Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses today.
I guess the part that concerns me is the time that it is taking to bring some answers, some resolution, some ideas to how we deal with this problem.
It was in 2005 that the U.S. put us on a watch list, and months before that the anti-counterfeiting coalition in Washington urged the U.S. government to designate Canada, along with China, as a priority foreign country for its woeful enforcement of intellectual property rights.
We had in 2005 the case of five deaths in Hamilton that were linked--and I don't know how that was finally resolved--with counterfeits of the pharmaceutical Norvasc. We've had recently the death of a woman on Vancouver Island because of a website pharmacy.
This is a problem we've known about for some time. In fact, Interpol states that 5% to 7% of global trade now involves counterfeit goods. The World Health Organization says that fake pharmaceuticals are worth $36 billion a year and estimated to jump to $75 billion by 2010.
If we look at trademark infringement—in my riding there's a Canadian Standards Association—goods are coming into Canada, the goods that the gentleman from the RCMP talked about, the fake batteries, the fake electrical products, with a CSA stamp.
We know roughly what the solutions are. I'm not trying to simplify. We need to beef up our Trade-marks Act. We need to increase the criminal sanctions. We had people in Montreal going into movie theatres with very sophisticated cameras in their ties now, apparently. They're taking photos of films and then putting them on DVDs within an hour. Organized crime is involved. The criminal sanctions clearly aren't stiff enough there.
We know some of the answers with respect to the Canada Border Services Agency. We talked about the fact that they don't have a mandate. They need a mandate, and they need the resources not to be an ancillary effort--because that's their current mandate now, it's quite appropriate--but they need to be given the mandate, and with that they need to be given the resources to deal with counterfeit goods and pirated goods.
To be put on a watch list by the United States and equated with China—no disrespect to China—for intellectual property violations, the penny has to drop somewhere. I'm particularly concerned about the safety of Canadians, whether it's pharmaceuticals or electrical products.
Now, I understand—and I know I was involved back in 2005 when this working group was working on this—we've known about the problem. In fact, the pharmaceutical issue was known to the RCMP in 2000, at least, and I'm sure they had briefed the department.
So we know what the problems are. I know there are some complexities because there are so many departments involved, but when are we going to find some solutions and come forward? Hopefully the government will come forward with some sort of omnibus bill that will deal with trademark law, with copyright law, with the Canada Border Services Agency, with the criminal sanctions that are required. When are we going to see something?