this new ecosystem.

    We see three areas: data where ownership resides primarily with the individual and the community whose efforts, likenesses and works created the training material; models where proprietary IP and open-source models reside, often owned by companies and research organizations; and oversight, where ownership has a shared responsibility with public systems, such as regulation and policy mechanisms, providing the framework to prevent harm and ensure fairness, but also the professional accountability of those who develop and deploy AI models.

    Finally, I wish to share a crucial observation. The creative industries play a monumental role in shaping how our citizens think of, imagine and understand this technology. The narratives crafted by our filmmakers, authors, musicians and artists shape the public understanding, the value perception and, at times, the misunderstanding of AI. Investing in the creative sector is thus an investment in the national dialogue around our technological future.

    Thank you.

    Next we'll turn to Pierre-Philippe Côté from Orio.

    You have the floor for five minutes.

     Thank you.

    I have just a few words about Orio.

    Orio is a company that fosters data sovereignty and security, first and foremost. At Orio, the security and sovereignty of our users' data are paramount. We operate decentralized data centres that are intelligently distributed to minimize the risk of breaches and to ensure that every piece of data remains protected and confidential. Our advanced security protocols and regular audits ensure strict compliance with international standards, creating an environment resilient to cyber-threats.

    Our operations are powered by hydroelectricity, and heat is recovered from servers for a reduced environmental impact. Orio is a secure and sustainable cloud infrastructure meeting the highest security and data integrity requirements.

    Regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on the creative industries, I am going to put on my creator hat, since I, myself, am an artist and the founder of BEAM, a creative crossroads located in Saint‑Adrien in the Eastern Townships that was, in fact, the first creative crossroads funded by Canadian Heritage, in 2018.

    Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today to discuss a crucial subject: the impact of artificial intelligence on Canadian creative industries. Every day, as cofounder of BEAM, a community creative crossroads based in the Eastern Townships, I observe the speed with which our practices are changing as we deal with this technological revolution. As a creator, music publisher, producer and philanthropist, I have a particular interest in these subjects. I am also here today in another role, as cofounder of the Orio Cloud computing constellation, a technology enterprise whose goal is to provide cloud computing solutions to creative enterprises.

    I will start by pointing out the potential for positive transformation that is offered by artificial intelligence.

    Artificial intelligence provides powerful tools that can be used to stimulate creativity, such as by generating music, images and scenarios, by automated editing, by real-time translation and by trend analysis. These technologies enable artists, producers and studios to explore new forms of expression, increase their productivity and make creation more accessible.

    In Canada, AI helps to expand the reach of our content internationally and enables small outfits like ours to innovate and compete with the big global actors.

    BEAM is the tangible evidence of this. As a regional driver of innovation, we generate tangible economic benefits in our rural community in Quebec, while at the same time attracting large-scale international projects. In some cases, AI enables us to go even further by creating unprecedented synergies among artists, technicians and local enterprises.

    Major challenges arise in incorporating AI, however. Issues surrounding copyright, the originality of the works generated and remuneration of creators are central to the concerns. It is essential that robust legal and ethical frameworks be put in place to protect artists, while at the same time encouraging innovation.

    Digital sovereignty is also a key issue. Canadian companies like Orio are developing responsible, locally controlled AI solutions that guarantee data security and the preservation of our cultural heritage. By supporting these technologies, we make sure that the benefits of innovation go first to our creators and communities.

    Excessive dependence on American technologies presents a real risk to our cultural and national sovereignty, however. Extraterritorial laws like the Patriot Act and the CLOUD Act allow US authorities to access data hosted on servers in that country, even if it is about citizens of Canada and Canadian works. This situation jeopardizes the confidentiality, security and control of our cultural content and highlights the strategic importance of supporting our digital infrastructure and local solutions.

    Artificial intelligence is transforming creative occupations. Some jobs are changing and others are emerging, but some are at risk of disappearing. It is therefore crucial that this transition be supported by continuing education programs so that professionals are able to appropriate these new tools and stay competitive. Canada has to invest in developing digital and creative skills, particularly outside urban centres and for emerging talents.

    When used properly, AI can be a formidable vehicle for diversity. It gives voice to creators from under-represented communities, allows content to be adapted for various audiences and expands access to culture. However, we must guard against algorithmic biases and guarantee that the tools that are developed reflect the wealth of Canada's culture.

    In conclusion, AI is both an opportunity and a challenge for Canadian creative industries. Our collective responsibility is to guide its development so it serves human creativity, protects our artists and expands Canada's cultural reach.

    I urge the committee to support ambitious public policy that reconciles innovation, digital sovereignty, protection for copyright and equitable access to these new technologies.

    Thank you for your attention and I am available to answer your questions.

    Thank you, Mr. Côté.

    We'll turn to Rezolution Pictures International's Archita Ghosh.

     You have the floor for five minutes.

    Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me here today.

    My name is Archita Ghosh. I am the president of Rezolution Pictures International. I did not use AI to create my opening remarks, so they might not be as good as they should be.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Archita Ghosh: Rezolution Pictures is an indigenous film and television production company based in Montreal. We produce mostly documentary and drama features and series.

     Our co-founders are Ernest Webb, who is Cree, from James Bay, and Catherine Bainbridge. You may know some of our work: Little Bird, Rumble, Mohawk Girls and Spirit of Birth. We're happy to be celebrating our 25-year anniversary this year.

    The Rezolution Pictures core team uses AI daily for productivity: We structure reports, find sources of research and administer our file data almost every single day. This increases our efficiency and definitely makes us more competent and competitive as a business. For us, there is not much to challenge or question here. AI in this context is a business tool wielded by us humans.

     However, when it comes to content, especially indigenous content, challenges and questions abound. At the centre of these concerns is the principle of indigenous data sovereignty: the right of indigenous peoples to govern, control and protect data that pertains to their cultures, lands, languages and bodies. Ultimately, indigenous data sovereignty envisions indigenous control over the cultural framework of data, the process of data collection, the content produced, the stories told and the priorities the data supports. Data is not neutral.

    Rezolution has many concerns, some very specifically coming from an indigenous cultural lens. These include a scarcity of accurate, unbiased cultural datasets that are used by AI platforms, and the lack of transparency for the sources with which AI platforms are fed.

    As it is for all content creators in our industry, we are also concerned with the absence of clear intellectual property protection for the many layers of AI-generated elements. Here is a real-world example that Rezolution has had and that reflects the complexities of these challenges.

     Most of the stories Rezolution tells are centred around indigenous cultures and communities. While we were in the middle of producing one of our feature documentaries in 2022, Red Fever, we needed an image of a Haudenosaunee leader from the 1700s. We initially scoured stock image libraries and then used AI platforms and existing data to source a representative image—no luck. In the end, we used our own data to train an AI platform to produce images that were acceptable and as accurate as possible. They are in the film.

    From this example, we were motivated to begin a modest culture- and community-centred project to work on bringing control, consent, credit, compensation and copyright to indigenous creatives and professionals—in other words, to inch AI platforms towards indigenous data sovereignty. SODEC provided Rezolution with the financial support to start this project last year.

    Since there is such a scarcity of accurate cultural data that feeds AI systems, we are creating smaller, vetted and curated datasets like we did for Red Fever. The stereotypes and biases we saw were glaring and disrespectful, clearly reflecting the unsupervised nature of immense online datasets. The Red Fever example reflects the power of human-supervised smaller datasets and how incredibly positive AI can be—if managed well by humans—in improving indigenous representation on the screen.

    The decades-long cultural and data research with which Rezolution trained the AI platform for Red Fever has disappeared into the AI abyss. We hope it will be used for good, but whether it is or not, there is no footnote or reference connecting Rezolution and all the communities that contributed to it.

    In our project, with our curated dataset, our goal is to credit and compensate the researchers, content creators and cultural workers involved in creating AI-generated content. When AI systems extract, process and monetize indigenous data without consent, colonization through data continues to harm and destroy. Rezolution has always been committed to both technological advances and indigenous peoples telling their own stories on their own terms.

     Thank you.

    Thank you.

    We will turn online now to the Writers Guild of Canada, with Victoria Shen and Neal McDougall.

    Collectively, you have five minutes.

    Hello, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

    My name is Victoria Shen, and I am the executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. With me today is Neal McDougall, our assistant executive director. Thank you for inviting us to speak this afternoon.

    We believe that generative artificial intelligence has the capacity to do harm: to flood our media ecosystem with homogenized, machine-generated content, to drown out human and Canadian creative voices and to undermine existing business models while redirecting power and profit into the hands of corporations.

    Generative AI is trained on the work of artists and creators and now threatens their livelihood.

    Excuse me, Madam Chair—

    I'm sorry, Ms. Shen. I think we have a problem with interpretation. Give us a minute.

    There does seem to be a technical problem.

    In fact, we are hearing two French interpreters at the same time. We should only be hearing one of them at a time.

    Ms. Shen, would you like to take it from the top, please? We'll restart. Our problem has been resolved, I imagine.

