Evidence of meeting #64 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was transfer.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
As a bit of a preface, I believe there are international IP provisions that some nations adhere to that are simply not in Canada's best interest to adopt.
Do you think that other countries impose IP protection regimes in Canada that they themselves do not permit in their own jurisdiction? I'd like to talk about some of the changes coming in CETA, and potentially the TPP. I'd like to know your point of view on that.
Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
As you may know, I've been critical of the provisions in the trans-Pacific partnership around copyright and of some of the patent provisions that we see in CETA. Part of it stems from the fact that the bargain we've been sold in some of these areas simply hasn't sorted out.
Take pharmaceuticals: almost two decades ago, Canada instituted changes in our patent rules to increase our level of patent protection in return for clear commitment in terms the amount of R and D that the large pharmaceutical companies would be making in Canada to try to address some of the imbalance that you just highlighted. That hasn't happened. In fact, the amount of R and D taking place in Canada has steadily declined.
Despite that fact, through CETA we are actually extending the amount of patent protection that we grant to pharmaceutical companies. As part of the TPP, if the TPP gets revived on the issue of biologics, next-generation pharmaceuticals, in many instances we're locking into levels of protection that will have significant impacts on health care costs and really not serve the national interest in the way that we ought to when it comes to IP policy.
That's not to say that we need to ignore international standards. I started some of my comments by noting that Canada meets its international standards. However, we are often the target of intense lobbying campaigns from some of our largest trading partners who see their national interests, and in a sense, try to take their rules and off-load them into Canada.
We need to remain strong. We need to remain strong in representing that Canadian interest, both when we engage in domestic policies, which I would argue will happen as part of the copyright review later this year, and when it comes to some of the international trade negotiations, notably the NAFTA renegotiation that's scheduled to restart, where it's very clear that some of the same kinds of provisions that we saw within the TPP will resurface within those NAFTA talks.
Liberal
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Thanks for being here on short notice.
With the transfer, whether it's an idea that started at a university, or wherever, in partnership with a business to try to commercialize it, or whether it's a business that has worked with a university and comes up with a great idea or a new twist to their technology and takes it to market, obviously there is some of that taking place in this country. Some of it is a huge success.
My question to you, though, is one that I've brought up at other committee meetings. Once the little company that has a great idea with the university just gets it off the ground and has 10 or 15 employees and has made a couple of sales to the United States, bang, here comes a patent lawsuit in the United States and Texas. What can we do here? Is it through NAFTA that we need to do something in our renegotiations to be firm in order to do this?
Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
That's a terrific point. It's one that Balsillie has made quite frequently as well.
It points to the fact that, with all respect, the trade negotiations around intellectual property in Canada have been almost entirely defensive. It comes back to the question we had earlier. It has been all about trying to fend off, in a sense, some of the pressures we faced from other jurisdictions. It's primarily from the United States, and of course, within the CETA context, from the Europeans.
I think it's worth noting that some of our other trade deals, with South Korea, for example, haven't featured some of those same kinds of pressures. Those are countries that recognize that Canada meets its international standards, and they are content to allow countries to sort out their rules in an appropriate fashion.
One of the things we haven't done but I believe we ought to be doing is to be more aggressive about representing those Canadian interests in the trade negotiations. Balsillie has talked specifically about this. The patent troll use, particularly out of the Texas courts, the eastern district, which represents an enormous risks for all businesses, obviously including Canadian ones, is something that we ought to address, because the use of the patent system as sword out of the United States represents a significant threat from a Canadian perspective.
It's not even just patents. I'll give you an example. There was a Burlington-based company, called Skylink, that made a universal garage door opener. People have multiple garage doors that are sometimes made by different companies. The idea was for a universal remote. They were sued in multiple U.S. courts on the basis of copyright infringement, citing the digital lock rules, the anti-circumvention rules that we implemented in 2012.
If you're a small company that's taken before the U.S. international trade tribunal on multiple levels, as well as the U.S. courts, that's a cost that you can barely afford. Therefore, one of the things we need to be cognizant of is the use of that as a very aggressive sword, particularly out of the United States, which tends to be more litigious in the IP area; in a sense, an opportunity to either shut down the Canadian business or force it to sell out for pennies on the dollar because it can't afford the litigation.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
To me, this is the non-starter in negotiations.
My former employer, Desire2Learn, which I believe is your LMS at Ottawa U, was sued by Blackboard in Lufkin, Texas. I was working there at the time they were sued.
