Comment on #ERRE #Q Committee by Laurel L. Russwurm

I have plenty of photographs of Ms. May from the 2015 election, and I was able to incorporate the photo of Nathan Cullen into my graphic because it was published with a free culture license. But unfortunately I have no photos of the Liberal, Conservative or Bloc Committee members, nor was I able to find photos of them in the Public Domain or licensed to share. Unlike our American friends whose Government releases media it generates directly into the public domain (on the principle that such material is already paid for), Canadian Government produced media is protected under Crown Copyright, so it won’t be legal to freely share any of their official photos any time soon.

The artwork of the Minister used elsewhere in this series is my own original creation, but as I am not a professional, doing that takes a lot of time and energy and even then, it may or may not work out. I do photograph politicians and release some of my best photos with a free culture license on Flickr and Wikimedia Commons (which is why so many of our local politicians have photos on Wikipedia) but politicians would do themselves a favour by making their own sharable images available.