Evidence of meeting #16 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was tpp.
Chair, British Columbia Agriculture Council
Interestingly enough, there are fruit wines, like non-grape fruit wines, raspberry wines. There are a couple of companies here that have been doing fruit wines that have just taken off for export.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
My colleague Ed Holder would like to try some of that fruit wine, I'm sure, so if you can supply some down the road....
Chair, British Columbia Agriculture Council
Ray also grows kiwis. He wanted to mention that.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Kiwis—that's interesting.
Ms. Etsell, just give me the size of the blueberry market, where it is today, where you see it going in the future, and where it's been. Give me 5, 10 years back, where it was, just so I can have a picture of the growth of the sector. Or has it stagnated? Has it matured or is it still growing?
Executive Director, B.C. Blueberry Council
There's a lot of new production across the world in the ground right now. I had somebody up from the U.S. this weekend and I drove them around. Even in the last two months just around my own neighbourhood there are four farms that have gone in over 20 acres. This is happening all over the world. Some of the fastest growing rates are Peru, Mexico, Chile. In the southern hemisphere, the cost for them to produce blueberries is much less. It may not be as good an area to grow in as it is here in British Columbia, or in Canada, but it's growing vastly all across the world. Everybody's trying to figure out how to grow blueberries, and they're putting out more and more production every year.
To give you an idea, even when I first started in 2006 with blueberries, there were 86 million pounds, and we reached 130 million pounds in 2012.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
That just emphasizes why you need that level playing field. Give you a level playing field and you'll compete hand over fist because you have a better product.
Executive Director, B.C. Blueberry Council
Yes, when we meet with the International Blueberry Organization, we have global production. We all put in what our forecasts met. The curve used to be like this; it's now like this.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Where are they getting their genetics, their plant stock?
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
On the genetics for the types of blueberries that they're getting, as far as the plants themselves go, are they getting them out of Canada? Are they breeding them themselves?
Executive Director, B.C. Blueberry Council
There are a few companies that sell them. Like I say, they're in huge demand and they're setting up different offices across the world.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
That takes us to the end of the session. We want to thank our witnesses for being so succinct, and questioners the same way. It has been very enlightening information into the blueberry industry and agriculture in B.C., in general, so thank you for that.
With that, I want to thank our witnesses for being here.
We will suspend. Lunch will be in the same venue as yesterday.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
We'd like to call this meeting to order. We have our witnesses with us for this hour panel. We're continuing the study on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
We have with us the Centre for Drug Research and Development, Ms. Es Sabar. Thank you for being with us.
From OpenMedia.ca—and I'm not exactly sure, but I'm sure I'll find out what that's all about—we have Mr. Anderson.
Thank you very much for being here.
We'll start with Ms. Es Sabar. The floor is yours.
Karimah Es Sabar President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Drug Research and Development
Good afternoon, and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak today.
By way of introduction, I'll just say that I'm the president and CEO for the Centre for Drug Research and Development, which is Canada's fully integrated national drug development and commercialization centre, supported in part by the federal government through the CECR program, which is the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research program out of the NCE group.
Trade agreements like the Canada-EU CETA, which this committee has been actively engaged in, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both offer policy-makers the opportunity to support Canadian research and innovation, and the Canadian commercialization of research, while benefiting Canadian patients and creating jobs. In order to explain the importance of this link to competitiveness and jobs, I would like to take a few moments to describe how our organization fits within the Canadian research enterprise, and the use of it as an example as to how it relates to the discussions on TPP and CETA as well.
The mandate of the Centre for Drug Research and Development, firstly, is to de-risk discoveries stemming from our publicly funded health research and transform these technologies into viable investment opportunities for the private sector, thus successfully bridging the commercialization gap between academia and industry, and translating research discoveries into new therapies for patients. In other words, we de-risk and make investable these technological assets.