The system is so flawed because you're appearing in front of a jury of regular, everyday Texans, at a time when they look at it as a Canadian company stealing American jobs, in high-tech language with high-tech terminology—some high, some low.
They were sued for infringing on the word “user”. When you have to go and spend millions of dollars that you're trying to spend to build your company on lawsuits in Texas, it is not at all a system to make the world a better place, or in this case, to make education a better place.
I hope that through our negotiations... but how do you get through the court system in the U.S.? Is there a way to get through that in NAFTA?
Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think there are a number of ways you can try to address it.
I agree with you; the problem in Texas is enormous. It's the reason you have companies like Samsung sponsoring and paying for hockey rinks in Texas, quite literally, in that eastern district. They appear so often before those courts that they want the potential jury pool to be familiar with and think nicely of a company like Samsung. Small Canadian companies simply aren't about to do that, so there's an enormous disadvantage.
I think there are things we can take a look at, both in terms of the enforceability of judgments here, but also how this represents a trade barrier.
The U.S. is fond of identifying areas they describe as trade barriers from the Canadian perspective, and then pressuring Canadian politicians and policy-makers to make adjustments. We see it in the copyright area.
Mr. Dreeshen earlier mentioned references to publishing and copyright. The reality is that Canadian institutions are spending millions of dollars, still today, on access to various licensing materials, often through intermediaries.
One of the things we ought to note is that the U.S. is even more flexible than the Canadian system, and yet they're pressuring us and claiming that somehow this is a trade barrier.
Perhaps when Canada comes to the table, it ought to be not just about preserving what we have and identifying areas that get a lot of attention, like softwood lumber and the like, in terms of trying to sort out those issues. If we truly believe that IP really is going to be one of the core engines of our economy in the future, we have to ensure that this agreement reflects our national IP interests as well.
Liberal
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Thank you.
I would like to explore the discussion that was brought up quite nicely by Mr. Nantel, that colleges are about solving a problem for industry, whereas universities are about the pursuit of knowledge. I would agree with that. I'm looking for ways they might be able to come together. Jaipreet, whom I did have the pleasure of working with in a previous life, touched on that as well.
Maybe we can start with you. You said that you had seen attempts to do that with clusters and that it didn't quite work. Maybe you could explain what didn't work, and if you have ideas of what might actually work to bridge that, where colleges can do their job of bringing technology and working with industry, and universities can do their pursuit of knowledge, their more purist pursuit. Is there a way we can make that flow?
Manager, Ernst & Young, As an Individual
I worked with Marc with the Ontario Centres of Excellence. Traditionally—and Marc can correct me—they used to have more funding and collaboration with the universities, but now it's increasingly with the colleges as well. I think one thing is to look at where there is collaboration.
I think a small industry can be a good collaborator with that university and the college, because there might be some interesting IP that's been developed at the university, but the company might not have those in-house resources to prototype it and test it. That's where a college can do that well. I've done degrees at universities, and I've done courses at colleges as well. They're more hands-on, so that can reduce the time to market. That would be one way.
I think in a lot of places it is possible. Geographically, they are mostly fairly close to one another, in most major cities. That could be one way to look at it.
Liberal
Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College
Yes. It is usually people who work together rather that institutions working together.
Most of the time it's this researcher who knows he or she wants to solve this problem or create new knowledge and then needs the other person at the other place.
I'm not a big fan of shotgun weddings as it sometimes happens that funding agencies want to force this, but having the availability of working together is great. An example of that is with FedDev Ontario, our regional economic development agency in southwest Ontario. We had a project from Niagara College, Sheridan College, and Mohawk College called SONAMI, the Southern Ontario Network for Advanced Manufacturing Innovation. We were putting ourselves up for FedDev, saying we were going to help SMEs in advanced manufacturing and all these technologies.
The folks at McMaster University also had a proposal in front of them and in the end they came to me and said, Marc, we really like some of what McMaster is putting forward, but not all of it, so could you take that bit and make it part of your project and then we'll fund you—it wasn't said quite like that—and it was great. We've had a great collaboration with McMaster University on advanced manufacturing, and these things happen all the time. Universities do come to us and we do go to them.
If I can be candid, often universities don't necessarily know what colleges can do, so they don't automatically have as a reflex, I need this done, where am I going to get it? I'll go to a college.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Maybe moving on to you, Christine, you talked about the TAC. Could you elaborate on this? Would that be an opportunity where we could somehow bring, as Jaipreet said, geographically close universities and colleges together through the TAC? Is that an opportunity?
Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada
I think they offer a terrific opportunity. In general, any applied research centre in a college or a polytechnic across the country has that potential. As you pointed out, geographically, they're co-located. People move around constantly.
Marc is a good example of where his career trajectory has taken him. We see that all the time, people who have moved in and out of the system, know a lot of people, have worked in the private sector, and when they look for a solution to a problem they look to the people they know and they bring it together.
Sometimes the funding structures and the way that our system is set up doesn't allow those things to happen as naturally and organically as we would like.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You would look to facilitate that and maybe use it in colleges and universities?
Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada
I think the cluster competition is going to be a really interesting experiment in how this unfolds. We're seeing a lot of our members—and I think Marc is an example—being involved in these discussions already.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Do you look at mini clusters, if I could say, like that concept?
Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada
Because colleges are naturally responsive to what the local economy needs, they're not making it up themselves and then going out to pitch it. They're working with the employers and the industry in the region and responding. It's only going to be a natural outcome of this that they're going to be working in the areas of strength of that region. So they're very well prepared in many cases to contribute to the cluster competition discussions.
Who knows that they're there and what they're doing? Small business know they're there and what they're doing. Sometimes the universities and the really big anchor firms may not be as aware, because it's through their supply chain that the colleges are working.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests for joining us today.
One of the questions I've had is about—and I'm going to bring in some government policy changes in the budget that tie into this—a $800-million fund that is specifically for clusters and innovation centres and it appears at this point it's going to be in a major urban centre. I don't need to go through what those are, you guys know what those are.
I'm in an interesting riding. It's in Barrie, Ontario, and we have Georgian College, Lakehead University, York, University of Michigan, I believe, and one New York university there as well. We've been struggling because we do not have a centre for innovation where the goal is to build clusters and to work with local industry to expand, but some of this has happened by itself. We have a lot of data centres, etc., coming to town.
My question relates back to the item that's on the floor that while it might be easy for these types of clusters to expand in major urban centres, there's a gap in our mid-tier cities. How do we take somebody who's come up with a piece of software or an innovation in a place like Barrie and actually help them approach the point of commercialization and help them get to a point where they're going to be successful? There have been some successes locally, but it takes years compared to what should take months in a major urban centre.
Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College
I can speak to Ontario. There are regional innovation centres are across the province in every region. It's a good place for a start-up, a new company, or even a company that has a new product line to go and find help, either market intelligence or connection to funding, venture capital angels, or just connections to other parts of the supply chain. One of the recommendations I would give to a person with a new product is to connect through their regional innovation centre. In other provinces, there might have other similar types of means.
I feel your pain to a certain degree because Niagara is a little bit over there, right? It is Hamilton that's blocking the way and all that. It's harder, but in the end it's a question of does the region...? You can have clusters within regions. You don't necessarily have to have superclusters. In Barrie, there's a cluster of something that's going on, essentially. In Niagara, manufacturing is a big thing. Of course, agrifood is a big thing. They self-organize as businesses, and we, Brock University, and Niagara College, as the only two post-secondary institutions in the region, tend to help lubricate this, if you want.
I hope the supercluster thing takes into consideration regional, not just big city, contributions to the whole enterprise because you have a lot of great worth in the regions.
Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada
I could just make a quick addition to that. Mr. Baylis mentioned the technology access centres, the TACs across the country. They are networked through a group that helps to support exchange of best practices and whatnot, but increasingly a network like that is going to be able to have.... Marc has two of the TACs at Niagara College. He's part of that network group. They can pass work back and forth to one another if there's another TAC somewhere that can do a job more easily or respond to a cluster.
Clusters are going to be largely local, urban, and regional, but you can reach into a lot of the smaller centres for a particular type of expertise that might not be available in that major centre.
Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
If I could have 30 seconds, I'll note that not every place can be a cluster. One of the reasons I tried to emphasize the issue of knowledge transfer is to recognize that the way we grow in communities can't always be through a cluster, and so by ensuring, for example, that the research and the information that is developed within some of these institutions is accessible to all, benefits accrue to all.
It's similar in terms of talent transfer of students. We have students from Barrie who come to our university, as do many institutions. They go back to those communities and bring with them the knowledge and the training.
I think, if we are focused just on trying to replicate clusters big and small and superclusters, once again we are missing one of the real opportunities and benefits that come from developing real strength and expertise in a wide range of different places and from encouraging people to go back and develop back in their own home communities.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
The only response to that is that I'm hearing from these businesses on the ground or start-ups that they don't have access. Maybe it's a communication problem, but that's what they are saying.
