I have it here.
Evidence of meeting #33 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #33 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
I have it here.
NDP
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Sure, with pleasure.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Finally, you mentioned Alectra. Is that some sort of municipal Crown corporation?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Yes, it's an energy distribution company.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I'm just wondering if you could comment on the role that agencies like that might—
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Yes, for sure.
I love working as.... I serve on the board of directors of Alectra, and I also teach business associations and entrepreneurship. To me, it's a constellation of all of these.
Within Alectra, and many other companies across Canada, they are only now in a sense realizing that, in order to be competitive, they need to keep innovating. Within Alectra, you also see how the company is changing. We're blessed there to have a visionary CEO who gets it and who is able to inculcate that culture of innovation, which I think needs to happen across industry. I'm happy to see that within Alectra.
Then Alectra is also looking to work more closely with universities and to work more closely with the technology that's coming out of the universities.
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Thank you for your questions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Thank you, Mr. Cannings.
Moving on to the next round of questions for five minutes, we have Mr. Williams.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. D’Agostino, thank you for being here today.
I love your analogy in the beginning with Dr. Best and Dr. Banting, of course for insulin. I'm from Belleville, Ontario, and we had Dr. Collip.
Dr. Collip, I think, is the best analogy for Canada. He was the unsung hero. He was one of the co-inventors of insulin and played a major role, but no one really knew about him. I think that's how Canada is set. We play a major role in developing IP, having institutions, major research and applied research, but we have this problem of not being able to keep it. We're helping other countries a lot of the time.
I really want to focus on your expertise in IP law. Are there aspects of Canadian IP law that are holding our innovators back, compared with other western nations? If so, how can we change them?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
That's a great question.
Just to go back to the insulin example, one way to change them is to really look to see, from a legal perspective, what actually happened in that case. The inventors, Banting and Best, actually assigned their patent to the University of Toronto for a dollar—one dollar. That then ignited the ability for anybody to come and practise the patent. What happened there is that the U.S., having the more robust manufacturing market and really the appetite for risk, took it on and a hundred years ago started building capacity, and now there's a multi-billion dollar industry. From a legal perspective, what we want to avoid.... I should mention that along the way, in filing follow-on IP once the patent expired, they were able to then lock it up and commercialize, because then they owned it. That's how this is something that we missed out on.
Earlier, Monsieur Gravelle talked about this, that follow-on IP, and it's something that I also mentioned in my opening. What we want to ensure is that we have that arsenal, that portfolio of IP. From a legal perspective, we can't give it away. We need to ensure that we are strategic in the way that we keep it, license it and commercialize it. If we want to give it away, let's get money for it, or it doesn't make sense to keep it, depending also on what the business strategy is, because it could be an innovation—and I'm thinking about Alectra, for instance—that is not germane to the business model.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
I'm going to drill down on the three aspects that I've identified, and I want to hear your opinion on these.
One is patent backlog. It's not just in passports. It's also in patents. It seems like there's a significant backlog in processing patent applications in Canada.
Also, I've seen that there seems to be a lack of clarity in some of our IP law on patentable subject matter.
Finally, on limited patent terms, you mentioned that there's an expiry. It seems that 20 years is the maximum.
On those three aspects, what would you say to each of them?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
I think there's hope.
On the backlog issue, I know that on CIPO Konstantinos Georgaras is at the helm there. I have high hopes with his work. I've seen what he's done. He's looking to innovate, really, also within CIPO. I know that some positive changes are being made. There's a new strategic plan. There is technology. I mentioned AI earlier. That will come in and also expedite and automate a lot of looking at these patents—
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
I'm so sorry. I hate these five minutes because there's only so much time.
On all of that, too, if you have anything else to add, please submit it in writing.
The U.S. also uses something that's really interesting to me: patent assertion. These are lawsuits in order to maintain IP. They use this extensively, and I think it's one of their successes. Is that something we're seeing in Canada? Is it something that you would ever recommend as a recommendation for Canadian companies?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
When you own something, you need to protect it. If you need to sue based on that, of course, putting my legal hat on, I would say, yes, but there what needs to happen—and I think we need to avoid that because it would cause access-to-justice issues, litigation and more backlog in the process—is to make sure that the technology is properly protected to begin with and that we have sufficient and proper patents around the techs. Sometimes it's not just one tech, because the claim construction process is key.