    It's not a problem.

    Hello, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Victoria Shen, and I am the executive director at the Writers Guild of Canada.

    We are still having the problem.

    I'm sorry, but we're still having a problem.

    Let me suspend for a moment. We'll try to resolve some of these issues.

    We're back.

    Ms. Shen, I'm sorry to do this to you, but would you please start over again?

    I think we've all learned my name at this point, I hope.

    Madam Chair and committee, thank you so much for having us here today.

    My name is Victoria Shen. I am the executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. One more time, my fabulous colleague, Neal McDougall, is our assistant executive director. Thank you so much for having us.

    We believe that generative artificial intelligence has the capacity to do harm: to flood our media ecosystem with homogenized, machine-generated content, to drown out human and Canadian creative voices, to undermine existing business models and to redirect power and profit into the hands of corporations.

    Generative AI is trained on the work of artists and creators and now can also threaten their livelihood. While some present this technology as a tool for creatives, one that will allow us to make more with less, it can also miss the fundamental point.

    Our member screenwriters create original works that speak to the human condition. We tell stories that are unique to Canadians. Cultural production and support for the arts are critical to our identity, our preservation and our sovereignty as a nation. Screenwriters and artists serve a public policy purpose that is much more than merely filling screens. While AI may be able to generate text and content, these things are not and never will be our stories.

    As a labour organization, we have already negotiated protections for screenwriters. Our collective agreement is considered a global leader in that regard. They include that if a producer provides writers with materials generated by AI, the producer must disclose that it's AI-generated and contract under our agreement.

    Material generated by AI is treated as source material. That is a defined term. It's much like a reference material, like a photograph or a newspaper article. AI-generated material cannot be used to reduce a writer's compensation or their credit. Writers also warrant that their work is not generated in whole or in part by AI.

     Canada needs smart policy around GenAI, particularly around copyright. Copyright itself is not regulation; it is intellectual property. Property rights are a precondition of free and fair markets. For GenAI inputs, use of copyrighted work to train them must respect the three Cs: consent, credit and compensation.

    Consent is the foundation upon which credit and compensation are built. It must be expressly given on an opt-in basis and not through an opt-out regime. This needs no compulsory licensing, as that would vitiate consent and deny copyright holders a market-based mechanism through which to negotiate compensation. It naturally follows that there should be no fair-dealing exception created for the purposes of training AI. That would amount to a government-forced value transfer from artists to technology companies.

    With respect to GenAI outputs, they are not copyrightable now, and this should remain the case. Copyright protection has long been founded upon two different but complementary rationales: one, to incentivize the creation of works for the ultimate benefit of society, and two, as a natural entitlement of a creator to the fruits of their own labours. Neither of these rationales is engaged by GenAI outputs.

    Similarly, the standard for human intervention to transform a GenAI output into a copyrightable work must be high. Otherwise, we risk the phenomenon of copyright laundry, in which financial incentives transform human beings into mere translators of machine outputs for the purposes of rendering AI outputs copyrightable.

    Transparency is also key. There currently is an enormous information asymmetry between AI companies and rights holders. Governments should require AI companies to provide a plain-language description of a sufficiently detailed identification of the content used for training the system to facilitate copyright holders in exercising and enforcing their rights under the Copyright Act.

    Finally, separate and apart from copyright, there are a number of existing cultural supports—like the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada—and tax credits to support Canadian content. These are cultural funds, not technology funds, so they should remain to support human creators and not fund AI-generated content.

    Thank you.

    Thank you.

    Our last witness is Tania Kontoyanni from the Union des artistes, who has the floor for five minutes.

    Members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on this issue on behalf of the Union des artistes and the 13,000 performing artists we represent, who are bearing the brunt of it.

    I would first like to clarify one thing: Artists do not oppose technological change. The entire history of art proves the opposite, and it has often been artists who initiated new technologies.

    The current situation is unprecedented, however. Never before have artists been threatened with extinction by the technology they helped to create. For two decades, we have been unwittingly feeding the beast that threatens to devour us today. Let us be clear: As we speak, creators' works are being appropriated. Every minute, images, voices and texts are being used without consent and without compensation. If we do nothing, our artists might disappear, in the shorter or longer term. Are we actually aware of what that means and of what would disappear along with them? The impact to which the arts community attests must not be taken lightly. They are the early warning signs of what can happen in multiple economic sectors of our society.

    We have been raising the alarm for two years now. In the cultural community, the impact of generative AI is real, and it is growing and accelerating. There are countless problems: identity appropriation, the rising precariousness of jobs and the disappearance of entire occupations, including the work of vocal artists, whose future is absolutely uncertain. How many actors will be out of work because a modifiable audio file will suffice? There is no shortage of examples. Authors, composers and performers are discovering albums released under their name, with their image and musical style, that are not their creations; they have been artificially generated. Their voice and their identity have been copied and this has even affected their royalties, the way they earn a living. Artists have been victims of fake videos that are increasingly being used for phishing and to defraud the public of their money.

    That is where things stand. Today, we are tolerating piracy, pillaging and plagiarism. It is not just that the thieves are not being punished; the red carpet is being rolled out for them, they are being invited to speak in national forums and we are letting their powerful lobbies influence governments.

    The big AI developers have, in fact, identified three things that are preventing them from expanding: patents, copyright and personal data protection. Are we seriously considering giving in on these things and allowing them to circumvent our laws, in order to enrich the multinationals that are exploiting AI with no consideration for national cultures and cultural sovereignty?

    Artificial intelligence is already influencing our standards of living and our relationship with work, culture and even truth, and yet a majority of us are completely unaware of how it works and what its implications are. The public must be better informed and better equipped to understand what they are using, what they are consuming and what they are contributing to. The dialogue you have begun here must keep going and must involve artists, the public, researchers, digital creators and political decision-makers, in order to demystify AI and shine a light through its shell. Each of us bears this responsibility. Understanding artificial intelligence is the way to give us the means to decide what world we want to build, what values we want to protect and what limits we want to impose. It is urgent that awareness be raised.

    Are there solutions? Even the most ardent defenders of generative AI must be seeing that guardrails will have to be installed and a legal framework imposed on it, and this means modernizing the Copyright Act.

    Transparency must be absolute. All content generated by AI must be identified as such to the public and consumers, and training databases must be known. Whether they are creators or performers, artists must be able to consent to the use of their works and their image, because that amounts to exploitation, and any exploitation of a work must be accompanied by compensation. This is how artists earn their living.

    Alongside this, there must be adequate funding for our cultural industries, particularly those most threatened by this new technology.

    In addition, it is a matter of urgency that the Canadian private copying rules be modernized to take the new digital realities into account and make the scheme once again fully capable of supporting our cultural production.

    As a final point, we have to consider offering support for Canadian artists when they need a remedy in order to defend their rights against the big tech companies.

    In conclusion, inform, debate, educate: This is the first duty of a democratic nation facing this new reality. Canada has everything it needs in order to exercise global leadership in the ethics of artificial intelligence. This is crucial to our cultural sovereignty.

    Our creators are the dam that stands between us and cultural homogeneity. Help us resist, because, as we speak, that dam is threatening to give way.

    Thank you for listening.

    Thank you, Ms. Kontoyanni.

    We will turn now to questions from members.

    I note that we have a couple of new members with us today.

    Welcome, Mike Dawson.

    Welcome, Ms. Dandurand.

    We are very happy to have you with us today.

    We will begin with Mrs. Thomas for six minutes.

    Thank you very much.

    My first question is for Ms. Ghosh.

    First off, I understand you've been in your role for about a year and a half, since April 2024. Based on the bit of reading I've done, it would appear you're doing an excellent job. Congratulations on taking on that role.

    Thanks.

    I read a bit about you, and it sounds as though that wasn't really the place you originally thought you would land. You said that mathematics is more your speciality than literature and the creative arts.

    I started out as an engineer.

    It sounds as though you were able to then bring that mathematical mind into the industry. One of the statements you made was that you wanted to look for ways in which your organization could set up a business model that was less dependent on government and more independent. That's not something I often hear within the creative or cultural sector. Most have their hands out for another dollar allotment from the government. You're very much wanting to be sustainable. I can appreciate that, and I'm curious about that.

    Can you talk a little more about that business model and how it's serving you?

    I can. It doesn't have that much to do with AI, but I can give you a very brief overview.

    Basically, we want to diversify. I came in to diversify the business, so that we could go from production to production, which many production companies do. You do one production and you finish it. Before you finish it, you're looking for the next set of grants or subsidies to go into your next production. It's one thing after another, so we're diversifying.

    One of those diversifications is community sector development. Our two owners, Catherine and Ernie, are from Chisasibi. We are bringing a video production hub up to Chisasibi. It will be its own business model. We're bringing production up there. We already have a couple of productions going up there. That's one part of the diversification.

