Honourable committee members, Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the Canadian Standards Association, now operating as CSA Group. I have been employed in IP protection now for over eight years. Prior to my work with CSA Group, I was the national anti-piracy coordinator for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, now known as Music Canada.
I am here to present on behalf of CSA Group to give you a picture of how counterfeiting affects our organization.
CSA Group is a not-for-profit association dedicated to safety and social good. As a certification body, CSA Group tests and certifies products in fields such as hazardous and industrial locations, plumbing, construction, medical devices, safety, appliances, and gas. The CSA Group certification mark appears on billions of products worldwide, and 88,000 clients use us for our certification services.
Intellectual property law and enforcement is very important to CSA Group. Its proprietary trademarks and certification marks are among the most valuable assets to our company. When products bearing counterfeit CSA Group marks appear in the marketplace, it puts public safety at risk and poses a very real threat to the acceptance of legitimate marks.
Numerous Canadian regulations require certain electrical, gas, and plumbing products to be certified by a certification body, much like CSA. These regulations have been put in place to protect the public. Products bearing counterfeit certification marks have not been put through the certification process. This means that no samples have been tested to meet the minimum requirements, and no audits have been performed on the manufacturer. Regulators rely on the CSA Group certification mark. As a result, products bearing counterfeit certification marks undermine the entire Canadian system of standards, testing, certification, and regulation.
I have provided some examples here if you have any of the handouts, but I thought I would cover some of CSA Group's most recent experiences involving products that bear counterfeit CSA marks. We find they're most often imported into Canada rather than manufactured here, and so as a result we recommend that the government provide customs officials with the express authority to target, detain, seize, and destroy counterfeit goods.
Like most private industry, CSA Group does not report its anti-counterfeiting statistics to any third parties. Our efforts are managed internally, and there is no reporting requirement mandate. The counterfeiting problem reflected in RCMP statistics, let's say, provides only a glimpse into the counterfeit problem here in Canada. Accordingly, we recommend the government adopt a recordation system whereby IP rights holders may record their rights with the CBSA.
Covered in the handout of photos I've included a wide range of potentially hazardous products that have been found recently bearing counterfeit CSA certification marks.
The first one is circuit breakers bearing counterfeit certification marks and brand names that were found in a hospital in Quebec supplying power to life support equipment. You can find this in your information package under photograph one.