Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise again to resume my comments on Bill C-8. I would like to speak a bit about what is in the bill.
Bill C-8 amends the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act to add new civil and criminal remedies and new border measures in both acts, in order to strengthen the enforcement of copyright and trademark rights and to curtail commercial activity involving infringing copies and counterfeit trademarked goods.
More specifically, the bill creates new civil causes of action with respect to activities that sustain commercial activity in infringing copies and counterfeit trademarked goods. It creates new criminal offences for trademark counterfeiting that are analogous to existing offences in the Copyright Act. It also creates new criminal offences prohibiting the possession or export of infringing copies or counterfeit trademarked goods, packaging or labels.
The bill enacts new border enforcement measures enabling customs officers to detain goods that they suspect infringe copyright or trademark rights. I think my colleagues in the House obviously agree that it is important to protect copyrights and trademarks. It is important to protect Canadians' jobs. This is how they earn their living.
The bill also allows customs officers to share information relating to the detained goods with rights owners who have filed a request for assistance, in order to give the rights owners a reasonable opportunity to pursue a remedy in court. The bill exempts the importation and exportation of copies and goods by an individual for their personal use from the application of the border measures. This is important to consider.
The bill also adds the offences set out in the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act to the list of offences set out in the Criminal Code for the investigation of which police may seek judicial authorization to use a wiretap. Obviously, in this situation, it would be illegal to use a wiretap. We are already hearing about illegal wiretaps that the government has done.
Bill C-8 also amends the Trade-marks Act to, among other things, expand the scope of what can be registered as a trade-mark and allow the Registrar of Trade-marks to correct errors that appear in the trade-mark register. That is important.
Personally, I hope that, in the future, the government will introduce a bill ensuring that these provisions apply not only to trade-marks but also to official marks. I think that significant changes must be made to official marks legislation and to how we correct past mistakes.
Finally, the bill streamlines and modernizes the trade-mark application and opposition process.
Now that I have given a bit of a review of what is in the bill, let us talk about what happened after the bill passed second reading and went to committee, where a variety of proposals for amendments were brought forward.
The fact is that this is unfortunately a case, another case, of the Conservative government using its majority to ram through a flawed piece of legislation that could have done a much better job of protecting Canadian business interests and Canadian consumers.
We are supporting the bill, because it is important to have some measures to protect these interests and to try to stop this enormous flow we are seeing of counterfeit goods into Canada.
Nevertheless, it does not mean the bill could not be better. We certainly would have liked to have seen it made better.
Every single amendment we brought forward and that the NDP brought forward at committee was torpedoed by the Conservatives there. The Conservatives followed orders. When the minister appeared, he stated that he wanted the bill passed by committee quickly and that he would allow no more than four days of hearings. To no one's surprise, that is exactly what happened.
When we talk about having less partisanship around here, about having more collaboration around here, this is what we are talking about. I hope that the changes we are proposing to the Senate make it a less partisan place and a more collaborative place. If we succeed in having a less partisan Senate, a Senate that is appointed in a non-partisan way, we would actually have to have more collaboration between the members of this House and members of the other chamber. That might even influence this chamber to become more collaborative and non-partisan. Hopefully it will be less hyperpartisan than it has been in the past eight years under the Conservative government.
What a shame that there were not more days of hearings and the consideration of amendments during the committee stage. This could have been a really strong piece of legislation, but no one on that side was interested in anything other than bowing down to the minister and the PMO.
The committee heard from many witnesses who testified about the serious problems and serious shortcomings in Bill C-8. They are flaws that could have been addressed through amendments.
Now, everyone agrees that this is a step forward. Some would go as far as to say that this is a good step to bring us in line with the international community.
In fact, when I was on the committee and when I was previously the Liberal critic for industry, I actually met with the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada and with the Canadian Institution of Plumbing & Heating. Both these groups were among those that were very concerned about counterfeit products coming into Canada. If we are talking about things that involve the plumbing and heating in our houses and in buildings where we work, the last thing we want are products that we think are up to Canadian standards but that are, in fact, counterfeit and have been brought in illegally and, unbeknownst to whoever brought them into Canada, are not the quality they are supposed to be.
That could create serious problems. It could lead to flooding. It could lead to fires. It could lead to serious dangers for Canadians.
I have not even talked about the issue of pharmaceutical drugs. When those come in and are counterfeit, we can imagine the concerns.
My colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, the member for Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, was talking earlier about Canada Goose. I was on the committee last year when we heard from companies like Canada Goose about the kinds of outrageous things that are put into counterfeit jackets and other products that come into this country. We ought to be concerned about this.
It has also been said that the way the bill is, it is a bit like providing bread crumbs to a starving man. The impact of counterfeit goods in Canada is growing. In 2005, the value of seized counterfeit items, which are the items our Canadian Border Services Agency was able to stop and identify at the border and seize, was $7.6 million. That is quite a bit. However, by 2012, that number had grown to $38 million. I think we can all agree that it has probably grown significantly since then.
This ought to be a matter of serious concern to us, because it means that those counterfeit products are replacing products produced by Canadians, and it is taking jobs and work away from Canadians. We ought to be very concerned about that.
The fact of the matter is that both Liberal and NDP members of the committee brought forward reasonable amendments in good faith in an effort to improve Bill C-8 because they do recognize it is an important piece of legislation. However, instead of a strong bill that the Conservatives could be proud of, that all of us in the House of Commons could be proud of, we are left with the minister's determination that it be just the minister alone required to make us compliant under global treaties. We do not how that will work, so the bill needed to be amended.
The government failed to address the really big issues and to make meaningful change. This, I suppose, is not surprising from this crowd. The Conservatives are driven by their ideology and the optics of things, as we have seen so often. They seem to care less whether they really stand up for the real interests of Canadian businesses and Canadian consumers.
Many witnesses pointed out that this legislation is all punitive, but the Conservatives did not really want to hear that and why it could be problematic, and even rejected the measures we proposed to help small businesses. Many small businesses simply cannot afford to go through the courts, which is a very costly exercise, to protect their brands. In some cases, this does not help them.
We could have helped those businesses, who provide the jobs we all want for Canadians, if the government had been willing to listen to witnesses and accept amendments to Bill C-8. When the opposition proposed a simplified approach that would have made it easier for small businesses, the Conservatives shut it down. I should not be too harsh on Conservative committee members; after all, they are just doing what they have been ordered to do by the minister or the folks over at the PMO.
One of the more disturbing things that will happen with the legislation is that it will give our enforcement agencies a lot more work at a time when they are struggling because of short-sighted funding cuts. The RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency need the proper resources to do their job and to enforce legislation like Bill C-8, but they are not getting them from the government.
In the 2012 budget, the government cut $142 million from Canada Border Services Agency. My colleague says it was $143 million. Whatever it is, it is in that range. It is a bit like the fact that the Conservatives are talking about all of this stuff they will do for veterans, but failing to mention that they have cut 781 people from Veterans Affairs Canada. That is 22% of the workforce, yet they expect people across Canada to believe this will improve their service to veterans. It does not wash. I am frankly astonished that the Conservatives would do this. Why they have not been listening to veterans and hearing the concerns about these office closures and cuts to services, and pretending they will get better service, I do not really comprehend. It does not make sense for the government to do this, but it is not the first time I have seen something from the government that does not make sense.
When I speak of the bill, it is sad to see an opportunity to bring in a real strong piece of legislation squandered by the Conservative government. Nevertheless, the Liberal Party recognizes the need to provide new enforcement tools to help strengthen Canada's existing enforcement regime for counterfeit goods.
We believe that Canadian businesses and industry associations must be protected to ensure the well-being of domestic businesses; the health and safety of Canadians, including in regard to the items in our homes I spoke earlier about, such as electrical components and pharmaceutical products; as well as the integrity of the Canadian economy as a whole. This is important for those reasons.
We would like to see public education regarding possession, production and distribution addressed in Bill C-8. We see nothing coming forward from the government to do that.
We would like to investigate and further study how e-commerce may provide a loophole to the seizure and the reduction of the presence of counterfeit products. We see no interest in such a study from the government.
With the current government deficit, as well as the recent cuts to the budget of the Canada Border Services Agency, we question how the Conservatives will fund the new prevention and investigative system. How on earth will we improve services at our borders when they are cutting the funding dramatically?
Border officers, who are by no means copyright experts, will be given new and increased powers that are not overseen by courts, which may lead to illegitimate seizures and violations of the Charter of Rights. We have to be concerned about that. Why would we want to put the Border Services agents in that position? We should not be doing that to them.
There are several further areas in which concerns have been raised. With an increased number of seizures due to increased powers being given to border officers and the RCMP, how will the government fund such extensive investigative and legal operations? Should genuine or non-counterfeit products be seized and destroyed and, in that case, how will the government compensate companies and individuals? Moreover, how will the government protect the information of legitimate importers from potential misuse of the request for assistance mechanism? These are important questions. How will the government determine whether importers of counterfeit production are aware that products are counterfeit? Why are there no provisions for counterfeit goods being transshipped through Canada?
While Bill C-8 certainly does not accomplish everything that it might, it does mark a step forward in the fight against the deeply damaging practice of counterfeiting and moves Canada closer, if only slightly, toward a modernized intellectual property regime.
