Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity today to talk about the importance of the intellectual property strategy.
From the beginning, our government has always worked to strengthen Canada's IP laws.
IP incentivizes and rewards intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields, and it is essential to a modern and dynamic economy. In fact, I would argue that it is a fundamental asset of the knowledge economy. IP protections act as an incentive by rewarding creators and inventors for their contribution to the economy in our society. IP enables them to profit from their ideas and their creativity and provides them a mechanism to obtain a return on their investments. IP laws achieve this by granting them exclusive rights, thereby preventing others from making, selling or using the fruits of their labour without their permission.
In addition, the use of IP is correlated with positive economic outcomes. Businesses with a solid understanding of IP and a strong, strategic plan for its use and protection are important contributors to the Canadian economy. In fact, these businesses create jobs that pay, on average, 16% more than businesses with little or no IP. Also, businesses using IP in patent-intensive industries have about eight to 10 times more revenue than those not using IP.
Canada's laws cover many forms of intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, industrial designs and copyrights. Following on budget 2017's commitment, budget 2018 proposes $85.3 million over five years and $10.1 million on an ongoing basis for measures in support of a new intellectual property strategy.
In April 2018, on World IP Day, our government officially launched the IP strategy that will help solidify investments in creativity and innovation, support our efforts to create high-quality jobs and enhance the understanding of the elements necessary to succeed in the global, modern economy.
The IP strategy is an important element of the innovation and skills plan, by fostering an ecosystem that enables businesses to grow to scale. The strategy will ensure that Canadian firms have the awareness and incentive to strategically use IP to grow and compete. The elements of the IP strategy fall under three strategic pillars: the need to increase IP awareness, education and advice; the provision of strategic IP tools for growth; and legislative amendments.
A number of initiatives are under way and planned under the first pillar of IP awareness, education and advice. Most notably is that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, CIPO, will continue to build on current learning tools and resources and also develop new educational resources to better equip innovators and businesses with the knowledge they need to succeed. Its teams of IP advisers located across Canada work directly with companies and innovators to deliver seminars and participate in innovation and business-related events.
We will be conducting an IP awareness and use survey to identify how Canadians understand and use IP, including groups that have traditionally been less likely to use IP, such as women and indigenous entrepreneurs. The results of the survey will help better meet the needs of these groups.
We will support increased engagement between indigenous people and policy-makers both domestically and internationally by providing support for this engagement, for research and for capacity-building.
We will encourage the creation of IP legal clinics by providing funding to help clinics obtain resources and tools to improve the quality of prior art searches. We see IP legal clinics as a win-win-win, enabling law students to learn more about IP, helping businesses get a sense of their IP needs and facilitating access to the profession that can provide quality IP advice.
Finally, there will be a new team of dedicated IP experts working through existing federal programs to ensure that Government of Canada program officers have the knowledge and capacity to address IP issues and guide program recipients to improve their IP knowledge and savvy. These advisers will supplement, rather than replace, existing IP professionals.
The second pillar of the IP strategy provides some tools to help Canadian businesses make the most of their new-found awareness of IP. First, one of the recurring issues that we heard during the consultation process was the lack of visibility of IP held by federal public institutions and institutions of higher learning. To this end, the IP strategy includes a new online IP marketplace designed to help surface dormant IP that was funded by public institutions.
We also heard about the time that it can take to resolve IP disputes and to get a ruling on a new copyright tariff. We all know that time is money. The IP strategy includes additional resources for the Federal Court to assist in the management of complex litigation, as well as a reform of the Copyright Board.
The additional fiscal support for the Copyright Board and accompanying legislation will make it more efficient and effective. These changes will help rights holders who now better understand the value of the IP they hold by reducing the time they spend fighting over their IP and more time monetizing it.
Canadian technology is cutting edge and should be recognized as such more often. The IP strategy will support enhanced participation of Canadian businesses in the standards-setting process, and encourage the inclusion of Canadian innovations in international standards.
The Standards Council of Canada will work with innovative Canadian companies to leverage their IP during this standards-setting process.
Finally, the last tool will be the development of a patent collective to bring together businesses to facilitate IP outcomes for its members. The patent collective is the coming together of firms to share in IP expertise and strategy, including but not limited to gaining access to a larger collection of patents and IP.
The third pillar involves proposed amendments to key IP laws, notably the Patent Act, the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act. The proposed amendments are intended to encourage creation and innovation by either clarifying acceptable behaviours or discouraging actions that have possible negative consequences. The proposed amendments would protect consumers by clarifying that notices that include settlement offers or payment demands do not comply with Canada's copyright notice and notice regime. They would also fulfill the earlier objective of expediting IP disputes by making the Copyright Board's decision-making process more efficient.
Proposed amendments to the Trademarks Act would prevent the abusive use of the trademark regime, such as by applying for registration with the sole intention of seeking remuneration from the legitimate owner of the trademark by creating—
To continue, being the chair of the industry committee, we had lots of conversations with our witnesses. Universities were saying they had a lot of great practices. Businesses were saying that finding access to IP was very challenging.
One of the initiatives that we introduced earlier this year was the $950-million supercluster initiative. Part of that supercluster initiative is having academia and industry come together, to work together, to create jobs and economy, but also to share the intellectual property that is sometimes locked away in places that will never see the light of day.
It is important if we want to grow our economy and if we want to create jobs, to have intellectual property accessible not only to academia but to businesses as well.
When we look at how we are moving forward and the investments we are making, it is so critical that we create an environment where all of our businesses and academia can work together, so that they can thrive and build the economy and grow good, well-paying jobs.
When we look at B.C., for instance, we have the digital supercluster that was awarded to British Columbia. B.C. is already at the forefront of digital media and IP is so critical. When we look at the economic tables, we can tell that currently on digital health care products, our revenues are about half a per cent or about $7 billion. By 2020, it is estimated that the digital health care marketplace in the world will be about $322 billion.
We are trying to create an environment where we get the best minds, the best people, the best research and the best companies that can work together to put us at the forefront of that marketplace. That is where we want to be. Do we want to be behind the eight ball, or do we want to be in front, leading the charge?
We are attracting the best and brightest minds here in Canada. This is what a government should be doing, to be able to lay out the environment where we can all thrive. We heard from all of our witnesses that it is so critically important that we have a national IP strategy and what is proposed in this budget is going to help address those issues. The $85 million over a five-year term will help to grow the landscape of intellectual property and help educate people so that they have an understanding of what that means.
If they do not know what kind of intellectual property is out there, people either have to reinvent the wheel or they have to go through an expensive process. The more we can share intellectual property, the easier it becomes because then they can license it for a short period of time, which allows them to move faster and create the products necessary to grow our economy.
When it comes to intellectual property, we have to look at those three pillars and education is absolutely critical. We need to be able to help people understand the ins and outs of intellectual property.
