In 2001 the Government of Canada held wide public consultations concerning changes to Canadian Copyright laws. Over 700 position papers were submitted by Canadians from coast to coast - overwhelmingly rejecting legal protection for digital restrictions and other ideas that have since been incorporated into the proposed legislation.

Copies of all the submissions can be found here:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/crp-prda.nsf/en/h_rp01105e.html

At the moment a number of groups and individuals are calling for another round of public consultations. Today on the This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it mailing list, Russell McOrmond offered the following reasons for asking that the process be repeated:

Be prepared with answers to the following:

Paraphrasing: There was wide public consultation about these digital issues in 2001 and 2002. While the educational amendments are new, there was consultation within the educational community on these and this appears to be what that community agreed to.

There are major flaws with both statements, but this is what the Conservatives (and some Liberals and Bloc) will be coming back with on any talk about a public consultation.

The 2001/2002 consultations widely rejected legal protection for technical meausres, the uncertainty around the "making available" right, and the uncertainty around term extensions. These are all issue where C-61 rejects the outcome of the consultations. That was also 6 years ago, which is a long time considering this bill alleges to target behaviour by youth who were too young to participate in a consultation at that time.

As to the educational amendments, they are highly controversial within the educational community. This largely comes down to educational administration (lead by the provincial educational ministers) and the teachers unions vs the interests of the actual educators and the educational community as a whole.