This is where, going back to the TTOs, you need smart people there, working alongside lawyers and ensuring we have a strong foundation of patenting, because if you get it right at a nascent stage, you can avoid the follow-on litigation. Litigation will always happen in some ways, but you will diminish that.
Conservative
Ryan Williams Conservative Bay of Quinte, ON
Is there a quick recommendation you can make to protect IP and for Canadian IP law?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
To protect IP, we need to file patents and have IP strategies.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Thank you so much.
Now, moving on to the last of the five-minute rounds, we have MP Collins, who is online.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, witnesses.
I'd like to start with Professor D'Agostino. As someone who was a long-time city councillor in Hamilton, I am familiar with the innovation at McMaster University and its innovation park. I've had a number of opportunities over the years to visit Dr. Ali Emadi's next-gen project in which he's working on AI. I know you're very familiar with that through all the work you do at York University. Their work on electrified vehicles and autonomous vehicles and much of the innovation there at McMaster is driven by three levels of government.
You're the first witness to date who has referenced that. I know we're early in the study, but McMaster Innovation Park is supported by the municipal governments in terms of purchasing the lands, the property sits on. Provincial and federal governments invested in the bricks and mortar. Also, as I questioned Dr. Emadi and his students, I heard that many of the operating dollars come from the private sector. They've been able to leverage, in that instance, millions of dollars from the automotive industry and associated stakeholders within the industry.
My question to them was how the federal government could get double or triple the investment it's getting today. How do we create an environment there at McMaster's Innovation Park? I'm assuming the same would hold true at York, Waterloo and others across the country. How does the federal government assist in that regard in terms of just driving innovation? You referenced that, I think, in your first point.
My second question is how we assist in terms of finding those private partners for them. For some I think it's probably an easy task. For others it's probably much more difficult, if it's social innovation. I will ask you those two questions to start.
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Yes, that's a beautiful example of really a multisectoral, multipronged approach to innovation, in which you have different partners coming together, and we see that even within York.
You asked how we bring in industry. That happens at every level. As a government, you have a line of sight as to who the key players are, but you may miss those smaller players at the grassroots level. That's where it is key to have the different hubs like the clinics, the TTOs and the municipalities that are aware of their local industry and work with them.
I mentioned a heat map, but we need more connectedness, because by working together we can also avoid duplication and be more efficient and really innovate with intention.
A few days ago someone talked about this clustering approach. We need to cluster around technologies and sectors and build that critical mass. AI is, in my view, something we need to really rally behind here in Canada, and we've seen this happening now with the government again. I'm encouraged by what we see in Canada. We have AIDA before Parliament right now, so the policy is getting promulgated. You have the start-ups. I read somewhere that we have more start-ups mushrooming across Canada than anywhere else on the AI front. You have the researchers—and I'll put myself in that camp—who are staying up at night thinking about what we're going to do with ChatGPT and how we're going to keep innovating. We have that within Canada.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thanks for those answers.
You are the first witness to reference women and indigenous communities. I had the opportunity to visit McMaster again two weeks ago. We made an investment in the aerospace industry there—300-plus positions that will be supported from a training perspective, 100 of which will be for indigenous people.
You mentioned earlier that you've had experience with government applications. How do those applications need to change to support women and indigenous communities? With what you've seen recently, do those applications appropriately or properly reflect our desire to support women and indigenous communities across the country?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
That's another great question. I've actually had the privilege to also serve on SSHRC adjudication panels. I know that the government takes very seriously ensuring that the best and brightest minds in this country are rewarded from their applications. Even there, and now at every stage, you see more and more in the asks that there is more mindfulness toward ensuring that women and indigenous communities are represented.
I would say that, in the actual applications, you need to ensure the parameters. When you're setting up a fund or putting a program together, you have mention that they need to be as diverse, equitable and inclusive as possible, and then ensure that those who are adjudicating, because then it's the follow-on effect, are also qualified to do so. There is also the accountability of it. I've seen applications where you just name-drop or put something, but there's no real track record of a relationship between those indigenous communities. That doesn't go well. You need to ensure that there is authenticity in every application and that in the follow-on there is transparency and accountability for what they actually produce in the end.
I think we need to do better in having accountability for every dollar that is spent, what we do with it and where it ends up, because I think it also—