We talked about the clutter on the register. I think that's an important one because it takes a lot of trademarks out of circulation, and there are few enough as it is. I think there is a certain amount of upheaval involved in taking a hundred-some years of case law defining trademarks, defining what use is, defining when rights can be exerted, and flushing it down the toilet, because I think that the abolition of the use requirement goes a long way toward doing that. It takes a system that has been entirely use-based, where you could not get a registration in Canada without having use somewhere in the world, to one where simply no use is required at all. I think a lot of the case law that has been developed over the years, which gives us stability in the legal community and as businesses, is really going to be useless after amendments like this. That could only hurt business.
On May 12th, 2014. See this statement in context.