The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law is established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988 and 1997. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the federal government by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act 1867.
It is unclear to what extent British copyright law, or imperial law, starting with the 1709 Statute of Anne, applied to then colonies including Canada. The first Canadian colonial copyright statute was the 1832 Copyright Act, long title “An Act for the Protection of Copy Rights”, passed by the Parliament of the Province of Lower Canada, granting copyright to residents of the province. The 1832 Copyright Act was short, and declared ambitions to encourage emergence of a literary and artistic nation and to encourage literature, bookshops and the local press. After the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec) were reunified to form the Province of Canada, the 1832 Copyright Act was repealed and with minor changes enacted as the 1841 Copyright Act, long title “An Act for the Protection of Copy Right in this Province”.[1]
The 1841 Copyright Act only granted copyright in books, maps, charts, musical compositions, prints, cuts and engravings. Copyright was only awarded if it was registered and a copy of the work deposited in the office of the registrar of the province before publication. The author or creator was required to be resident in the province in order to obtain copyright under the Act, though the Act was unclear on whether the work needed to have been first published in the Province. The objective of the colonial copyright statutes was to encourage the printing of books in Canada, though this was not made explicit to avoid conflict with imperial copyright law, which was primarily designed to protect English publishers. Britain forcefully demanded guarantees that British and Irish subject were eligible for protection under Canadian colonial copyright law in the same way residence of the Canadian colony were.[2]
One year after Canada passed its colonial law on copyright, the UK Parliament passed a new imperial statute on copyright, the Copyright Act 1842. The statute explicitly applied to “all Parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, all Parts of the East and West India, and all the Colonies, Settlements, and Possessions of the Crown which now are or thereafter may be acquired”. Any book published in London would therefore be protected by copyright law in the entire British Empire, including Canada, which was a young British colony.[1] The imperial Copyright Act 1842 had an immediate impact on Canada and became infamous because it effectively prohibited the importation and sale of reprints of any book under British copyright printed in other countries. Previously Canada had mostly imported books from the United States, but it was now unlawful for Canadian merchants to engage in this trade. Instead merchants were required to import books under British copyright from printers in Britain, though British market prices were unaffordable for most residents of Canada. As British publishers systematically refused to license books for printing to Canadian printers, the Canadian Government questioned the responsible self-government arrangement.[3] In a provocative move Canada passed “An Act to extend the Provincial Copyright Act to Persons Resident in the United Kingdom” in 1847, granting British authors protection only if their works had been printed and published in the Province of Canada. The 1841 and 1847 statutes were subject to minor revision in 1859 and the requirement for the works to be printed in Canada, buried in the text, was later noticed and denounced by the imperial British Government.[2]