    The other part is technology. I mean, we're dabbling in it a bit. A modest fund from SODEC has allowed us to create our smaller datasets, as we were talking about, for indigenous representation. This didn't really exist, as far as we could tell. We really scoured to be able to make our film. I'm a business person. I'm an entrepreneur. I like finding business models that are interesting and different and not reliant on one source or a few sources. We're looking to diversify with all of these things and to create a business model using all of them.

    What is that opportunity, then, to bring other investors alongside you and to be able to help share important stories from an indigenous perspective? What is that opportunity there?

    Do you mean from the AI side?

    No, not at all. Just from a business side, what is the opportunity in terms of bringing private investors alongside and community members alongside to own these stories with you in order to be able to reach a broad audience?

    We have 25 years' worth of stories at Rezolution Pictures. We have a huge catalogue. We've never had the chance, and we still don't, even under my leadership, to organize them, put them together, distribute them and get them out into the world. We don't have the time. We don't even have the expertise for that.

    In an ideal world, I would have a little distribution arm that helps us monetize our huge catalogue. There is a big demand for indigenous content. There's a big demand, but we don't have the resources. We are a pretty small production company going from one production to another, trying to do a whole bunch of different things. We don't have the resources to do that, but we're open to interested investment in order to optimize other parts of our business, for sure.

    One of the observations I've had in my own community is that when community partners are invited in, when private sector dollars are invited to be part of making a vision a reality, there's great pride in that. There's greater pride in that than accepting government dollars. I just find that interesting. I think the model you're going after is fascinating and worth celebrating. I would imagine that it's a tremendous amount of work for you, but I just wanted to take the time to commend you for that. I think it's important.

     I just want to say that we have a really great team at Rezolution, so it's not just me.

    That's for sure, but you are offering great leadership. Thank you for taking a moment to explore that with me.

    My next question is for Ms. Enders.

     You made the comment that Canada is behind other G7 countries in our adoption of AI, and I am curious as to why that is.

    That's a big question, so I appreciate your asking it.

    I would say that it's a trend we've seen with the productivity challenge in Canada over many years, potentially decades. When things are changing, we often wait to see what our peers in other countries are doing before we leap in. We work really hard at AMII to find pathways to meet Canadian businesses where they are and encourage that adoption.

    The biggest barrier we're seeing right now is the lack of literacy around the technology, especially at the executive and board tables, so we focus very deeply on executive and board training. That helps them make investments in AI and decisions about AI. Their teams are very keen to use this technology, but they want to do so under the right kind of governance model, and they want to ensure they're working towards the same objectives and impact numbers as their leadership.

     We focused on that full stack of literacy, because we know there are always keeners. There is a phenomenon called shadow AI, where your company might not have a particular policy or tool adopted, but you're using it a lot at home, so you bring it in. That isn't going to see the massive adoption and productivity gains we want as a nation. We really need to ensure that workers, managers, executives and boards are all working from the same playbook to understand the technology.

    That is interesting.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Al Soud, you're next. You have the floor for five minutes.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I'm sorry. You have six minutes. Excuse me.

    It's great to see you, as always, and thanks to our witnesses for being with us today. It is truly appreciated.

    Ms. Enders, with a big smile, full of pride, in your opening remarks you said that AMII is one of Canada's leading AI research and education institutes. AMII also often notes a fundamental belief that AI literacy must be accessible to everyone, and you spoke to that not long ago.

    We had Dr. Kearney here, and she spoke passionately of the incredible work taking place there.

    In your interview with the St. Albert Gazette last year, you emphasized that AI literacy should empower workers to partner with AI. The article stated that generative AI “could help artists take care of non-creative tasks such as applying for grants, or act as a source of inspiration for new human-made works.”

    This touches on two important questions. The first is this quasi-philosophical question on the threshold for creativity. The second is a fear of mine, which is that innovation's pace is not always easy to match.

    With that in mind, what is the threshold for creativity from your perspective? How do we ensure that literacy is a possibility in a world that is rapidly evolving as much as this one?

    I'll tackle the literacy piece first.

    For folks who aren't familiar with the UNESCO AI student competencies, it's a set of four competencies that ladder up. They include having a human-centred mindset, which is followed by the ethical understanding of AI. Then there are AI tools and technologies that people often want to put first, and finally, there are AI systems, which are how you build systems for AI but with AI. That's the first piece, which is really understanding the difference between a skill and a competency in fluency.

    The next things are understanding that different kinds of Canadian workers are going to need different kinds of levels of competencies—AI curious, AI users, AI builders and AI strategists—and making sure that we're not thinking about this as a one-size-fits-all model to literacy and that it will be different from sector to sector and from individual to individual. Again, it's not about mandating a specific kind of use but about providing people with the tools so that they can make informed choices.

    On the threshold for creativity, that's like asking me to number the stars. I am a failed artist. My background, when I was young, was in dance. That didn't pan out for me, but I was very blessed to have an early start in my career in arts and cultural management, including writing curriculum for the MacEwan University arts and cultural management program.

     I feel strongly, then, that everyone has the capacity for creativity, but there are really different ways they get to practise that muscle memory. Really understanding how hard it is to do something that you're proud of in generative AI is actually like a stark reminder of how important human artists are, so it's almost like holding up a mirror and realizing how bad you are at something.

    One interesting thing is this conversation around data, and we might be at a turning point about how much data there is left to train these big foundational models. Dr. Richard Sutton, who is the grandfather of reinforcement learning, really positions his work around this “era of experience”. When thinking about the threshold for creativity, I think of his work, and these are models where they learn through experience; they create their own experiences to learn from. In that model, there is no threshold to the creativity, but it really depends on how someone defines creativity. I don't know if I would define the models as creative.

     Fantastic. Thank you for that. That was great.

     Mr. Côté, your work focuses on protecting cultural data and on creators' control of technology in the AI era. In an interview with La Presse, you said it is important that people be sovereign and control their data.

    Given that AI is often developed outside Canada, what measures can we adopt to guarantee this sovereignty over Canadian cultural data?

    In fact, the decentralization of data centres is an issue that Orio wants to work on. We also want to create large-capacity computing tools for our Canadian institutions.

    I can give you a concrete example. Suppose that a big American corporation gives an artist a virtual reality headset that displays the apple logo, but in exchange, the artist has to give the company information every week about what they like about the software and the improvements the company could make to it. At that point, the artist's intellectual property and expertise would become the property of that big corporation.

    So there is a possible problem. Our vision involves creating tools here in Canada that would allow for the same exploration of that kind of headset, but in a closed circuit, so the artist would retain their intellectual property and all other types of intellectual property that flowed from it.

    I don't have a lot of time left, so I am going to ask my question quickly.

    You also advocate an ecologically responsible vision. Do you think that public policy on AI should include environmental criteria?

    Yes, the development of AI technologies and of data centres must be decentralized, environmentally responsible and sustainable. We have to address this, because we are going to need greater and greater computing capacity for all sorts of reasons, whether for industrial development, defence or creativity. I think it is time to ask ourselves what development model we want and to think about smaller, decentralized models that will create jobs throughout Canada and bring the technologies to areas outside urban centres and to the public and users.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Al Soud.

    Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for six minutes.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I just want to tell Ms. Enders that she is not the only one who had artistic aspirations but didn't have the talent to realize them. I started playing guitar when I was 12 years old. I have dreamed of playing in a band all my life, and I ended up doing radio, because I wasn't able to string three chords together. So I understand perfectly, as my colleague Mr. Généreux also does, I believe. Mr. Myles is the only one here who can laugh at us.

    Despite that failed experiment as artists, we have developed a love of culture and admiration for artists. That is why we are doing this study today: We want to know how to preserve this community that we are so fond of.

    Ms. Kontoyanni, you concluded your remarks earlier by saying that artists are the dam that stands between us and cultural homogeneity, but that dam is giving way. Is that really the state of mind that members of the Union des artistes are experiencing today: that they are running out of breath and feel like they are being flattened by a steamroller?

    I won't hide the fact that people are very afraid right now. This is the first time we have found ourselves faced with this kind of danger.

    In addition to how some of us feel like it is already too late, like we have fed the beast too much already, our data is already scattered all over and we no longer know what is really ours, we are running into all these threats on the ground.

    For example, growing numbers of local and international producers, big promoters, are knocking on our door to offer us a contract, but they want to add to it so they will be able to model our voice, for example. When we refuse, the work is done somewhere else; we lose these contracts.

    Do you agree that by agreeing to a contract like this, an actor, for example, is practically signing their own death warrant? Their voice is simply going to be reproduced, with their agreement, in productions for which they will no longer be paid after that, if I understand correctly.

    Is that what it means?

    The guidance provided by a collective agreement is not enough to replace a law. Of course, we can guide an artist and negotiate a good contract for them in money terms, but we can never guarantee that their voice will not be transformed, in addition to being modelled, to be used for some other purpose. So we can't protect our artists right now. When we say no, we lose the contracts.

    There are a lot of examples where not just artists' voices, but also their images, are being used for flatly fraudulent purposes.