Canada is among the world leaders in academic health research in terms of the scale of investment, the quality of the work, and the discovery output. This work is supported mostly through federal government funding, some provincial funding, and then matched private funding, but to a much lower level than we hope to have. But now that we have built this foundation, we risk the return on this investment being realized elsewhere. As we know, in the world of biotech, that is very much the case already. If Canada is to strive for true S and T excellence globally, we need to create an environment that includes the full innovation continuum from discovery through to commercialization, such that the industry critical mass is reached and a self-perpetuating sustainability is achieved.
This shift is not easy. Getting new drugs and other therapeutic products to market has become more difficult with greater associated costs and risks. There is, therefore, a need to support innovation by effectively de-risking new technologies and filling the gaps in the commercialization process, what we call “translation”. To address this need, CDRD was established in 2007 to provide the expertise in infrastructure needed to enable researchers from leading health research institutions to advance promising early stage discoveries forward. CDRD is the only organization in the country and the only one of a handful in the world that has a fully integrated platform. This means that we provide expertise, infrastructure, non-diluted funding, and partnerships to source, evaluate, incubate, accelerate, and commercialize innovative health technologies in virtually any therapeutic area, and stemming from any geographic region in Canada.
A year and a half ago, CDRD also established a commercial arm, the CDRD Ventures Inc., and collectively the CDRD, the enterprise, brings dedicated resources specifically to the commercialization and monetization of high-priority technology assets, which we have successfully incubated. Already this enterprise has proven to be a high-performing incubator and accelerator. In its first six years, the CDRD enterprise has successfully established a network of 40 international and national affiliated institutions. That means from UBC to McGill and Dalhousie, and some European, Japanese, and U.S. high drug-discovery output organizations.
We have built a great innovative pipeline. Over 800 technologies have been evaluated and triaged, so that 125 of those have actually moved forward into incubation. Of these, 49 advanced towards commercialization. To date, within this period, we have actually 49 technologies that are bubbling up. There are three that were out-licensed to the private sector, to biotech and pharma, one which is now advanced into clinical trials. Four new spin-off companies have also been launched.
As a specific example of the removal of barriers and creation of value, one such spin-off is a company called Sitka Biopharma, the technology of which was founded at UBC by Drs. Helen Burt and Don Brooks. The use of this technology is in treating bladder cancer, which is a particularly virulent kind of cancer and very expensive to treat for the health care system. There's been no new drug in the treatment of bladder cancer for the last 25 years, so this a very important technology. We were able to advance it, to take this program, raise $2.5 million, both securing internal and external funding. This critical early stage funding, which we call the first valley of death in our world, was bridged, the technology advanced, a CEO was hired, and a new company established, Sitka. The technology is now moving forward and will go into full clinical trials within the next few months.
Without CDRD, this technology would have not made this kind of progress and likely not seen the light of day. Why I tell you this long story about our organization and this technology is that our ability to successfully have this kind of impact, and to leverage this kind of partnership and create value in research and development becomes severely hampered when we do not have the same ability to protect our IP as our global partners do. To continue to build on our success, it is imperative that policies affecting innovation at all stages of the product development life cycle are, in fact, conducive and in sync to innovation.
The single most critical of all these policies is patent protection, as intellectual property is the primary asset of any innovative company and organization. Canada must therefore ensure that we are home to a national patent protection regime that is equally as strong, if not stronger, as those of our trading partners. Such an internationally competitive intellectual property protection regime is critical to our ability to successfully achieve the vision and mission we share with government and other stakeholders.
It is also imperative to stimulate innovation but this can't be done without the attraction of foreign direct investment to support R and D. In the case of our centre, we have been successful in building partnerships with several of the world's top biopharma companies, which have committed close to $40 million to support the development of our projects and commercialization of these technologies. Without inflow of international capital such as this, we again would have little or no ability, as a country, to successfully take our place on the international innovation stage. It is our belief that an improved IP system will stimulate further investment of this nature in Canada.
