Evidence of meeting #35 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was goods.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
I'm a little confused, because I thought that in the past, at least with the former government, the Department of Public Safety was driving this work taskforce and that they would have done a memorandum to cabinet that brought in other people if they were going in that direction. But if you're telling me now that nobody's driving this, no one department's taking the lead on it, I can see why we don't have anything coming forward.
12:45 p.m.
Deputy Director, Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
This is a joint responsibility. The question--
12:45 p.m.
Deputy Director, Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
The question was is there one minister who is responsible for this. There is not one minister--
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
My question is, is there one minister leading this? Has any one minister in the current government taken the lead on this file?
12:45 p.m.
Deputy Director, Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
We haven't got to that stage.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
I don't think so. That's shocking, actually, because this was about public safety, and that's why the public safety minister in a former government was taking the lead in driving the agenda.
Maybe I'll try to ask some health questions, then, seeing as no one's in the lead.
Let's try Health Canada. You do an awful lot of good trying to get out to the community, and I think for the most part you strive very hard when there's a health food safety issue. You have, I understand from our researchers, a hotline that anybody wishing to give information or lodge a complaint concerning medications bought over the Internet can call.
I want to know your evaluation of that program, whether you feed that information into something that can be effective. I'm not talking about a legislative solution, I'm talking about non-legislative strategies right now. What actually happens to that service? Have you assessed it? Is it helpful in this regard?
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
There are different processes. We have a phone number that we put at the bottom of advisories to alert consumers that they can phone in on a specific complaint. We have another process called an adverse drug reaction reporting system. It's in another part of the branch that I'm in within Health Canada. Consumers, doctors, and patients can phone in and report adverse reactions to different drugs. That kind of information is then analyzed so that we can see if there are any trends, and we can then make any determinations on where we need to go with action.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
What does the service tell us about counterfeit medications in Canada?
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
That's where it's really hard. That's one of the difficulties in trying to come up with a substantive number of counterfeit products in Canada. It's very difficult to make a direct linkage between a counterfeit product and a death, because sometimes it could be linked to it or it may not be linked to it.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
The World Health Organization estimates that 50% of Internet medications are counterfeit. They've made a linkage. How come we can't make that linkage?
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
We can't do it for all kinds of reasons that I talked about: because the testing has to be done of the drugs; because you have to be able to do lab analysis to find out if they're actually counterfeited drugs; because you have to do a lot of research to find out where they've come from; and because you have to do a lot of collaboration with lots of different partners. I cannot say we have any substantive numbers to be able to come with a 50% number or a 20% number.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
I'll turn to the Canada Border Services Agency.
Is there specific training for the Border Services Agency on counterfeit products right now?
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Program Development Directorate, Canada Border Services Agency
Not specifically. As I indicated earlier, we don't have a program specifically on counterfeiting and interdiction of counterfeit goods. For the reasons we outlined earlier, we don't have the legal authority to be doing the targeting and detection. That being said, we have developed some level of expertise. Training would come, of course, if we did get the legal authority. We would include training as part of the program development and delivery.
We have developed some expertise, as mentioned by my colleague from the RCMP. We do have a few joint forces operations in Toronto and Montreal. Those officers have developed some expertise as a result of working on the job with these goods.
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Program Development Directorate, Canada Border Services Agency
I wouldn't go so far as to define them as counterfeit specialists. What I would say is that by reason of them dealing with these goods in their day-to-day activities they have developed a certain experience and expertise around counterfeit products.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Thank you.
I also commend the RCMP for trying to get out some information on the counterfeit goods. I've seen some of the materials that are out on your website, and I think that's a good start. Obviously, with this government, you're not going to be at the border unless you're called to the border.
What we're now down to is a strategy. Some of that strategy, Mr. Becker has said very clearly, has to be legislative. I would think, Ms. Segal, that you are going to have some non-legislative parts to that strategy. Can you outline for us some of the non-legislative parts, and potentially some of those that might be capable of being put into play right now, like sharing of databases when you find information? That's something I know was in an idea that was around a couple of years ago, but I haven't seen any pickup on it.
12:50 p.m.
Deputy Director, Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Trade Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
The short answer is that we're looking at all of the possibilities to try to improve the regime. Things like sharing of information are part of it. We do have to also look at the consistency with our privacy laws and everything else when we look at putting things like that into place.
As Cal said, I'm not at liberty to talk about the prescriptive nature. I'm trying to do a technical briefing on what we're actually looking at, but I can't get into what specific recommendations we're putting forward.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you.
For the last two witnesses, let me put an obvious question to you, and maybe Mr. Cabana can answer this as well.
Do you have any data on counterfeit goods? How many charges have been laid either by the health department, Canada Border Services, or the RCMP? Do you have any idea of what's happening there? Is there any data on the extent of this?
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Program Development Directorate, Canada Border Services Agency
As I mentioned earlier, we've come across approximately a thousand shipments on an annual basis. I should emphasize, though, that these shipments that are discovered in the course of our administration of the Customs Act are not necessarily large. We're not talking about necessarily huge amounts or about large containers of counterfeit goods. It's important to understand this, because as I mentioned in my opening remarks, when we refer the goods to the police agency, it's often not practical for the RCMP to pursue the matter. The size of the shipment is often so minimal that it really doesn't warrant going ahead with prosecution and charges, etc.
I will have to turn over the question of numbers of charges and prosecutions to the RCMP, of course, because that's their jurisdiction.
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
I would give the same answer as well. We have a number of investigations that are underway with respect to potential counterfeit drugs, but, again, we turn them over to the RCMP for prosecution.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Do the thousand shipments per year include my constituent trying to bring in his cassava from someplace? I got a complaint about that, because he was stopped at the border and they regarded his cassava as counterfeit goods. Is that included or...?
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Program Development Directorate, Canada Border Services Agency
I'm not sure I understand what cassava is.