    Are artists a bit risk averse when it comes to AI, not only as regards regulation and the dangers it brings with it, but also as regards the tool it represents for cultural creation? Does this all mean that artists prefer instead to stay away from it, given that it is just causing them problems at the moment?

    In fact, does the advent of this technology bring anything positive for artists with it?

    For performers, there is little that is positive, the reason being that we are performers.

    For creative artists, yes, there is the potential to use AI as a tool, and performers are not opposed to that kind of use, but there has to be a meaningful human presence behind the work.

    I won't lie to you, Mr. Champoux; performers do not see what benefit there is at this time in providing their body, their voice and their image.

    Right now, the main problem lies in the fact that when people discover they are victims of generative AI, they do not have the strength to initiate proceedings against these development giants or distribution giants like Spotify, for example. Artists feel really alone when it comes to proceedings like that.

     You know that the committee has had several meetings on this subject already. This is the seventh, in fact. There are certain requests that we have heard regularly from the witnesses who have appeared here. First, they want transparency, so they will be able to trace back to the source of the content that inspired the content generated by AI. It goes without saying that they also want copyright to be respected. And third, the idea of having an opt-out, the option to withdraw, has also been regularly raised.

    What do you think would be the right combination to put in place, in terms of regulation or guidance? Do you have any other suggestions to add to the ones that have already been made to the committee several times?

    Certainly transparency is essential. Even before it is important for artists, it is important for consumers. I stressed how important we believe it to be for Canadians to know the full extent of what is happening in our society. Culture is often a harbinger or forerunner of what is on the way for other occupations.

    One thing is certain: It is entirely up to the artists to decide whether they want to engage or disengage, whether they want to choose to opt in or opt out. We should never assume that choosing not to opt in means choosing to opt out, and vice versa. It should be up to the creative artist to say whether or not they agree to provide their performances.

     Ultimately, the concept of consent, what young people are taught about, should also apply in this field.

    Thank you very much, Ms. Kontoyanni.

    I agree with you completely. Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for five minutes.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I would also like to thank all the witnesses.

     Mr. Côté, after reading Mr. McKenna's article about you in La Presse, I have to tell you I was very impressed by all of your projects. I also have to admit that I was not familiar with you or with your work.

    What I found very interesting in what you do is that you have bought a church to create your centre in, so I hope God is with you. It could have been a garage.

    It's two churches.

    Good then, it's two churches. I might also mention there is one for sale in my riding, if you have any more projects.

    That is what is appealing in what you are doing: first, you are doing it outside the big cities; second, you are doing it sustainably and ecologically. You are transforming buildings that can now become places where artists can put or store their works and retain sovereignty. In fact, that sovereignty is a principle I would like you to explain for me.

    Ms. Ghosh might become one of your clients someday, as well. I hope so, in fact. You could go and set up facilities in the north or the Far North. I even have a spot for Ms. Ghosh in Mistassini, if she wants to set up there.

    In other words, your technology offers a variety of possibilities.

    You also talked about the United States and the importance to all our artists of being truly sovereign in Quebec and in Canada. What we have heard from witnesses, and we have even been hearing it for some time, is that there is fragility, there is considerable suspicion, regarding what is happening with artificial intelligence.

    I may be mistaken, but what I saw in you was not God, but a potential solution for artists as a whole.

    Can you explain what data sovereignty is, in particular? That is very important to me.

    Thank you, Mr. Généreux.

    I am going to explain how it happened. In fact, it all started with a need. In my village of 500 people, the church had been abandoned. We therefore asked ourselves what we were going to do with it. Because I am an artist, the first idea that came into my head was to make it into a world-class studio. It became a community creative crossroads. We have even made a multigenerational community teaching garden.

    We bought the church for a dollar. The first winter, it was very cold in the magnificent edifice. We were heating the church with oil, a fossil fuel. However, a colleague and friend of mine was mining cryptocurrency, and I noticed that it was 45°C in his home when it was -35°C outside. That is where it started. It started with a need. He needed to put his computer servers somewhere that needed heating; we needed heating. So in the first winter, 2017, we made what we called a digital campfire. We took all the computers we could and we plugged them in, taking into account the electrical capacity we had, and we were able to maintain this 10,000 square foot church with a 50‑foot ceiling at 15°C for the whole winter without burning oil.

    After that came the idea of using the technology we had developed. We worked on research and development for four years. We used immersion tanks to put blade servers in transformer oil and we used a plate heat exchanger to transfer the heat to a heating system.

    That was when we decided that this is how data centres needed to be developed. In Quebec, there are 2,700 churches that are going to be sold for a dollar, abandoned or demolished in the next five years, according to the Quebec Religious Heritage Council. These are edifices that already exist, that are often in village centres, in communities of 2,000 people or fewer that need development within their boundaries and need square footage. Often, the buildings have been abandoned. So this kills two birds with one stone.

    That is extraordinary. Sincerely, it is a brilliant idea. I think the fact that it has come out of the arts community is very important, because you are now the proof that you are able to partner with other groups and develop technologies like this for a very specific need like yours.

    I want to come back to the importance of sovereign data, because you didn't answer that part of my question. I think it is a fundamental question, because artists in Canada and Quebec would love to be able to have some kind of security when it comes to their works.

    Can you explain exactly how it works?

    Certainly, I will be happy to.

    Take a hypothetical case. Imagine that a Quebec filmmaker or director deposits a screenplay with SODEC, the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles, and it is hosted by Amazon Web Services, which owns Paramount Pictures. If Paramount Pictures is short of ideas that week, there are mechanisms it can use to invoke American laws like the Patriot Act and the CLOUD Act. I am not accusing anyone of doing it, but in a world where knowledge rules, there could potentially be a breach if a private cloud services company was directly in an apparent conflict of interest in connection with the production of screenplays. I like to say, as, in fact, I said to the Quebec Minister of Culture and Communications at a meeting not so long ago, that it is plausible that the screenplay could be translated, transformed and produced as a film in the United States even before the Quebec filmmaker received a receipt from SODEC. That is my little point about SODEC.

    These really are potential situations. It might be that in order to be more competitive, American companies would invoke the CLOUD Act and the Patriot Act to get access to technology or intellectual property that was developed by another company and is hosted on American cloud platforms. It is as if someone gave their house keys to their competitor and said there are no secrets anymore and it is all theirs. In fact, it is not yet all theirs, but it could, potentially, be all theirs.

    Thank you.

     Ms. Royer, you have the floor now for five minutes.

    Thank you, Madam Chair and esteemed witnesses.

    My first question is for Ms. Ghosh.

    You've raised important concerns about AI's accuracy, bias of indigenous datasets and the lack of transparency of sources.

    In my own riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam, the Kwikwetlem First Nation worked directly with School District 43 and Microsoft Canada to create Minecraft's “A Pacific Northwest Coast Experience”, which is an extraordinary educational game of world-building through the lens of Coast Salish first peoples.

    In using technology as a tool for storytelling and preservation, but not something scraped or appropriated, what safeguards or governance models, in your view, could ensure that indigenous digital content—whether language, imagery or oral history—is protected and that communities retain control and consent over how their data is used in AI systems?

    I don't know exactly how the government can be involved in doing this other than from our perspective as a small company: creating a mini AI system within the bigger one and allowing it to happen. I don't know how this helps us from preventing our data from going everywhere else, but certainly we would be within a controlled space.

    With the project we're doing, we've identified about 200 or 300 indigenous visual artists. We will get their consent, we'll compensate them and we'll credit them. We'll put them in our database, and we'll use them and their images to feed our AI, along with our historical text—cultural community research—to come out with images that we need in film. We're not controlling where all that data goes, but we're certainly saying that we are controlling the data that we're using. What we do would also be to credit these artists in the films we have.

    We did not do this in Red Fever, because it was just a bit too early. We did use our own research, but we used images that we found on the Internet. We don't want to do that anymore. We're not doing that anymore. We're actually creating our own mini dataset to be able to at least control what we're putting in films and how we're representing it.

    I will say, from the indigenous perspective, that it's very hard to find archives the way you can find archives for many other cultures that are here in Canada. We have tried. We've gone to many different archival sources. We don't find them. For us, we really don't know where else we can get images, but we want to do it in a respectful way that comes from the communities that we're using the images for.

    In my riding, there are eight nations and many elders within those nations. I think that as their stories are captured online, that content will become more available, hopefully, but in a way that is protected and does recognize the source, does compensate and does maintain the unbiased nature we're hoping for.

    Are there any countries—maybe New Zealand or Australia—or models you're aware of that Canada could learn from in embedding these principles of consent and co-governance?

    I know a bit about New Zealand, mostly from a language perspective, but we just haven't spent enough time to fully research that side of it. I know it's there.

    Okay. Thank you very much.

    Mr. Champoux, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

    Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Ms. Kontoyanni, I have some more questions for you.

    During our first or second meeting on this study, we heard from Professor Dave Anctil. I'm sure you know him, because he attended a symposium on this issue last May.

