Currently, only the Federal Court has the jurisdiction to correct any errors on the trademark register. The goal of Bill C-8 is to give the registrar the ability to correct errors without going to the Federal Court. Right now the circumstances are such that even if an error is determined right after a filing, in order to have it corrected once it's on the register, the commissioner of trademarks or the trademark owner has to go to Federal Court to have that correction made. So what the amendment does is provide for a six-month period during which, if an error is determined by the trademark owner, then the commissioner of trademarks has the ability to make that correction without going to Federal Court.
The amendment changes the flexibility the commissioner has in response to errors identified by the rights holder to a liability, so he or she would effectively be in a position of having, first off, to proactively correct all errors, and then, secondly, be responsible and liable in situations where they did not find the error.
From the perspective of analyzing this section, there's a legal community of trademark agents who have the strongest incentives to make sure that their trademarks are accurate. Our view is that they are best-positioned and most responsible to bring those errors forward to the commissioner, who can then correct them. To create a liability on behalf of the commissioner would substantively raise the bar.