An Open Letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney

To the Right Honourable Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada,

Congratulations on your election as leader of the Liberal party and your assumption of the Office of Prime Minister.

Your credentials demonstrate that you understand the threat of both extractive public institutions and extractive economic policies to successful societies.

With that in mind, I ask that your government do more to help authors protect the work of our lives.

My first novel, Chaos Calling: Book I of The Xenthian Cycle, is a fantasy action story set in Toronto. I wrote a book that spoke to me as a resident of this city, as a fan of Marvel movies where Toronto is forever masquerading as other global cities, and as a person who believes Canada, for all its challenges, has something to say about how to build a successful collaborative society in the 21st century.

In March, I learned through Alex Reisner’s reporting for The Atlantic that Chaos Calling is among the millions of books that have been pirated and mined to train AI and Generative AI engines by Meta and other unethical tech companies.

I won’t attempt to describe to you the feeling of violation this news has brought. Hundreds of other Canadian authors and academics, whether they are traditionally published or independents like me, are affected.

This is one instance where being in such fine company is a small consolation. We did not consent to this practice, and we were not compensated.

The theft required two participants: LibGen, the decentralized site loosely based in Russia that pirates author works across genres, including those by indie authors, and tech companies like Meta who actively decided to steal the data to make their products without compensating the people whose labour and creativity made that training possible.

I trust you are familiar with the ideas of the Nobel-Prize winning book Why Nations Fail, which I finished reading shortly before Reisner’s story broke. Self-publishing and the rise of indie authors are two inclusive economic and cultural forces in Canada and around the world. They reflect Canada’s open commitment to allowing its citizens the right to self-determination and our protection of our inclusive institutions, including the law, intellectual property, and other long-standing policies.

Chaos Calling is the first in a five-part series that I began in 2014, publishing the first instalment in 2022. Optimistically, it will likely take me another 10 years to complete.

I knew when I started that economic success is not guaranteed.

I accepted that risk, even as I invested substantial funds to create a book comparable in quality to what publishing houses produce by hiring experienced professionals and paying them a fair market rate for their work (don’t take my word on the quality; see the Kirkus review).

I accepted that risk, even as I invested additional funds to market the book and begin the long, slow process of building a readership.

What I did not and never will accept is the right of tech companies run by billionaires to steal the work of authors out from under us while using our creativity, insight, and craft to develop generative tools to benefit their profit margins.

If that’s not the definition of an extractive economic practice, I don’t know what is.

I implore you and your cabinet to consider what can be done to protect the next generation of creatives telling Canada’s story. There is a legal and policy response to the intellectual property threat, certainly, the shape of which I leave to you. More must also be done to fund and support creative people who are gambling their time and energy to affirm and reflect what it means to be Canadian here and now.

I share your concerns about the threats to Canada’s freedoms within and outside our borders. I’m sure there is much to occupy your time. But this threat is no less significant if we are to remain the country that I was raised to believe in.

I wish you and your colleagues the best in the upcoming election.

Yours Sincerely,

Elizabeth Monier-Williams

(writing fiction as E. M. Williams)