    When I asked Professor Anctil if any jobs in the cultural sector were likely already doomed by artificial intelligence, he immediately pointed to illustrators and dubbers. I have to say that surprised me. We may have suspected that this technology would make them very vulnerable, but this is an extremely important part of Quebec's cultural sector. We are proud of our dubbers. We are proud of the dubbing work we do better than anyone else. We put our own stamp on these productions. Some of the productions dubbed in Quebec by Quebec dubbers have achieved unparalleled success here, precisely because of the Quebec-specific versions created by our dubbing artists.

    With that in mind, do you think we can save this sector because our artists and creatives have something to offer productions that AI will probably not be able to do in the short or medium term?

    That's a very optimistic question, isn't it?

    For sure.

    If you're asking me whether we're losing work for voice artists at this point, I would say yes. Some jobs have already disappeared because what AI has to offer is less demanding. Take video description, for example, which enables blind people to understand what is happening on a show. That used to be our job, but it has completely disappeared; it no longer exists.

    Dubbing is certainly under threat, but the technology is not quite there yet. I think that's why we're currently receiving a huge number of requests to clone our voices. The expertise we have here has been developed over some 30 or 40 years. It is highly specialized. It's a technique that takes years to develop, and we have experts here. At the moment, we're receiving a lot of requests to clone our voices, especially dubbing actors. Most of them are resisting at this point. Big developers are looking for the expertise we have in Quebec.

    When we talk about this, we need to remember that voice work can be either a side gig for performers or a full-time occupation or profession. For many of us, it gives us the time and money to create more performance art works.

    Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

     Mr. Diotte, you have the floor now for five minutes.

    Thanks, Madam Chair.

    Ms. Enders, we've been lucky enough to hear from a lot of Edmontonians. I'm an Edmontonian myself. Welcome.

    We've heard very good things about Alberta leading in AI innovation. Can you describe that a bit? How do we lead? What are we doing right in Alberta?

    Fundamentally, this has been a long-time investment in Alberta. The founding researchers of what would become AMII were established over 20 years ago through an investment by the Government of Alberta before AI was in the cycle we are in now. There is a true collaborative spirit amongst our researchers of collaboration with one another and a sense of being experts but also humble and growing on success. It's a long legacy that we've built upon.

    Since the establishment of the not-for-profit through the pan-Canadian AI strategy, our mandate has been really crystal clear in thinking about the interconnectedness of these pillars of invention, innovation and diffusion. They're interoperable, and without one or the others, that great success for our province, our city and our nation wouldn't really be achievable.

    On a super tangible front, I do think it's this massive investment in talent that we've seen come to fruition in short cycles and very long cycles. Alumni of AMII have raised over $1.6 billion in venture capital. Some of that is through really specific start-up programs. Some of that is going into research, popping into industry and going back into research until that spark of “How am I going to commercialize this?” happens.

    That has really been able to advance us, but I do think it's that spirit of collaboration and finding really positive pathways forward, knowing that there are realistic risks and ethical implications. From an optimistic lens point, it's been solid.

    Thank you.

    You hear a lot of people in the public, when they think of AI, say it's something big and scary. What would you say to that if you were just talking to a member of the public who says AI is really scary?

    I love going to the movies. When you think about people's experiences and when you think of AI, it's been informed by these incredible cultural narratives, and that's something wonderful, but it also creates the sense that there's “an” AI and that it's something happening to them. That's one of the reasons we focus so much on sharing the people behind this technology and their motivations, as well as thinking about it as a tool made by humans for human use. We break it down into something called the four Ps. Just like any other business model, you can use AI to project things, to prevent things, to personalize things and to produce things. That helps people bring it and anchor it into reality.

    Can you give us some anecdotal instances of that? I think a lot of people think AI is just, like, about doing a better search engine, etc.

     Yes. I think one of my go-to examples right now is a Calgary-based start-up called ZeroSound, which is using reinforcement learning for real-time noise cancelling on industrial work sites. Think of that element of putting on your noise-cancelling headphones when you're on a plane. How do they take that into the real world, where things are maybe shifting a lot? The speed of a machine changes the amount of noise it makes, as does the amount of traffic on the street. How do we use real-time systems to actually reduce harm to citizens and then also use that for economic impact?

    I think we see also a lot of opportunity in the health care system, where we have things like the ER scribe, which is the work of Dr. Ross Mitchell and is helping ER physicians use their time more efficiently and really focus on patient care and accuracy, rather than necessarily on the administrative requirements of their work.

    I think there are lots of opportunities in the cultural industries as well, and we see that in the work of organizations like Alex Kearney's Artificial Agency, which uses these deep technologies to assist creative business models.

     There is often a fear about AI stealing jobs. What's your thought on that?

    I think it's a realistic fear, because it's a sweeping technological change. With any change, there will be changes to the way people work. One way is that we really think deeply about what specific tasks within a job could be impacted and what our responsibilities are to prepare people for that shift in their work. That's probably the biggest one—there are specific tasks within jobs that will be impacted, and they will be impacted by different kinds of AI.

    I see. Thank you.

    Mr. Ntumba, you have the floor for five minutes.

    Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Ms. Kontoyanni, I listened to the question my colleague asked earlier, and I would like you to elaborate on that.

    How much will AI hurt dubbing? At what point will we know that dubbing by performers is a thing of the past, that it's all done by AI or that AI has reached the point of no return?

    I believe it will happen soon. Right now, what we're hearing is that the technology isn't perfect yet, which means that people aren't very comfortable with dubbing done entirely by AI. However, given the training, all the voices that exist and quality dubbing, I think it's just a matter of time before it completely disappears. It will be in the short term.

    If I understand correctly, AI will eventually replace dubbing by performers in the short term. Actors who do dubbing here in Quebec will have to start thinking about finding another job. Is that basically what they're thinking? They have to be able to look elsewhere.

    How would you explain this situation? What can we do to prevent that from happening?

    There's definitely a time when we need to protect our workers. Most of all, we have to protect the expertise we've developed over the years.

    When actors like me dub a film, there's a significant artistic quality tothat work. We honour human emotion by humanizing it ourselves through our language. It is a reflection and an expression of our language and our cultural and artistic soul. That should not be overlooked. Dubbing is not just a disembodied technique. The same is true of all voice work, by the way. Think of singers. They are voice workers too. Voice work is a deeply artistic undertaking. Our voice is part of our identity, just like our image and our body. We know it's part of our identity.

    I think those workers need to be protected. A lot of people say they need help retraining. I get that, but we should ask artists if they want to be retrained. Yes, we should use AI to protect, heal and care for our society, but ask artists if they want to be replaced by AI. I'm sure my counterparts at the Writers Guild of Canada would agree with me on that. We want to write and tell our stories.

    Thank you very much, Ms. Kontoyanni.

    Good afternoon, Ms. Ghosh. We met in my office a few weeks ago.

    There are stereotypes about first nations, and AI has both pros and cons. How can AI help combat those stereotypes?

     The stereotypes exist because of all the vices that exist in society, which are reflected on the Internet. The way we can change those is, again, by going back to the small dataset, because it all has to come from research that has not been done. We have had it as Rezolution Pictures for 25 years. We've worked with communities all across the States and Canada. We have a lot of that research.

    For us, we would need to have a project where we annotate the research. We can put it back into AI models and then, if it goes into the bigger model, it can to some degree offset all the biases and stereotypes that exist right now. They are terrible. I did a little presentation that I wasn't able to show you today, but we did a little presentation for Red Fever on where we started and where we ended. It's really bad. It comes from gathering knowledge and annotating research, and it's also being done by a company or an entity that actually cares about the output, which is us.

    I will say that language is the same thing. Language is a big component of this as well. Indigenous languages don't exist as much as many other languages do. Part of our job is to bring back languages and bring back images that all reflect what real indigenous communities have.

    Thank you.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Dawson, you're next. You have the floor for five minutes.

    I'm going to pass my time to my colleague.

    Mr. Généreux, you have the floor.

    I'm happy to take my colleague's time.

    I have more questions for you, Mr. Côté.

    My understanding is that you use blockchain in your technology. Is that correct?

    No. We have technology partners that use blockchain, but it's mainly to ensure the traceability of carbon credits and environmental, social and governance factors.

    Orio doesn't use cryptography, cryptocurrency or anything like that. It's really a cloud company.

    Was that by choice or happenstance?

     There is another company in the field that recovers heat from data centres, but it works with cryptographic data centres. That company also does heating, among other things.

    At Orio, we've really chosen to focus on the creative industries, which are very poorly served by the web giants. I have to say that training models to create images and music is very specific. To avoid the extremes we imagine emerging in the future, we think it's important to help them by using a sovereign cloud network.

    At Orio, we train large language models, and we work with graphic processors, central processing units and data storage. It's like a classic cloud server, but it's a little different. It's like comparing a Ferrari to a big Cadillac.

    Everything you just said is Greek to me, but I imagine people understand what that means.