Canada aims to be among the world's innovation leaders and as such, the federal government has invested greatly in leading edge research development and training. We applaud and value federal and provincial efforts in this regard. We feel that we must do more to nurture innovation at other stages of development as we continue to lag behind in innovation globally. We are losing ground, internationally, in many metrics.
We believe that improving our IP regime is a step in the right direction and that there are a number of areas that will be assisted by these changes. The first area is that we need to do better in developing IP here in Canada and keeping it here. Indeed, a number of reports released over the last several years concur that a misalignment of policy to fund this research, only to have it commercialized elsewhere, where the environment is more conducive, is not helpful to return on investment. When it comes to R and D and its commercialization, global borders are very porous and we must, therefore, ensure that the innovations remain in Canada as long as possible so that we may add as much value as possible.
The second area we need to do better at is providing job opportunities for our graduates, especially those in science, technology, engineering, and math, or the STEM fields. The commercialization of discoveries is where those jobs come from. Training is one of the core pillars of what the Centre for Drug Research and Development does. As such we have trained over 110 science students over three and a half years with multidisciplinary industrial drug training. Of these 110 graduates, 92% have found jobs in their field in this sector. Without an environment where industry can flourish, these trainees will have no option in the future but to find jobs in other countries.
The third area in which to improve our track record is private sector investment. By way of example on how we could foster international inflow of innovation and capital, in January of last year the Centre for Drug Research and Development led the founding of a global alliance of leading drug discovery and development centres, an association of top-pier translational research organizations including MRC Technology in the U.K., Cancer Research UK, Lead Discovery Center at Max Planck in Germany, CD3 Leuven in Belgium, and Scripps Research Institute in Florida to share infrastructure and best practices and work collaboratively to support and accelerate the conversion of early stage technology into commercial investment opportunities.
Through this alliance the CDRD-CVI also has strengthened the mechanism to attract new foreign technology, innovation, and global funding through the Horizon 2020 funding as opposed to the former paradigm of made-in-Canada discoveries often leaving the country to be commercialized elsewhere. We see these types of relationships as potentially being furthered through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other such trade agreements. We have to play a global role in a globally competitive environment.
In conclusion it is our hope that the TPP proceeds and is ultimately executed in a manner than ensures that IP in Canada enables the attraction of foreign capital for R and D, creates new Canadian companies, and is found in the most innovative and robust technologies, thus creating jobs for our brightest and best here in Canada.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to Mr. Anderson. The floor is yours, sir.
Steve Anderson Founder and Executive Director, OpenMedia.ca
Thank you for this opportunity to present before the committee regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I'm Steve Anderson, the executive director of OpenMedia.ca.
Founded in 2008, OpenMedia.ca is a community-based, award-winning civic engagement organization working to safeguard the open Internet. We work to bring citizens' and innovators' voices into the digital policy-making process.
OpenMedia is probably best known for our stop the meter campaign that engaged over half a million Canadians to stop meter billing in Canada focused on telecommunications prices. It was the largest online campaign in Canadian history.
In addition to our civic engagement work, we also regularly participate in policy processes and produce public policy reports and recommendations. Many of our recommendations, in particular regarding telecommunications, have now thankfully been adopted as official government policy.
One of our top concerns at the moment is the IP chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, specifically copyright within the IP chapter.
We're working with hundreds of thousands of people in our own trans-Pacific network of public interest groups and web businesses to push for and encourage a balanced copyright provision in the TPP. We are working, as I said, in our own crowdsource process to develop copyright rules that we feel are more befitting of the 21st century.
Our concern with the TPP is focused on the intellectual property chapter, as I mentioned, and its potential limitations on free expression online, commerce, and access to knowledge.
Over 135,000 people have signed on to a campaign that we've run reflecting these same concerns. These concerns are echoed by Canadians and I have, in a sense, crowdsourced this presentation for you today. I asked Canadians online over the last week to let me know what they think I should say, and I did my best to incorporate their input into this presentation. Throughout the presentation, I'll mention a few direct comments that people sent in to me.
