Guy Caron

[Combating Counterfeit Products Act, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I followed her work on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, a file previously under my responsibility. Industry and trademark issues are very interesting.

My colleague has raised an important question because this is not the only file where the government has not paid attention to elements important to the application of future legislation. The government must give the agencies, in this case the RCMP, the powers and resources they need to do their job.

How can we ensure that the work is done properly if we do not have the ability to monitor progress made in terms of their capacity to detect and seize counterfeit goods or even to improve processes that can help border services officers or the RCMP do a better job?

Data collection is an important aspect, whether in the private sector or, in this case, the public sector. It helps ensure that effective tools are available or that existing tools are improved so people can do a better job. In that sense, it is fine to feel good about a bill that has more teeth, but we must help these officers effectively detect counterfeiting.

[Combating Counterfeit Products Act, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this bill touches on relatively complex issues such as copyright, intellectual property, trademark rights and the ethical and legal challenges related to Internet regulations. There are many types of counterfeit products, and depending on the case, Canadians can suffer very different consequences. As with the Criminal Code, some infractions could endanger peoples' lives or safety, while others have economic consequences. When it comes right down to it, counterfeiting is a form of fraud and, like all fraud, sooner or later it will affect Canadians' quality of life.

The International Chamber of Commerce “puts the cost of lost tax revenue and additional welfare spending due to counterfeit goods up to USD 125 billion in developed countries alone. And 2.5 million jobs have been lost as a result of fake products.”

Globalization makes it easier for countries to engage in trade, thus considerably increasing the opportunities for this type of activity. The counterfeit products intercepted in Canada in 2012 and seized by the RCMP were worth nearly $40 million a year. That number has increased more than fivefold in the past 10 years, from $7.6 million in 2005 to $38 million in 2012.

By 2015, the International Chamber of Commerce expects the value of counterfeit goods globally to exceed $1.7 billion U.S. That is over 2% of the world's total current economic output.

The government introduced this bill on March 1, 2013, as Bill C-56. Interestingly, that very same day, the U.S. International Trade Administration published a report asking Canada to adopt specific measures in line with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to combat counterfeiting in Canada. Specifically, it recommended that customs officers be given the necessary authority to intercept suspicious goods.

The problem is that Canada has not yet ratified the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement despite the fact that it signed the agreement on October 1, 2011. For its part, the European Parliament rejected the agreement, which means that neither the European Union nor any of its member states will be able to ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the United States and Europe, Canada seems to want to have its cake and eat it too by taking a vague position on the importance of combating this phenomenon without talking about the agreement specifically.

The American authorities can certainly suggest that the Canadian government improve its customs services and give them the authority they need to seize or at least intercept products that they suspect are counterfeit, but nothing can force the government to allocate the necessary resources. Without adequate training for officers and additional resources for inspection services, especially the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and customs, they can write whatever they want.

Not only do officers have to know all of the laws in addition to the Customs Act and details about trade agreements that have a bearing on these issues, they also have to have the expertise to recognize problematic situations and counterfeit goods. However, the government is cutting jobs and the agency's budget the same way it is cutting other departments and organizations.

We always get the same answer: the cuts are not affecting services. However, we must not kid ourselves. Border officers did not have these responsibilities before this bill was implemented, and with the staff cutbacks, there are fewer people doing the same amount of work. The agency was asked to cut back by at least 10%, as were all departments and agencies, which has resulted in a shortfall of over $140 million since 2012. The border officers' union said that some 1,000 jobs would be lost over the next few years as a result of those budget cuts.

In fact, that was one of the main criticisms of the members of the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network, a not-for-profit group made up of individuals, businesses and associations that have joined forces to combat fraud, counterfeiting and copyright violations. In a letter to the Minister of Industry prior to the parliamentary committee's study of Bill C-8, which we are currently debating, the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network outlined five contentious issues in the bill, including the lack of resources.

