THE LAW ALLOWS SCHOOLS TO COPY ALMOST ANY AMOUNT OF MATERIAL WITHOUT COMPENSATING PUBLISHERS.

levels were quick to seize the opportunity the Alberta decision presented to them. Shared guidelines, the Fair Dealing Guidelines, were drawn. These permit copying so extensive that Canadian educational book publishers, already serving a small market, are going out of business. According to a recent PWC study performed for Access Copyright, “since implementation of the Fair Dealing Guidelines, the educational publishing industry in Canada has been subject to a significant negative impact … Revenues from sales are experiencing an accelerated decline. These declines … will accelerate further, purposes.

Although the Alberta Education case is one of the most egregious examples, it is not in that case alone that the SCC has taken IP jurisprudence down a crooked path. Why is this area of law, so critical to Canadian innovation policy, ill-served by our top court? For many years after the enactment of the Charter, the SCC was busy applying it. Commercial and IP were turned aside. It is only in the last decade, a decade in which Internet copying has greatly influenced public, and academic, views of copyright, that the court has begun finally to turn its collective mind to IP issues.