The Canadians I heard from were broadly critical of the TPP and their concerns fell roughly into three main categories: the restriction and even censorship of expression in commerce; concerns about the TPP's implications for personal privacy; and thirdly, what many deem as the secretive, closed, and undemocratic TPP negotiating process.
Starting with the first concern—the implications on expression in commerce—Canada took 10 years, as I'm sure many of you know, to pass our copyright policies in Bill C-11. When I attended a TPP negotiating round in Auckland, I asked our own TPP chief negotiator if she would commit to uploading our copyright law and not overriding it through the TPP process. She refused to make that commitment.
Generally, I don't think Bill C-11 is exactly how I would have written it, but I think it's a reasonable compromise. But if we get into some of the specifics of the TPP that have been unfortunately revealed through leaked documents, I think we can start with digital locks or technological protection mechanisms.
The U.S. proposal in the TPP would increase the penalties for circumvention and restrict the ability for Canada to create new digital lock exceptions.
On the issue of digital locks, a woman online, named Monica, wrote into our process, and I want to convey this to you today. She said that as part of the special needs community, she wants to be able to continue sharing resources with others without fear of sanctions. As a community, they are often isolated, and without the Internet, they would be even more so. So the TPP threatens to limit the flexibility and exceptions on copyright that those with disabilities depend upon in their use of technology.
According to leaked documents, the TPP would also remove our relatively fair, I would say, notice system for dealing with those accused of copyright infringement. Instead, they would create new, costly liabilities for online service providers and ISPs. This increased cost for Internet service providers will result in Canadian consumers paying more for telecom services. As I'm sure you're aware, we pay some of the highest prices in the industrialized world for telecom services, and increasing fees is the last thing Canadians need right now.
The new business costs could knock independent Internet service providers—the smaller players—out of business and remove choice from the telecom marketplace. The liability costs could also add a barrier to entry for online entrepreneurs that are increasingly critical to our economy.
In short, if this U.S.-backed TPP-ISP liability proposal is adopted, it would mark a major step back for the government's commitment to lower telecom prices and improve choices.
Just to make this a little more concrete, on a daily basis countless photographs and other content are shared through new innovative services that are fundamental to our thriving economy. These services are also threatened by these new liabilities and regulations proposed in the TPP. One example of one online service provider is Vancouver-based HootSuite, which in August raised over $165 million from investors, marking the largest private placement for a privately held tech company in Canada. Another example is Ontario-based e-commerce platform Shopify, which passed the $1 billion evaluation mark this December; and then let's not forget Toronto-based Tucows Inc., which is the world's largest publicly traded domain name registrar.
These companies are threatened by this new liability that will be in the TPP, if it goes through as the U.S. is hoping it will. Do we really want to threaten to burden these budding businesses with new costs and regulations? Do we want to create a new cost that prevents the next HootSuite or Shopify from starting in the first place? Furthermore, as everything from our cars to our fridges are connected to the Internet, these proposed liabilities and costs fundamentally threaten to create red tape for a dizzying array of services. The new liabilities could be particularly damaging to the emerging Internet-fuelled sharing economy that is currently driving value across a range of sectors.
According to the Information Technology Association of Canada, the national Internet economy accounted for 3% of Canada's gross domestic product in 2010, compared to an average of 4.7% in the United States. It's estimated that ratio will become more out of balance if we don't take action to invest in our digital economy. We simply cannot afford to add new red tape and costly regulations to online businesses and commerce, while increasing telecom costs for Canadians.
Increasing ISP liabilities is also a threat to individual expression online. According to IP experts the TPP proposals could result in ISPs taking down and even blocking content based on accusations. In short, the TPP represents a regime that could amount to widespread Internet censorship. One commentator online had this to say on the topic:
Censorship of any kind is undemocratic. It has no business in our society and we should actively DISTANCE ourselves from such heavy-handed policies.