The letter states, and I quote:

While the Bill empowers Canadian customs officers more than before, we are concerned that insufficient resources may be allocated to allow for effective enforcement by CBSA.

We fully agree that more powers need to be given to border services officers. However, they must know what their rights and responsibilities are, since they will have no legal supervision. The agency must also have the resources needed to train them and properly enforce this legislation.

The Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network is currently fulfilling its mandate by helping to train customs officers and members of various police forces to recognize fraud and counterfeit products. In committee, the group's representative expressed his frustration with staff turnover and layoffs. He said:

I'm continually frustrated by the fact that it's like a drop in the bucket. If we go to the Niagara Falls border and train 50 border guards, as we did last year, and then come back in three months, 50% of them have gone on to other jobs, and we start over again. It's very difficult to maintain a level of understanding of what products look like.

They need some help on their side, and we're willing to help them, but we don't have funding either.

Let us be clear: strengthening the rules and legislation on counterfeiting is a good idea, but we have to put words into action.

According to a number of witnesses, the financial burden that comes with penalties and the administrative costs of a seizure falls to the rights owners, who are already stung by the counterfeiting.They therefore become financially responsible for the legislation put in place to protect their rights. The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology heard from several witnesses about that, including Michael Geist, Wayne Edwards and Martin Lavoie.

At the very least, I would like to cite part of the testimony by Michael Geist, who is well known in the field of digital law and copyright:

Further, detention of goods can be used to harm small Canadian businesses that could find the goods they are seeking to import detained, oftentimes by competitors. The absence of a misuse provision in this bill is particularly notable in this regard.

Those remarks were echoed by Martin Lavoie of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association:

...I would like to raise a number of concerns that we and our members have with the bill in its current form.

One of them is about the responsibility of the right holder—or in other words, the victim of counterfeiting—to pay the fees associated with the detention and destruction of goods. We do not understand the rationale for this.

We believe that the importers should be responsible for these costs, since they are the ones introducing these goods into our country in the first place. They should not be given a free ride. Where is the disincentive [for importers of counterfeit products] in that? Moreover, these costs, which will largely be incurred in court proceedings, are likely to be onerous and difficult to support for smaller companies that are the victims of counterfeiting. I know that you've heard this from other witnesses. We share this concern.

That is a concern that we on this side of the House also share. We are going to support this bill at third reading, but it is important to recognize that the bill still has shortcomings that were not corrected by the committee.

The NDP proposed nine amendments, which were all rejected. The only amendments that were accepted were technical amendments. This happens regularly in every committee when the Conservatives see certain flaws in their bills.

Like all opposition parties, our role as the official opposition is not only to oppose—which will not be the case with Bill C-8 since we are going to support it—but also to point out any significant flaws in the text and any negative effects that the government did not take into account when drafting and examining the bill. We therefore strongly criticize the government for failing to listen to the arguments made by the opposition.

We are going to support this bill, since it is a step in the right direction on the important issue of counterfeiting. Given that trade with our major trade partner, the United States, is fairly free, this is a way to coordinate our efforts in the fight against counterfeiting, a practice for which there is no justification. As I mentioned earlier, counterfeiting is a type of fraud that must be dealt with.

Will the government now put words into action? Will it provide the resources necessary to implement this bill and ensure that border and other officials responsible for identifying and seizing counterfeit goods can do their work effectively?

With regard to funding for these agencies, whether it be border services, food inspection or customs as a whole, the government still has a long way to go to ensure that Bill C-8 becomes law and that authorities have the strength and power to enforce it.

[Taxation, September 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, either the minister is purposely creating confusion, or else he himself is confused about this topic.

A third study, from the Mowat Centre, confirms that the provinces will have to bear the costs of and go along with the Conservative government and its ideological income splitting plan. The total bill for the provinces is $1.7 billion as of the first year. The federal government is using the EI fund surplus to balance its budget. The provinces, for the most part, are struggling with their budgets.

Is this the government's version of co-operative federalism?

