Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
It's a pleasure to be able to address you this morning, and I appreciate this opportunity.
I am the director of corporate audits and investigations for CSA. It's a body for standards writing and certification testing, and the mark appears on products to indicate compliance to safety requirements for Canadian consumers and industry.
In addition to that role, I am the chair of the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network.
As all of us today are here to tell you this is a growing problem and a concern that we think needs your attention, primarily from a health and safety standpoint, as well as an economic one.
I'd like to point out to you a couple of examples of the growing problem that we see as we do inspections around the world and look at products in the marketplace.
We also do investigations with respect to product failures, and I brought a couple of samples. There is a plethora of samples that we could talk about. I found counterfeiting to be in essentially every area of pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, electrical products, hockey helmets, which is a travesty for Canadians, and things of that nature.
Mr. Chair, if I could pass a couple of these samples around to the committee, they can take a look at them
In the first case, we have a power cord, and it's a three-conductor grounded receptacle providing safety if there's a shock. Unfortunately, to save on the copper, they only have two conductor cords, and it's essentially a sham. In addition, the surge protector switches are not certified or tested, and all pose a hazard. In this case, the hazard is that there's no grounding. I'll pass these around so you can see them.
The next one is an extension cord that has caught fire. These present both fire and shock hazards. If there is a melting of the insulation, then there will be a bare conductor. If you inadvertently grab the cord, you could be electrocuted. If it continues to smoulder under carpets or near combustibles by computers, you have a potential fire hazard.
The reason we're seeing these things is that in the manufacturing of the products, the number one commodity that seems to be in these developing countries at large for manufacturing is copper, so they save on the copper.
For the black insulation, you'll find the correct size of wire. The white insulation is what they're putting in, so they beef up insulation. The difference is a 26-gauge kind of telephone cable instead of what you need in the wire. The effect is that the resistance is much higher, causing overheating and a potential shock hazard.
These are only a couple of examples that could be passed around to let you know what we're doing.
We're also seeing that these problems are not isolated incidents. They are in fact orchestrated and organized. Some of the shipments are tied into organized crime, because they're coming in through the same circuitous routes as the drugs and they're often packaged with drugs. The counterfeiters are the same people, with the same networks. They're getting into our supply chains, and we have to put a stop to it.
My goal in investigations is to catch them at these stages and bring them to the appropriate parties so we can take corrective action and act swiftly. My worst fear is that I will have to investigate fatalities, and it's inevitable that we're going to have that with the counterfeits.
It's a huge problem, and I urge you to advance on the recommendations we have proposed here with CACN.
I will be happy to take any questions, give any other details, or expand on any other investigations you'd like in the question period or at any time.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you.
I'll turn it over to Brian Isaac.