Here is the fundamental point. There's no way that increasing online liabilities as proposed in the TPP is in the national interest of Canada. Old media conglomerates in Hollywood have no problem pushing for policies that will hold back the Canadian economy or free expression, but legislators surely should.
Beyond new service liabilities, there's also concern about the TPP criminalizing common activities that involve small-scale and often accidental copyright infringement, such as sharing a recipe online. According to intellectual property experts and Professor Sean Flynn, the U.S. TPP proposal would severely increase penalties for copyright infringement even when done without commercial intent. He notes that we could even be looking at controversial copyright cases in the U.S. where teenagers and their mothers have been required to pay big record companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for copying music for personal use.
Canadian copyright law now includes an important distinction with respect to statutory damages as it features a cap of $5,000 for non-commercial infringement.
As it stands, we already have copyright trolls trying to use copyright litigation as a business model. Under the TPP, damages could skyrocket. We could see many more of those court cases and we could see Canadians much more timid and fearful online.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Okay.
I'm not going to stop you now, but I'm going to let you know that I'm looking at your text. I want you to get through it, but I don't think you can in the time. I can let you go over a little, but if you could...and I know you're following text all the way through, so if you would just accelerate your presentation, that would help.
February 4th, 2014 / 2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
Would it help if I gave him my opening question time for him to finish his remarks?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Let's see. I let the first one, Ms. Es Sabar, go over a little bit. I'll let you do the same but I want you to get through it. If you can shorten it, I'm giving you warning now. Go ahead.
Founder and Executive Director, OpenMedia.ca
All right.
I'll move on to the implications for personal privacy. Experts argue that the provisions put forward in the TPP as seen in the drafts would force ISPs to monitor and police their online activity. As discussed above, Internet service providers would now face a financial risk if users infringe on copyrights and thus be compelled to monitor our online activity.
Adding to that, ISPs can be compelled to hand over our online subscriber information based simply on an accusation of infringement. Those who sent me comments on privacy implications of the TPP were vociferous. One commenter said, “I am completely against all of the Internet restrictions, monitoring, policing and enforcement provisions of the TPP. It will only serve to restrict and reduce Internet use in Canada and is a direct invasion of my personal privacy. I will actively campaign against any political party that signs this agreement next election.”
In the most recent TPP leak there were over 900 brackets and Canada was, thankfully, seen to be on the opposing end of many of the efforts of the U.S. What that says to me is that I certainly will know and I'll be letting Canadians know if the government does cave to the U.S. demands. The most recent reports show that there are landing zones that have been established. But have our negotiators caved to the U.S. interests in those landing zones? We just don't know and I think that's a serious problem, which leads me to process issues.
It is an important one. I don't want to underestimate the importance of this issue. As you know the TPP is being negotiated in secret behind closed doors and we only know the details because of a leaked text. Many commenters wrote in about the secrecy issues. One of them said, “These kinds of decisions need to include the input of the general public, not made behind closed doors.” Many people talked about transparency. In response to this closed process, OpenMedia.ca is organizing a crowdsourced process of our own. That's also part of the reason why I tried to encourage citizens to write to me about my presentation today. I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
One is that getting direct public engagement creates better output and ideas than a small group of stakeholders. I also believe that our democratic institutions are losing legitimacy and I think it's because there's a democratic deficit in many of these processes.
I and OpenMedia.ca are in favour of trade—open trade policies that are developed with open debate and participation by those impacted by the policy. But we're against agreements made in secret, closed off from the public, especially those that will negatively impact free expression online.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
I'm just going to halt you there because I think you got the gist of your whole text and we will follow through on any other questions. But you're a significant amount over time, so in fairness to the committee's questioning I will leave it there. I will get the full text translated so the committee members will get your entire text.
NDP
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you.
Steve, I was wondering if you could just lay out and compare and contrast the differences between Canadian copyright law and American copyright law? You touched on this a bit in your presentation.