    We had Mr. Chan here on Monday. I don't know if you had a chance to listen to his testimony. He is currently an artist in residence at Library and Archives Canada, if I'm not mistaken. He's working with AI technologies. He also talked about NFTs.

    NFT refers to non-fungible tokens.

    That's right. That has to do with blockchains, which guarantee the authenticity and traceability of the works.

    Earlier, Ms. Ghosh talked about the impact on first nations, their catalogues and so on. Could those catalogues potentially be sorted and put on a server like yours, thereby providing that traceability to ensure their authenticity in the long term?

    You raise a very interesting point, Mr. Généreux.

    Blockchain is actually used for traceability for the purposes of copyright allocation. NFTs involve smart contracts. There is also an initiative that emerged in Quebec to ensure smart copyright allocation that takes into account the development of a work from the point of creation.

    Say my two colleagues and I decide to create a work together. According to the Nashville rule, which is popular in the industry, copyright allocation would be one third for each of us. Then the work would be created. There would be a smart contract attached to that work through an immutable blockchain. Then AI could recognize that the work was played or broadcast in a stadium and, thanks to geolocation tools in our phones, it would determine that 5,000 people were present and all heard the song we composed. So there would be compensation for public performance, which would go through SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, or perhaps even through smart copyright distribution mechanisms, and then those royalties could be distributed to rights holders directly through the blockchain, almost instantaneously.

    I realize this is a big, broad and crucial question, but, as an artist, how do you see the future of artists? The Union des artistes representative just said that artists may be seeing dark clouds on the horizon. Do you still see great opportunities?

    I myself see great opportunities. I'm not an artist myself, but I wrote a song this week just to amuse my colleagues, particularly Mr. Myles. Unfortunately, my intern, Shane, did not have time to add my voice to the soundtrack. Now I want to store it on your system so I can be sure no one will ever be able to use it.

    Seriously, though, I entered my name and the name of my riding into an AI tool, and my intern asked it to write a song. The song is amazing. The lyrics are fantastic. It actually refers to who I am in my riding, and the tune is neat.

    Mr. Myles, I promise I won't sing it, but I could still record my voice and play the song with my voice. It's wild. We are living in the future.

    In short, do you see a future for artists? That's essentially my question.

    I believe artists and creators will always have a very big place in our society.

    I see AI as a tool. It helps me make better art and think outside the box. It empowers me. For example, we know that budgets are always shrinking, especially in production and culture. Every time I get a contract for a film score, they want it done by tomorrow morning, and they send me Hans Zimmer music as inspiration. Those soundtracks were performed by symphony orchestras in Hollywood and cost $3 million to produce. They expect us to do that at the drop of a hat.

    AI is therefore a tool at our disposal, but the artist behind it will always make decisions and use their artistry to transform raw materials into works. For example, if you input about 50 prompts into Suno for a string quartet with very specific elements, you'll get five minutes of music containing maybe 12 very good, usable seconds. That's where we're at right now.

    There's also the fact that we don't know where the AI was trained—

    I'm sorry to interrupt you, but Mr. Généreux's time is up.

     Mr. Myles, you have the floor for five minutes.

     Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Thank you so much. I just have to say that I've never been so happy to be at this committee. I love this study and I think it's super interesting, but it's particularly because I feel very compelled to address something that was said earlier in this committee—that artists are looking for handouts.

    I spent 20 years as an artist. I'm very proud to be a parliamentarian. Artists are small businesses. They're entrepreneurs. You all have them. They're in every single one of your ridings. They work on tiny margins. They take huge risks. Just like all the small businesses in your ridings, they are entrepreneurs. That's one thing I've been very interested in hearing as an artist and now a parliamentarian.

    That's certainly not how I ran my business. It's not how anyone I knew who had a successful artist business ran their business. They ran them like entrepreneurs, with tiny margins and huge risks. They worked endlessly and tirelessly. I'm so proud to be part of this committee and to get to talk about these things and to figure out how we, this committee, can empower artists as entrepreneurs. That's what we're really trying to do. No one wants a handout. I would never say that about anybody's industry, let alone one that employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians across the country in every one of our ridings.

    It is important to remember that what we're trying to do here is to make sure we're empowering artists as businesses and as legitimate entrepreneurs and contributors to the Canadian economy. They don't want to be seen as lesser. That's not why they get into it. No one gets into it for a handout. They get into it because they're passionate about it.

    I couldn't let it go, and I'll say it every single time I get a chance. It's really important that we recognize that this is why people do this. They are entrepreneurs. You too understand this. I'm sure all of you have people in your squads who are very much part of this thinking. They do this because they care. They care about the country. They care about the people they're singing to and their audiences. They work tirelessly for that. That goes for those who paint and everybody else.

    All of that being said, with AI, I just want to say that this is one of the most important parts of this conversation. I'm really pleased that we're respecting them as businesses, because it means—my counterparts aside, since we don't want handouts—that we will empower their copyright and their IP. That's their property. That's their business. We're going to empower their licensing, because that's their business. We're going to make sure that these models are transparent, because that's their business. It's not a handout; it's economic levers that we don't take away from other small businesses.

    Pierre-Philippe, maybe you can speak to this idea of how we can empower artists as small businesses in the AI era.

     I love that you brought that up. Thank you for this intervention.

    When the CD and the cassette were invented, and artists suddenly couldn't rely on sales of vinyls, there was a mechanism put in place to ensure that every blank cassette or blank CD would have some of the price paid—I think it was 10% at the time—given back to copyrights holders. We knew their music would be on those burned CDs.

    This phone contains a lot of gigabytes of music, information and other things. When I bought it, nothing was going back to creators. I would not need 128 gigabytes if it weren't for movies or streaming. In addition, the people who deliver the Internet.... You would not need 100 gigabytes or 10 gigabytes at your house if it weren't for streaming content, and these people are not paying their fair share.

    To come back to the subsidies, Jean-Martin Aussant said something very brilliant in a podcast. When I see a construction worker redoing the road in front of my church, he gets 100% of his funds from the government to do his work, and we don't call it a handout. He's there, sometimes charging double what it's worth, but he's there, getting 100% of his money from the government. As artists, we ask that we put in 50% in cash. If I want to do an album that costs $100,000, I have to find $50,000 and then hope to maybe get the other $50,000 from FACTOR. Most of the time, it's 85% and you get 84.5%, because there are a lot of people asking for those funds.

    People struggle. I haven't put out an album in eight years, because I'm a social entrepreneur, as well as a realty entrepreneur, a tech entrepreneur and a publisher. I had a label. I helped many artists get their albums out there and do their thing, and I put a lot of my personal money into the non-profit that I co-founded eight years ago.

    I find it very sad that some people think artists and people in culture are always looking for a handout, because we are contributing a lot to society, such as technological innovation, bringing forward a lot of things in society, and bringing the social fabric together.

    Thank you for the question and intervention.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Champoux, you have two and a half minutes.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I'll try to be quick.

    Mr. Côté, you talked about private copying and the fee collected for cassettes and CDs, which was a few pennies. Initially, I believe it used to be $0.05 for cassettes and $0.25 for CDs. Those rates are still in effect; I think it's now $0.29. The industry is nevertheless asking that this fee be renewed for devices. As you said, it wouldn't be visible to consumers. It would also generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for artists and rights holders. It's ridiculous that the government hasn't passed legislation on this yet.

    Thank you for bringing that up. For the first time in this meeting, I understood what you were talking about. I'll have to go back and listen to the recording of the committee to properly absorb all the technical points you mentioned earlier.

    Ms. Kontoyanni, I have another question for you. Let's talk about discoverability. Earlier, we talked about artists' right to choose whether or not to sign up, whether or not to provide their content to feed the beast, as they say.

    If a critical mass of artists decided not to authorize the use of their content, do you think that could have the unintended consequence of preventing discoverability of content that would subsequently be generated by AI? For example, would indigenous or francophone content be invisible or be at risk of disappearing because of this technology?

    You're talking to me about discoverability. Yes, I think AI trains itself using everything. That's where we see the biases. Does it really train itself using authentic indigenous or French-Canadian content? It's hard to say.

    One thing is certain: The more limited the number of our works that are accessible, the less we are represented. That's why I support some of the proposals made here, namely that we must feed our own artificial intelligence tools if we don't want to disappear.

    Yes, discoverability is currently a major challenge. Not only do you have to be discoverable, but you also have to exist somewhere in a future where AI-generated works will occupy most of the space.

    Although I am extremely optimistic, the artist must nevertheless be present in a meaningful way behind each work. In addition, a distinction must be made in the case of performers. Honestly, what advantage do I have, as an actor, in using artificial intelligence? It is directly the human soul that is expressed through me and my colleagues. In the case of creators, it's something else; they can use artificial intelligence as a tool.

    Thank you very much, Ms. Kontoyanni.

     Mrs. Thomas, you have the floor for five minutes.

    Perfect. Thank you so much.

    Ms. Enders, my question is for you.

