(I am currently working on a writing and photo project on First Nations customary copyright so I have been researching the subject)
Jimmy..... an individual copyright under the Act is the life of the creator plus 50 years after death, which is pretty standard world wide, except in the US where it can be 75 years.
Perpetuity. I know a lot of clients these days demand rights in perpetuity. In the world's first major copyright trial Donaldson v Becket, 1774, in Britain's House of Lords, the justices ruled against any form of rights in perpetuity, in favour of a fixed term set by the legislature, in 1774 it was 14 years with one renewal and would have applied in what became both Canada and the US. ( So today the fixed term is life + 50). Because it was two years before the American revolution and was later upheld by the US Supreme Court, technically it still applies in all Common Law countries. Technically, "some conditions apply." On the other hand, as Moe says, these days the client usually has the final say in the hiring negotiation, which is why we get so many demands for perpetuity these days.
Oh and on the prospective one time client who wouldn't pay my mileage for a 500 k round trip, the fee wouldn't have barely covered the costs of the trip, so it wasn't worth it. Nor, as Moe points out, was this client, that prestigious.