Thank you, Madam Chair.
I should have bought stock in Tylenol before we started these sessions.
I don't think we can over-emphasize the importance of this e-learning digital era. I really believe the advent of e-learning will have impacts on this century comparable to what the industrial revolution had on the last one.
I am convinced that with the doubling of knowledge every five years now, there is only one way that will be useful. There is only one way that the masses will have access to that, and that is through a digitized format. So I say, creators beware.
We seem to be looking at things in the rear-view mirror and comparing it to how this is working out in the paper industry. We have to start looking 10 years down the road, and I think Mr. Weber has clearly done that. He's recognizing that as creators are producing, they're not going to be producing 50,000 or 100,000 bound copies of their reports; they're going to be producing a digitized version or a digitized copy. And if we don't get this right, I think it will have an absolutely tremendously negative impact on creators.
Mr. Wills, regarding your reference to the recent court decision, I'm disappointed in that particular justice, but I think I have to hold our government to account as a result of that decision, to a large extent. I don't think Parliament, or Canadians in general, believe the courts should be determining what level of support the country should be providing its creators. I think they look to Parliament to do that, and I would suggest that is exactly what we are doing right now. So I'm hoping we don't use justices' opinions to determine whether or not we should be supporting our cultural sector.
If I understand your argument properly, you should not be paying for things like computers, for software, for electricity, or for anything else, for that matter, because I can only assume that you value the content that you're providing by way of your curriculum every bit as much as you do the Microsoft software you're buying, or the computer you're buying, or the electricity you're purchasing that allows you to deliver that.
In fact, if I were to keep going down that road, I would suggest that maybe you shouldn't be charging for your courses, or you should only be charging a portion for your courses.
I'm very, very nervous about not getting this right, making sure we have a good structure in place to make sure we can deliver the money in a digitized era five years from now, to make sure that we have the appropriate levels of support for creators, because you, as educators, are going to have a very difficult job in providing course material if nobody is producing it.
So I'm interested in where you see things going five years from now, where you see things going 10 years from now, as we recognize that this doubling of human knowledge.... It's difficult for me to even comprehend this. The last 25,000 years is now being repeated by human knowledge every five years, and it will likely accelerate beyond that. Where do you see this going 5, 10, or 15 years down the road if we do not have collective licensing to support our creators?