My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. It is a question I had for the Minister of Canadian Heritage when he took part in Question Period in the Senate on March 19, 2019.

At least three professional writers’ associations have spoken out against a practice being used by Internet sites that violate their members’ copyrights. Three of those associations are UNEQ in Quebec, the Authors Guild in the United States and the Society of Authors in Great Britain. These three organizations are calling on legislators to put an end to the practice of certain websites that claim to be online libraries of digitizing books from public or university libraries and lending them to Internet users.

These sites are digitizing and distributing copyrighted material online without the authors’ permission and without paying them any royalties, in violation of Canada’s Copyright Act.

What is interesting is that these sites are referring to this practice as “controlled digital lending.” What is more, some of them are falsely claiming the following, and I will quote from one such site:

Imagine a world where authors can make money by giving digital versions of their books away to their readers . . . .

There is also the fact that this website claims to be a site that was, and I quote:

. . . made with love in Vancouver, BC.

We know that, in Canada, there is a comprehensive system for managing public library loans through which the Public Lending Right Commission of the Canada Council for the Arts enforces authors’ copyright and pays them royalties on loans made by Canadian public libraries.

The question that I would like you to submit to the minister is as follows. What does the government intend to do, as part of its current review of the Copyright Act, to stop such practices? These sites are falsely claiming that the use of material on their site is fair and legal, an argument that an American court recently rejected in the ReDigi case.