News, cultural groups want clarity on copyright after Ottawa releases AI strategy

OTTAWA – News and cultural industry groups are calling on the government to take a stand on how AI systems use copyrighted content after Ottawa’s long-awaited national AI strategy failed to address the issue.

The Liberal government released a strategy earlier this month which includes $2.3 billion in new and expanded funding and sets a goal of increasing Canadians’ use of artificial intelligence.

But while questions — and lawsuits — have swirled for years around AI systems’ unauthorized use of copyrighted content, the strategy didn’t offer any answers.

“You’ve got basically a 50-page document that came out and the word ‘copyright’ didn’t appear once, which is troubling to news publishers but it’s also troubling to music publishers, book publishers and others,” said Paul Deegan, CEO of News Media Canada.

Marie-Julie Desrochers, executive director of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, said creators in the media and cultural sectors are still seeing their work being used by tech firms to train their AI platforms without authorization or compensation. The group represents more than 50 organizations in multiple sectors, including book publishing, film, television and music.

“That needs to change because it’s the foundation of our ecosystem. If creators don’t get paid for creating, then it’s a huge problem,” she said.

Both groups want the government to state it will not introduce an exemption to the law allowing companies to use copyrighted content for AI system training.

Taylor Owen, founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University, said the absence of copyright in the AI strategy was “conspicuous.”

The centre released a report in March that found AI systems depend on Canadian journalism for the information they provide to users but don’t offer compensation or proper attribution in return.

A coalition of Canadian news outlets which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada is pursuing a lawsuit against OpenAI in Ontario. The lawsuit was launched in 2024 but a verdict has not been issued yet.

Earlier this month, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said AI systems were built on the “original sin” of a “brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale.”

He urged news companies to fight back and noted the New York Times has spent more than US$20 million on its lawsuits against AI.

Florian Martin-Bariteau, research chair in technology and society at the University of Ottawa, said he would have expected to see the federal AI strategy address copyright, since the government held an extensive consultation on the subject in 2024.

“We know that the government has been working on this,” he said. “I think some people were maybe expecting some policy-making, maybe a reform of the Copyright Act.”

During that 2024 consultation, Canadian creators and publishers asked the government to do something about companies using their work to train AI systems.

AI companies maintained that using the material to train their systems doesn’t violate copyright. Google said AI training is already exempted under existing copyright law, though it added the government should adopt an exemption to make that explicit. Canadian AI company Cohere said the law needs to make it clear that the training process doesn’t violate copyright.

Both News Media Canada and the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions are asking the government to take the opposite stance.

They want the government to state that it does not intend to introduce a broad exception to the law for text and data mining.

Desrochers said a clear statement from the government would pave the way for the development of a licensing market. Licensing would “allow creators and rights holders to give consent and to be remunerated for the use of their work,” she said.

Deegan and Desrochers both pointed to Australia, where the government has made that statement.

The request is in line with a recent recommendation by the House of Commons heritage committee.

In an April report that followed a study of the impacts of artificial intelligence on the cultural sector, the committee said the government should “establish a clear opt-in consent requirement for the use of copyrighted works in the training of artificial intelligence systems, ensuring that creators’ works may not be used for text and data mining or model development without their prior authorization.”

Deegan said the government should also leverage its procurement policy to require that companies on its supplier list pledge that they won’t use content without permission.

“When the government is doing everything they can to … help support national champions, companies like Cohere, and we fully support that, I think they should ensure that those companies they are championing are living by Canadian copyright laws,” he said.

A group of publishers that includes the Toronto Star, Condé Nast and McClatchy has launched a separate lawsuit in the U.S. alleging Cohere infringed their copyright by scraping their articles from the internet without the publishers’ permission or compensation.

Both Desrochers and Deegan said previous comments made by Culture Minister Marc Miller indicated the government’s position is close to what they are requesting.

In March, Miller was asked why the government still doesn’t have a clear position on copyright and AI training.

He responded that there was no “particular need” to open up copyright law. 

“Current copyright law does and should protect those that have created material and people need to be compensated properly,” Miller said.

He didn’t answer a followup question about whether Canada would oppose or support an exception for text and data mining if it came up in the context of trade negotiations with the U.S.

A spokesperson for Miller said the government doesn’t have any updates on its plans for copyright and whether it will make a statement on a text and data mining exception.

Teresa Scassa, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada research chair in information law and policy, said there is an international component to copyright policy.

“Copyright is subject to all kinds of international treaties and agreements to create harmonization more globally,” she said.

Scassa said there could be risks for Canada if it gets ahead of other countries with policies that aren’t compatible with other jurisdictions.

“It’s quite possible Canada’s hanging back and waiting to see where the tide goes on this set of issues, simply because we’re just not big enough to be charting a new or different path on these copyright questions,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 25, 2026.