Canadian Heritage

This House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting, the fifth of the session, studied the impact of technological advances in artificial intelligence on the creative industries. Appearing were Marie-Julie Desrochers from the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Arezki Raab and Maryse Beaulieu from Copibec, Dave Anctil from the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies, and Rudyard Griffiths from The Hub.

Marie-Julie Desrochers, representing over 350,000 creators and 3,000 cultural enterprises, argued that generative AI is profoundly disrupting the cultural ecosystem and that three pillars—authorization, remuneration, and transparency (ART)—are essential. She called for no exception for text and data mining in copyright, no copyright for purely AI-generated content, and transparency for training data and synthetic content, and she regretted that no cultural industry voices were on the new Canadian AI strategy expert panel. She noted that the international community, including at the recent MONDIACULT 2025 conference, has committed to a human-centric approach to AI and culture.

Arezki Raab and Maryse Beaulieu of Copibec, a non-profit rights management collective, stated that generative AI poses an existential threat to rights holders, as large language models have been trained without authorization, violating the Copyright Act. They argued that no exceptions should be made for text and data mining, that Canada needs regulations on transparency, and that waiting for court rulings is not a substitute for proactive legislation. They emphasized that creators are absent from the AI business model and must be compensated through licensing.

Dave Anctil, an affiliated researcher, warned that generative and agentive AI enables non-artists to simulate and market works, creating unfair competition and threatening cultural sovereignty. He argued that unlike other professions, artists have no legal protection against replacement by synthetic productions, and he called for a regulatory framework to label synthetic products so the public can make informed judgments. He disagreed with the notion that AI is just another tool, stressing that the scale and control of digital infrastructure by American oligopolies is the core problem.

Rudyard Griffiths, publisher of The Hub, focused on the news industry, noting that AI offers productivity gains and investigative journalism opportunities but also causes significant drops in organic traffic due to zero-click searches and AI Overviews. He argued that over-regulation, citing the Online News Act as a cautionary tale, can have unintended consequences, such as forcing news outlets to give all content to Google to receive funding. He recommended focusing on competition, fairness, and transparency, and warned against subsidies that distort markets, instead urging that the government allow competition to occur naturally.

During questions, Griffiths elaborated that under the Online News Act, recipients of funding must make all content available to Google, preventing them from blocking AI bots from scraping subscriber-only content, which he called anti-competitive. He stated that 60% of Google searches are now zero-click, fundamentally changing the Internet, and that the government should prioritize competition over protectionism. In response to a question about whether he would be considered an artist if he used AI to create music, Anctil said no, because the system is trained on human data, while Raab noted a grey area; Desrochers added that the Copyright Act already prohibits unauthorized use and that legislation on transparency is needed. Anctil also said that two trades—digital illustrators and French dubbing—will be permanently transformed by AI.