Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a privilege for me to rise today and speak in support of Bill C-8, the combatting counterfeit products bill. I will begin by indicating that I will be splitting my time with the member for Durham.
Counterfeit products are a threat to all Canadians. They undermine the success of Canadian businesses by stealing the good reputation of a business in order to sell knock-off goods. The inferior nature of these knock-off goods then serves to tarnish the reputation of quality that the real Canadian business has worked so hard to establish.
However, counterfeit products are not simply a threat to Canadian businesses. Counterfeit automobile parts, counterfeit circuit breakers, counterfeit drugs, and many more dangerous counterfeit products also pose a threat to the health and safety of Canadians. The government has reintroduced the combatting counterfeit products act because we are committed to ensuring that the hard-earned reputations of Canadian businesses are maintained and that all Canadians are protected from the dangers posed by counterfeit products.
I would like to take this opportunity to focus on one of the key elements of Bill C-8. New provisions introduced in this bill would provide businesses and rights holders with better tools to stop those who form a part of the supply chain for counterfeit goods and to obtain compensation from them . These supply chains are essential to the spread of counterfeit products and are directly responsible for counterfeit products entering the Canadian marketplace.
Under the current Trade-marks Act, it is prohibited to sell, offer to sell, distribute, or advertise counterfeit products or services. What this means is that any person found to be selling, distributing, or advertising counterfeit products can be sued by the rightful owner of the trademark that the counterfeit products are attempting to imitate. For example, if someone is selling counterfeit jackets out of the back of a van, the legitimate company, under the current law, is able to sue that individual, both to stop him or her from selling and as a means of getting compensation for the damage done by the counterfeiter. Similarly, that company would also be able to sue an individual who is advertising counterfeit jackets or an individual who is found to be distributing counterfeit jackets to others for the purpose of sale.
However, the problem with this current system is that it does nothing to target those individuals who are part of the supply chain that enables the sale of counterfeit products. Under the current law, the rightful trademark owner has no means of stopping those who produce, import, export, or store counterfeit products prior to a distributor or seller actually selling the counterfeit goods. To illustrate the problem, allow me to give some examples.
Let us imagine that a manufacturer of car parts finds a production line for counterfeit car parts operating somewhere in Canada. Under the current Trade-marks Act, despite knowing that car parts with another person's trademark on them are being produced, the owner of the trademark would be unable to ask a court to stop the production line. Until those individuals producing fake car parts attempted to make a sale or began to advertise their counterfeit products, the owner of the trademark would have no legal recourse to stop them or obtain compensation for damages.
In another case, let us imagine that a brand-name hockey manufacturer finds a series of storage units full of hockey jerseys bearing a counterfeit trademark. Under the current Trade-marks Act, the legitimate manufacturer would have no grounds to seize the counterfeit jerseys, even if the manufacturer was certain that they were indeed counterfeit. Until the legitimate manufacturer could produce evidence of the sale, attempted sale, or advertising of these counterfeit jerseys, he or she would not be able to seize the jerseys. Imagine if this was one's favourite hockey team.
Again, imagine that a legitimate electronics company has grounds to believe that an importer is bringing thousands of fake smart phones into the Canadian market. As members can appreciate, this would be a concern for me as the member of Parliament for Waterloo, for obvious reasons.
Under the current law, they would be unable to go to court to get an order preventing that importer from bringing those counterfeit smart phones into Canada. Unfortunately, once the counterfeit phones arrive in Canada, it is much more difficult to ensure that they are not released into the Canadian market, where unsuspecting Canadian consumers may be tricked into purchasing them.
Clearly, there are gaps in our current laws that need to be filled in order to better combat counterfeiting. Our legislation needs to be updated to ensure rights holders can protect their rights and that Canadian consumers can have confidence that they are purchasing the goods they intend to.
Part of what the combatting counterfeit products bill proposes to do is to fix these loopholes in the law. It would do so by adding new civil provisions to the Trade-marks Act that would tackle all parts of the counterfeit supply chain, not just point of sale.
Specifically, the Trade-marks Act would be amended so that along with selling, distributing, or advertising, individuals who are found to be manufacturing, causing to be manufactured, possessing, importing, exporting, or attempting to export counterfeit products could also be stopped and sued for damages by rights holders. These are overdue provisions.
Under the proposed changes contained in the combatting counterfeit products bill, a legitimate car parts manufacturer would be able to stop the manufacturers of counterfeit car parts under the new manufacturing provision. A legitimate hockey equipment company would be able to seize the storage units full of fake hockey jerseys under the new possessing provision. Under the new importing provision, a legitimate electronics company would be able to prevent an importer from bringing counterfeit smart phones into Canada.
These new provisions will serve to better protect the interests of rights holders by giving them the ability to ask a court to halt the actions of members of the supply chain for counterfeit products. The new provisions will also create a much-needed deterrent to those counterfeiters who, up until this point, had been able to participate in the supply networks critical to counterfeit operations with little risk that they could be targeted by the law.
To sum up, we need the expanded civil provisions contained in the combatting counterfeit products bill to effectively combat counterfeit products that pose serious risks to Canadian businesses and to Canadian consumers. I urge my fellow members of this House to swiftly pass the combatting counterfeit products bill.