[The Environment, September 15th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on September 11, TransCanada began offshore drilling near Cacouna in order to build an oil port in the middle of a fragile ecosystem. However, the National Energy Board has not yet reviewed the entire project, nor has the BAPE, which is supposed to begin hearings later this fall. In fact, only the NDP consulted Canadians this summer. To add insult to injury, the government refuses to publish the studies conducted by scientists at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Why does the government refuse to put all the scientific information on the table? What is it hiding?

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, to that, I say bravo. This is exactly the approach we must take.

In fact, the member provided a very accurate description of the approach used by safe injection sites. It is a matter of harm reduction. We have to deal with a hard line approach. According to this approach, the plight of these people is their own fault. It is their own fault if they are hooked on drugs, and they should be left to their own devices.

Sites like these will not only help to save lives by reducing the number of overdoses, but they will also help to reduce the rate of HIV and hepatitis infection. In that sense, I think that InSite and other sites in Europe and the United States have clearly shown that this approach is much more positive for the community than an approach where authorities simply ignore the facts while hoping for the best, and drug users have to make it on their own.

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I understand what my colleague is getting at. I talked about how I visited this neighbourhood and indeed, it is a poor neighbourhood where people need support and where some need a helping hand. The InSite centre is there to help them. What is the alternative? Should we close our eyes to these problems? Should we take a hard line and send them all to prison? I do not really understand the reasoning of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in that regard.

The issues of prostitution and the extremely low standard of living in that sector, because poverty and unemployment are permanent fixtures there, will not be solved by closing InSite. These problems were there long before. There are reasons that escape the Conservatives as to why poverty is prevalent in some neighbourhoods and why some people are drawn to drugs and the illusion of escaping daily reality. Those people descend into the hell of drug use and are caught in a spiral that takes them where they are now, where they need a helping hand.

InSite gives these people a supervised environment in which they can be reached much more easily than when they are on the street, where they are left to their own devices and feel vulnerable and isolated. In answer to the minister's question, I would like to know whether he thinks that a laissez-faire attitude should be the norm and that closing InSite will solve the problems that he raised.

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today in the House to speak to Bill C-2, which has been known under different names in the past. This is not the first time that we have heard speeches on this issue, but they are informative in many ways.

First, I must say that I am disappointed. When they talk about the northern gateway pipeline, for example, the Minister of Natural Resources and Conservative members say that we must rely on science and studies.

Actually, this bill is a very telling example of this. The InSite safe injection site is supported by the scientific and medical community as a whole. All of the studies have shown that this site has had a very positive impact on the community and on people who want to escape the hell of drug use. It is the most effective approach. In fact, it is even more effective than the hard line, a position that has been favoured by the various levels of government since Confederation. The facts are there and they have been mentioned many times by the members who spoke on this issue.

However, the government ignores these facts and takes a position that many speakers and experts who have studied this issue described as being dogmatic and ideological.

The InSite experiment, which is a success, has played out not only in Canada, but also in Europe and the United States. This experiment clearly shows that the best way to help people in distress who are trapped in a vicious cycle of drug use and addiction is to provide opportunities for them to get the support they need.

There is another paradox here. In the abortion rights debate, I am pro-choice. I have noticed that, in the speeches I have been hearing for a while, the members who consider themselves to be pro-life on the abortion issue—or what I would call anti-choice—are the same ones who oppose this bill or who support the bill but are against supervised injection sites.

The thing is, these sites save lives. Studies have made that clear. InSite itself has been a determining factor in reducing overdoses by about 35%. Many lives have been saved immediately following drug use. I am not even talking about lives saved by rehabilitation, by helping people get back on track and conquer their addiction.

The question the Conservatives keep asking is not about community consent. They ask us questions because there are not a lot of arguments on their side to justify this bill and all of their barriers to setting up supervised injection sites. The Conservatives' question would be much more relevant and appropriate if they had not already launched a campaign to convince communities that they do not want heroin in their backyards and to sow panic and fear.

