OTTAWA–Canada has capitulated on copyright policy in the new trilateral North American trade deal, experts say, with a new “digital trade” chapter that could have wide-ranging implications on everything from Canadian content online to personal privacy.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), announced late Sunday night, commits Canada to extending the term of copyright by two decades, from 50 years after the author’s death to 70 years. While that sounds like a relatively minor change, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist said the costs associated with it could be significant.

“I think it’s bad news for Canadians, bad news from a cultural and heritage perspective,” Geist said, who suggested the government “caved” on the issue.

“We’ll find that Canadian culture and heritage is locked down, out of the public domain for an extra two decades. Canada had resisted those reforms despite U.S. pressure for a long time … (It) means that works that might otherwise make their way to schools under the public domain won’t for a couple of decades, which could increase education costs.”

Geist also said the extension of patents on biologics to 10 years could have an “enormous” cost on the health care system by driving up the price of generic drugs.

Read more:

Justin Trudeau calls trade deal a win, promises compensation for dairy farmers

Here’s what’s new in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement

Opinion | Chantal Hébert: Trade agreement is unlikely to hurt Liberal fortunes

Experts were still poring over the massive trade agreement on Monday, reached between Canada, the United States and Mexico after a year of tense negotiation. Much of the initial reaction has been focused on the impact for Canada’s auto sector, which appears to have dodged U.S. tariffs for the time being, and the Liberal government’s concessions on Canada’s supply managed dairy industry.

But it appears that protections for Canada’s cultural sectors remain largely intact, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said nixing them would be a “red line” in the negotiations.

The agreement maintains cultural exemptions to help preserve “our unique Canadian character” and protect official bilingualism, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters on Monday.

Like the previous NAFTA deal, USMCA specifically exempts Canada’s “cultural industry.” But while the exemption covers things like books, music and television programming, Carleton University’s Meredith Lilly said it does not appear to cover digital products.

“My read of it is that it’s exactly the same language that we’ve had for 30 years, yet digital products are new and there’s no mention of them in the exemption,” Lilly, who previously advised Stephen Harper on trade issues, said Monday.

“There was no digital chapter in the original NAFTA. Now we have a digital chapter, we have definitions around what digital products are, and so if digital products are included in the cultural exemption, why isn’t that language specifically there?”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Lilly said if digital products fall outside the general exemption on cultural industries, it could limit Ottawa’s ability to set Canadian content standards in digital media.

But a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told the Star that digital content is included under the cultural exemption, saying that the updated language is consistent with recent trade deals with the European Union and Pacific nations.

Read more about: