Industry Committee on Sept. 26th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, MP Gray and Mr. Wudrick.

I will now move to MP Dong for six minutes.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to thank all the participants for coming today and for giving us their testimony.

My first question goes to you, Mr. Georgaras, with regard to the trademark situation here. I think you said that last year you received over 112,000 IP applications. What's the average processing time for these applications?

[Konstantinos Georgaras]

Thank you very much for the question. My apologies for the technical issues I've had.

Perhaps I could turn to my colleagues, Mesmin Pierre and Iyanna Goyette, to respond to the specifics.

[Mesmin Pierre, Director General, Trademarks and Industrial Designs Branch, Canadian Intellectual Property Office]

Thank you, Konstantinos.

Thank you, sir, for the question. It does depend. We have seen a decrease now of 30 months on average for a response from the office with respect to overall domestic applications.

We do have a number of streams. If the application is coming internationally, we have obligations under that system, as Konstantinos related to earlier. The obligation for Canada is a response within 18 months. We have been meeting that obligation since we joined the treaties in 2019. However, we also take measures to accelerate some applications when they are needed—for court actions, for instance, or in response to COVID applications and so on, so we—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you. I'm sorry. I have a few questions. I don't mean to be rude.

What you're saying is that for average domestic applications, it takes up to 30 months, but for international applications it's 18 months, because Canada has an obligation to fill. How do these numbers compare with other jurisdictions?

[Mesmin Pierre]

With respect to the international ones, they do compare, because those are the obligations. With respect to domestic, we are seeing that here in Canada we're a bit slower.

As Konstantinos mentioned, we are taking steps to address these issues. We have now peaked with respect to our inventory. We are improving turnaround times by building capacity. Since 2020 we have hired over 100 examiners for trademarks. We're also now using or deploying better technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to automate some processes. That is really helping us in—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

The question was this: How does that compare with other jurisdictions, such as the United States, the U.K., or Japan?

[Mesmin Pierre]

We are looking at sharing best practices with our international counterparts. Canada is slower than these jurisdictions, but we are looking at similar measures that they have put in place. We know we're on the right track, given the type of best practices we're sharing on this.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

That sounds great.

As my last question on this topic, what's the trend? What was the processing time five years ago? Just give me an idea and some context.

[Mesmin Pierre]

We were at about 15 to 16 months prior to joining the treaties, and then we had the surge that Konstantinos mentioned.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

It was 15 to 16 months before the treaty, and now, because of obligations, international is 18 months and domestic is 30 months.

Can I make the hypothesis that it was because of entering the treaties? Is it because lack of resources is slowing down the domestic application processing?

[Mesmin Pierre]

It's a fair assumption, combined with the COVID-19 situation and, indeed, the very high success of Canada following the accession to the treaties.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you.

I want to change the channel a little bit for Monsieur Blanchet.

With regard to the labour shortage, we've seen that there are underutilized groups in our society, such as youth, older workers and new immigrants. What can we do to change this, because it does impact SMEs' productivity? Can the government do something to encourage underutilized groups to contribute more to our economy?

[Dr. Yves Blanchet]

Yes, absolutely. There are ways to do that.

I will give the example of Quebec and its institutions. Quebec focuses on designing training for these underutilized and under-represented groups in the labour market. There are various institutions, including the mutual training organizations I talked about earlier, which are more oriented toward specific sectors of activity. However, there are also similar semi-public institutions in Quebec that target under-represented populations, whether they are women, seniors or young people in difficulty, former dropouts, who cannot find a job at age 22, 23 or 24.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

That would be through training and skills upgrades.

I have the same question for Mr. Pecman.

I've seen the growing use of online platforms, and, especially in the general labour market, they've kind of sucked in a lot of those resources. We've all had conversations with Uber drivers who are trained professionals now driving Uber, and we see an increase of that.

What is your comment on it? What are your thoughts in terms of the productivity of our labour force in Canada?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Please give a very brief answer, Mr. Pecman.

[John Pecman]

Very briefly, clearly, to have a more diverse workforce is a goal for government. Allowing for open, unfettered markets that function freely helps with that. Clearly there are places where government subsidies and intervention are required to facilitate more diversity. The program that Mr. Blanchet was mentioning is one example of that, but the Competition Act itself does not target labour, diversity and those types of issues, so it's hard for that particular piece of legislation to assist in any significant way, in my view.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

I now give the floor to Mr. Lemire for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank all the witnesses for their presentations. I think they are a good complement to the study we are doing on SMEs.

I will start with you, Mr. Pecman. What is your assessment of the current Canadian legislation on competition? Is it sufficiently robust? Is it not time for a legislative reform, for a serious consideration?

[John Pecman]

Thank you for the question.

In my opening statement, I commended the government for taking some baby steps towards strengthening competition laws. I firmly believe more needs to be done, particularly given that its competition laws are a huge macroeconomic policy lever to deal with increased productivity and competitiveness, and that lever has been neglected, in my view,.

There are areas of the legislation that need an upgrade to deal with the digital economy. In my view, our merger controls review process has some antiquated provisions dealing with efficiencies that need to be looked at and revised in order for there to be more robust competition in Canada.

With regard to market study powers, the fact that the bureau doesn't have them means that the bureau doesn't have an in-depth study of industry sectors where there may be huge competition issues and where it could make recommendations to remove regulations that could be problematic or give other advice to governments to make them much more competitive. These tools are used in other jurisdictions, whether it is in the EU, the U.S. or Australia, and they have informed legislative change. In Canada, unfortunately, market studies that advocate are done on a voluntary basis. The bureau had some resource constraints that take away from its enforcement function. I think more attention needs to be placed on that.

Last, a competitiveness council, as I suggested, would ensure that there is some oversight in making sure that Canada has regulations and policies that promote productivity and competitiveness, very much like the United States has this Competition Council that reports directly to the White House and to the President. Something akin to that, I think, would be helpful to Canada. In the context of small businesses, clearly more competitive markets and a better marketplace referee to call fouls more efficiently will help the small and medium-sized businesses as well.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Pecman.

Mr. Georgaras, as time is limited, I will take the liberty of asking you the same question I asked Mr. Pecman. What is your assessment of the current Canadian legislation? Shouldn't it be reformed to ensure that it is meeting the current needs in Quebec and Canada?

[Konstantinos Georgaras]

Thank you for your questions.

With regard to the legislation, we continually look at our IP legislation in Canada, and likewise with the trade agreements that we have made over the years, whether with the European Union or as part of CUSMA. We use those as opportunities to ensure that our legislation is up to date and internationally harmonized.

As I mentioned earlier, most of our applications come from outside Canada, and many of those applications are also filed abroad, so we work through these trade agreements to ensure that our laws are up to date, harmonized and consistent.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Blanchet, labour and training essentially come under provincial jurisdiction.

What are your expectations of the federal government? How can it help you better achieve your goals?

[Dr. Yves Blanchet]

The federal government has already introduced the Canada training benefit for Canadian workers. There is also the Future Skills Centre, whose goal is to promote training. It works with the federal government through the Department of Employment and Social Development.

These organizations could do that promotion with the provinces, to set up institutions across Canada, somewhat along the lines of the Quebec model, but without the other provinces having to repatriate powers as Quebec has done. The federal government could give the rest of Canada the powers to set up a model modelled on the program we have in Quebec, which each province could adapt in its own way.

This model must be developed in conjunction with businesses and unions across the territory or country. They must take responsibility and become leaders. The federal government can help them and provide the funding to help them get started, but then it's up to businesses to show interest.

Both businesses and the workforce will come out ahead. It is a win-win situation. If the federal government launches a national strategy, the initiative will benefit everyone.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blanchet.

Mr. Chair, I am going to stop now, contrary to my habit of asking a question at this time, because I know the schedule is tight.