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Tucked away inside the 500-page budget unveiled in Ottawa Tuesday was a single sentence that is already raising alarm over how it will affect the way Canadians create and consume media.

In a section about “celebrating our heritage,” the budget vows to update the Copyright Act “to protect sound recordings and performances for an additional 20 years,” raising the copyright term for musical works from 50 to 70 years and potentially signalling further restrictions on works of art yet to be unveiled, critics fear.

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“This extension is a really bad idea,” said Tamir Israel, staff lawyer at the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. “There is no proof at all the extended copyright term in any way increases incentives to create. On the other hand, Canadians are robbed of open access to works that should be entering the public domain.”

Israel says the 70-year copyright term is likely tied to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an international trade deal being hammered out largely in secret between the United States, Canada and 10 other countries. The eventual TPP agreement will affect everything from farming and food safety to labour and trade tariffs. Included in that package is a set of changes to intellectual property regulations, and documents leaked to Wikileaks suggest the U.S. is pushing for longer copyright terms in all jurisdictions that sign onto the TPP, including Canada.