    I'm wondering if you can comment at all on how to strike a balance in terms of a regulatory framework that is developed around AI at the federal level. Obviously, it involves wanting to protect innovation and creativity and the way forward, but recognizing that there are perhaps some dangers or detriments to leaving it completely free. Do you care to comment on that?

    Absolutely.

    Probably echoing some of the comments from previous witnesses, I think it's important to think about the technology as an application and the potential harm as different pathways on what part to regulate, and also what different mechanisms the government has between regulation and policy, and then guidance.

    One of the things is that AI is a horizontal technology, so there are very good mechanisms within the government and regulations in specific sectors in industry, and it's likely that one of the paths could be taking an AI lens to the existing regulation rather than thinking about everything being regulation to apply to all AI technologies as a universal path.

    One of the most important things, I think, is informed voices at the table. Again, hearkening back to why AI literacy is so important, as we have dialogue and consultation on what that regulation should be, there should be an equal playing field for all of the people involved, so that they understand they are talking about this technology knowledgeably and so that their voices can be heard and amplified appropriately.

    I'm sorry. You're going to have to maybe dive a bit deeper, because you said, “apply an AI lens”. What do you mean by that?

    Again, I am not coming to the table as an expert in regulation across different sectors, but the way you may want to regulate or approach the use of AI in health care might be vastly different from how you want to regulate or have policies in place for the creative industries. We need to think about what that AI lens track is on the potential regulation per sector or industry in addition to sweeping AI regulations related to a horizontal technology.

    Right.

    I'm curious about the work you're doing with students and teachers, helping them adapt to a world that is increasingly using AI in a myriad of fields. In that world, what is the main message or thesis that you want to drive forward within the education sector as we look to adapt and adopt, moving forward?

     I'll speak to two main programs related to education.

    The first is our work in K to 12, where we're curriculum-aligned. To date we've trained a thousand teachers on professional development related to understanding how this technology works.

    We are also codeveloping curriculum-aligned resources in subjects beyond STEM, so when we open this program, it's about understanding the potential and application of this technology in subjects across the curriculum and at all age points while being age appropriate. What we work on, alongside teachers, to bring to a kindergarten classroom is vastly different from what is being supported, for example, in a grade 12 social studies class. That's the first piece: co-creation with teachers and being aligned to curriculum outside of just computing science.

    The next is an initiative that's coast to coast to coast in Canada, called AI workforce readiness, made in partnership through funding with Google.org. We're working with the post-secondary institutions, and we're bringing that same AI literacy skill set to programs across faculties. Rather than focusing 100% on AI-specific courses, certificates or degrees, it's the addition of AI literacy to programs of study such as nursing, biology, finance and accounting.

    Currently we have 29 post-secondary institutions in that consortium, representing 500,000 post-secondary students. We think about it as “just in time” literacy training as they're entering the workforce. Because the field is changing so rapidly, we know that these interventions allow them to make informed choices and adopt more rapidly once they're in their first jobs.

    Thank you.

    I have 20 seconds remaining. I'm going to use those 20 seconds to move a motion. I believe that there is unanimous consent that's already been agreed to at the table, so hopefully this will be quick. I move:

    Do we have unanimous consent?

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: Perfect.

    Mr. Myles, we will go back to you for five minutes.

    Thanks very much.

    I will say that I got to go to AMII in Edmonton in the fall. It was amazing. It's an amazing facility. It was super fascinating, and there's amazing work being done there.

    I think part of what we've been challenged with and what we've talked about a lot as a group is figuring out what is possible in terms of transparency and being able to properly credit the works that have been ingested as part of a generative work.

    Stephanie, maybe you can speak to that. I don't know the technical side of it. We've gotten varying answers in terms of.... We understand why it's important, but it's also about how to actually get it done. The blockchain thing is super interesting, but I just wonder, even with the generative models, how much clarity we can get from the outputs.

    I'll clarify that I'm a non-technical leader at AMII, so when I think about things like transparency and explainability, it's really about applying the right tool at the right time. There's a lot of research still to be done in this area. That's why investments in fundamental research are so important. There is work still to be done on things like explainability and transparency, and then other processes, such as human-in-the-loop, which I think folks in the creative industry would be super interested in.

    In terms of the actual practices for transparency at AMII through our principal AI framework, we use a number of tools that help encourage companies to adopt some of these practices. These include things like model cards. As a company is developing a model to deploy in their business, it's actually documenting all of the choices made about the experiments with the model, the origins of that model and the decisions made along the way with model cards.

    Another tool is data sheets for datasets, which serves as a record of the data related to a specific AI project, so that explains ownership, governance, provenance and decisions made along the way.

    There are lots of different ways that companies handle these two tools, model cards and data sheets for datasets. Some of them are very open and transparent about publishing those so that consumers and individuals can understand how they are using data, how they're collecting it and what model it's associated to.

    On a more technical front, and the Government of Canada also uses this tool, is an algorithmic impact assessment. Things such as privacy, transparency and explainability are part of that algorithmic impact assessment, so as you move toward perhaps an autonomous system, it is about really understanding your risks and mitigation opportunities before you move forward with the model development.

    I wouldn't say I have an overall answer on how likely it is that we will have full transparency for the creative industries related to AI, but I do think there are a number of interesting tools, and there is a lot more research to be done that can move it towards new opportunities in that area.

     That's really interesting. Part of it is interesting just because it shows that it's being done at a certain level already in your organization, being understood as part of what fairness looks like.

    It's different for every application. It is very challenging to talk about AI in very broad strokes. There might be some opportunities where full transparency is possible but others where that is very challenging.

    Thank you.

    Neal, I feel like we've completely ignored you. Do you have any thoughts this far into the conversation about things you've been hearing and how it affects your line of work and the conversations that have been happening?

    Sure. Thank you.

    It did occur to me to point out that our members' work is part of a domestic film and television industry that in 2023-24 was worth $4.23 billion in GDP in Canada and generated 71,000 jobs. That is a component of an arts and culture sector that directly contributed $65 billion to the Canadian economy in 2024. There's definitely a lot of economic activity on the table here that needs protecting, nurturing and sustaining.

    Where do you see some of these challenges in terms of, let's say, transparency in your business?

    Thanks.

    One of the main focuses, again, is on copyright and ensuring that on the inputs and the outputs, the three Cs are respected. AI-generated content is not and should not be copyrightable. That's one of the ways we protect human expression. Copyrightability inures to human authors, not machines. That's already the status quo and should continue to be the case.

    We want to make sure something we've called copyright laundering doesn't become a thing. It's where humans are essentially added in to make something copyrightable that would be an otherwise uncopyrightable AI output. That would be a perverse reversal of the human and machine dynamic. Technology was always supposed to make humans' lives easier and better. It shouldn't be creating art and then being able to commercialize that art while we all still have to do the dishes and mow the lawn.

    Thank you.

    You're out of time. I'm sorry.

    Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for five minutes.

    Madam Chair, I have a point of order.

    We still have 13 minutes left in today's meeting, and this is our last meeting on this study. I want to know if we plan to take the time today to give instructions to the analysts to make recommendations in our report. This is something we need to do at the end of a study. If we want to do that today, we should take that into consideration in our calculations for the time we have left.

    Yes, we will do that today, before the end of the meeting.

    That's fine, thank you.

    You have the floor, Mr. Généreux.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Mr. Côté, you're going to think I'm annoying, but I'd like to know how you came up with the idea of combining AI with your work as an artist. You started out as an artist. As far as I know, you weren't a techie. What made you decide to work with these tools today?

    You're right, I was absolutely not a techie.

    In fact, I discovered the power of these tools as a creator and as a serial entrepreneur. I have eight companies and a non-profit organization, and AI gave me the tools I needed in terms of administration and management, for example. I also wanted to discover the creative side of artificial intelligence and the limits of its possibilities. There are plenty of processes that make our lives easier, but there are plenty of others that still complicate them, for now. Still, I'm sure that AI will, in some ways, transform the creative work of certain artists. For some, this will be for the better. For others, this may not be the case.

    That said, I remain convinced that it is around a campfire, with an acoustic guitar and a voice, surrounded by fellow human beings, that we can experience the greatest emotions. That's also something to consider. I don't think AI is going to replace real emotions. After all, it's called “artificial” intelligence.

    I completely agree with you.

    That's why I decided to launch my artistic career today.

    If my colleagues and the witnesses will allow me, I will play you an excerpt from my song. My creative agent, Shane, simply entered my name and the name of my riding into the app. Let's listen to it. It's not my voice, though.

    [ Audio presentation]

    The whole world has just discovered my future career.

     Voices:Oh, oh! Bravo.

    Now I'll give the floor to Mr. Ntumba for five minutes.

    That's a hard act to follow.

    Excuse me, Mr. Ntumba, I have to clarify something. I didn't fully understand the question Mr. Champoux asked me earlier.

    The purpose of the November 17 meeting will be to give instructions to the analyst. I was going to bring it up at the end of the meeting, but I wanted to clarify right away that we're not going to have time to give the instructions today. Many members of the committee are new members, so I think it's worth spending two hours talking about this study with the analyst. The analyst may also need clarification from committee members as to what they need.

    Mr. Champoux, you have the floor.

    I understand what you're telling me. You're taking into account the fact that there are new members of Parliament around the table, but I don't think we planned the fall schedule by reserving a full two-hour meeting to give instructions on producing the report on a study. I find that a lot of time is spent on issuing instructions.

    New MPs are surrounded by teams that can very easily mentor and guide them through the process. Giving instructions for a study like the one we just did takes 10 minutes, not two hours. It seems to me that we should have planned the November 17 meeting you mentioned differently, because other studies and discussions are waiting.

    I wish I had known in advance that we had scheduled a meeting to give instructions on how to write reports.

     Mrs. Thomas.

    I have just a quick comment on that.

    I can understand where my colleague is coming from. I think putting aside an entire two hours for direction of the study is a lot and perhaps doesn't seem like the best use of time. That said, we also weren't told that there would be business as a part of this meeting. Therefore, we did not come prepared to give our recommendations to the analyst today.

    My encouragement to the chair—my ask of the chair—would be that an official business meeting be called, that it be posted so that we understand what we're coming to, and that there be an agenda for that meeting so that we can come as prepared as possible.

    My further ask would be that perhaps we not just use time to give recommendations or direction in terms of that report. My understanding is that we have studies coming up. We will need to be able to give recommendations in terms of witnesses we want to see come for those. Thus far, none of that has been outlined for us in an official capacity. We have not been asked for input, so we are looking to the chair for further direction in terms of the status of this committee and how we're moving forward after today.

    We can have that discussion on November 17. It will be an in camera meeting, and we can have all of those discussions. I think that will work.

    I'm going to turn now to Mr. Ntumba.

    It's your turn, and you have five minutes.

    Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    As I said earlier, I don't know how I can top Mr. Généreux's intervention, which lit up the room with his beautiful music.

    I'll turn to you, Mr. McDougall.

    During the meetings we had at my office, you mentioned that Canadian productions were highly dependent on public policies such as the Broadcasting Act or the Canada Media Fund.

    What legal adaptations do you think would be needed to protect screenwriters in an environment where AI is becoming increasingly present in the creative process?

    Partly, I would just reiterate what I said before about the copyrightability of AI outputs. I think copyrightability and commercialization are closely related. It's the way in which content is commercialized and created into property that then can be taken to the market. That is one way—

    Excuse me, Mr. McDougall.

    I think we have a problem with translation. Let's see if we can get that fixed.

    Okay. Go ahead. I apologize for the interruption.

    No worries.

    The copyrightability is one piece. Another piece is ensuring there isn't drift within our cultural funding agencies, such as the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, etc., towards funding what is essentially AI-generated content.

     I'm not suggesting that's necessarily something they want to do or will do, but it is something to keep an eye on, to make sure that some of the enthusiasm—potentially some of it undue—around AI-generated content doesn't drift into taking away funds that are needed to support the 71,000 jobs I mentioned earlier. That cultural funding should continue to be for human beings. It's not a technology fund. It's a cultural fund for artists.

    Thank you very much.

    Ms. Kontoyanni, I have a question for you in response to your earlier answer.

    Artists are very concerned about their image, their voice and their style. However, I heard my colleague opposite say earlier that one aspect of technology was becoming necessary and useful to humans.

    Artificial intelligence seems to be adapting more to humans and taking on their role in dubbing work. The audiovisual production industry may find it cheaper to use AI to replace human labour. How can we keep humans involved in order to convey emotions effectively in film dubbing?

    How do we keep and protect that work? That's the whole question right now.

    First of all, it's important to recognize that this work is essential if we want to keep active artists among us. There will always be artists around a campfire with a guitar. That's guaranteed. However, if it doesn't allow them to make a living, we're going to lose them, which means losing our culture and letting in content that is increasingly foreign or built around a foreign philosophy, ideology and culture. If we fail to keep our artists thriving and our authentic voices vibrant, let me say that the 51st state will arrive from within. We won't need to be convinced of anything anymore.

    In my opinion, the key is to find a way to keep our artists as active as possible and our works as authentic as possible, in order to keep our voices alive and our ways of creating art alive. I think the bigger question we should be asking ourselves is: Can we afford to lose these jobs as a nation?

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Ntumba.

    Mr. Champoux, you have the last turn.

    Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    I apologize to the witnesses for the discussion we had about the end of the study and the recommendations. It's a mandatory step, obviously. I didn't have it in my mind that we were going to solve everything, but I thought we could get ahead of the game by already providing our instructions and recommendations for the next meeting scheduled to deal with committee business.

    I'd like to thank the witnesses. Their testimony was extremely edifying. Again, we've learned a few things. We've heard various points of view and possible solutions. There was a bit of optimism and hope in the message from some witnesses; there was a bit of realism that was hard to take in the message from other witnesses. That said, in general, it was extremely enlightening, so I sincerely thank them.

    Madam Chair, if the committee will allow me, I will use my speaking time to debate a motion, for which I submitted notice on September 17. It concerns a study I would like us to conduct after the one on indigenous art, which we agreed to devote two meetings to after the study we are wrapping up today.

    My motion is as follows:

    The notice of motion was tabled on September 17. I would like us to start this study after the two meetings already scheduled after the one we are completing.

     Mr. Myles.

    For our part, we completely agree.

    I want to move a slight amendment, that it include a government response.

    Okay. Are there any other comments?

    (Amendment agreed to)

    The Chair: Mrs. Thomas, go ahead.

    Sure, if I may.

    Normally, a committee would go to the next item that has been approved for study, that has had notice both given and accepted by the committee. The next study in order, according to that, would be a study with regard to the media.

    My colleague is moving this motion today—it will be voted on in just a moment—and as a part of that, he's asking that this be the next motion for study. If that's the will of the committee, I'll honour that, but I would ask of the committee that the study agreed to in September, having to do with the media, would then be the one to follow that of my colleague, Mr. Champoux.

    I don't know if I agree that it's normal committee practice to follow studies in order. Fairness is a big part of this committee. Today we're just wrapping up a study that was proposed by the Liberal Party. We've already had several motions that we've worked on from the Conservatives. It's fair to give the Bloc Québécois the next study, something proposed by Mr. Champoux. As a committee, we decide what goes next. Typically, it often depends on what's happening in the world. We're doing timely studies at this committee.

    Those are my thoughts.

    Are there any other comments, or shall we vote?

    Mr. Champoux.

    Madam Chair, I would like to add a comment.

    I relied on the most recent schedule we had. I don't recall a commitment that this study would be followed by the media study. If that's the case, then we've deviated from the schedule by adding the two meetings on the issue of indigenous art. However, in good faith, if these were the studies that the committee had agreed to do, I have no problem with that. That said, I get the impression that we've dealt a lot with the issue of the media recently, and the effects of online content on children and adolescents is still an extremely important problem for everyone.

    However, if we had agreed otherwise and my memory is lacking, I'm entirely fine with doing things as we agreed to do.

    However, I don't see anything to that effect in the schedule we have, which is up to date, and I don't remember having this discussion, but, in good faith, if that's what we agreed to, I'm listening.

    That's great.

    Would anyone else like to comment?

     Do we need a recorded vote, or are we all in favour of Martin's motion as amended?

    (Motion as amended agreed to)

    The Chair: I will just say this to the members, because we will be discussing drafting instructions when we come back: Maybe if you have time, review some of the testimony that we heard during this study. We heard a lot of really compelling witnesses. Think of some of the quotes we heard that you may want to see in the report.

    Liane, do you want to take a minute? Is there anything else you'd like to hear from members when we come back on November 17?

    Typically, we just expect what, in the testimony, you would like to see reflected in the report. Recommendations are welcome, if you want to put those in draft form. We can also generate some of those ourselves, based on the testimony.

    My colleague and I can also provide a draft outline as well, if you want something to work with when we get back, if that's helpful.

    I will also say thanks to the clerk. He would like to see witnesses for Mr. Champoux's study by the end of next week, if possible. That gives us a good two weeks to get people in place for that study.

    We have lined up witnesses for the indigenous art museum study, and that will be happening on November 19.

    Yes, Mrs. Thomas.

    One of the practices at other committees that I've been a part of has been to provide a schedule, so that we can see a layout of what's to be expected in the weeks ahead. Would it be possible to have that on Monday, November 17, for that business meeting, to enable us to discuss a long-term schedule between now and the end of our fall session?

    Okay. Thank you.

    Is everyone else good?

    I will thank our witnesses once again for coming. I will add that if there is anything you didn't manage to get on the record today—if there is any further information you think of later—please send it to our committee, care of the clerk. Our analysts will have access to that information, and all the members will see it. We can include it in our final report on this study.

    Thank you, again, for your time, everyone, and for being here for our last day of this very interesting study.

    I will consider this meeting adjourned.