This bill creates so many bureaucratic obstacles to setting up supervised injection sites that can help communities that any organization wanting to help its community in this way will find the process very discouraging from the start. The Conservatives talk about consultations, but what they really want to do is base their campaign on emotional arguments instead of facts, statistics, and the opinions of specialists and medical experts.

I will list the bureaucratic barriers this bill would create for the establishment of safe injection sites. Applicants must meet the following criteria in order for their application for an exemption to be considered: scientific evidence demonstrating a medical benefit; a letter from the provincial or territorial minister responsible for public health and safety, municipal councils, local chiefs of police and senior public health officials.

As well, they will have to provide information about infectious diseases and overdoses related to the use of illicit substances; a description of the drug treatment services available at that point; a description of the potential impact of the site on public safety; a description of all the procedures and measures, including measures that will be taken to minimize the diversion of controlled substances; relevant information, including trends, on loitering in a public place that may be related to drugs, drug trafficking and crime in the vicinity of the site at the time of the application; and a report of the consultations held with a broad range of community groups from the municipality, including copies of all written submissions received and a description of the steps that will be taken to address any relevant concerns.

Any group wishing to set up a safe injection site similar to InSite to help the community and those caught up in the spiral of drug use will have to provide all that information, and more.

Does this approach comply with the Supreme Court ruling and the instructions given in its 2011 ruling? Certainly not. That is why we are wondering whether the Conservatives are attempting once again to provoke another Supreme Court refusal. This will eventually pay off because their base likes confrontations with the Supreme Court.

The Conservatives believe that elected members make the laws, prepare legislation and should vote on it, and that the Supreme Court should not interfere. However, the court's role is to ensure that the rights and freedoms of Canadians are upheld, and it uses the charter to that end.

Since Bill C-2, which is supposedly a response to the Supreme Court ruling, is more like an attempt to skirt the spirit of the decision, this leads us to believe that it is a Conservative dogmatic and ideological process that seeks to please their electoral base and fund their election campaign, since the Conservatives have used this issue before to raise money.

The gun registry is no longer an issue. From an election perspective, that was their cash cow. Now, they need to find other issues. They dreamt up this issue so they could go out and raise funds from their base.

That is deplorable because it is an extremely sensitive and important issue for our communities. Our main critic on this matter is the member for Vancouver East and she is aware of this. I had the opportunity to work for an organization with offices in British Columbia, in the Gastown district, which is very close to Vancouver East.

I had the opportunity to go for a walk in the neighbourhood, which is not where InSite is located, but is in the community it serves. I can say that this initiative is doing a lot of good. This has been proven by the people who studied how the clinic operates and its results, and I also saw the good it is doing in the community because there is support.

Drug addicts who want to get rid of their addiction do not feel abandoned or ignored. They do not feel that people just walk by without paying attention to them. They see people reaching out to them. There is immediate help for those who are still addicted and help for those who want to find a way out. It is the best way to connect with them.

For social and street workers who wish to help those who are at the end of their rope, it is much more difficult to go into the streets randomly than to provide information at a supervised site that is managed in the most medically competent way possible. It is much easier to do the work, and that is the reason why the whole medical and social work community is in favour of such initiatives.

Therefore, I have a hard time figuring out why the Conservatives persist in putting up more barriers to the use of this risk and harm reduction method. Unfortunately, I can see nothing but electoral, political and ideological reasons, and I am really sorry to see that.

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague fromLaval—Les Îles on his speech. I would like to ask him a very specific question.

Obviously, this is a very sensitive issue. It is also a public health issue, one that is handled appropriately, in a manner approved by the Canadian Medical Association and other response groups. However, it appears that the Conservatives are using this issue as a campaign tool, a way to boost their fundraising. They are polarizing this whole question, which seems to me a very dangerous tack, simply to use it as a fundraising tool now that the gun registry cannot serve that purpose.

What does my colleague think of using such an important and sensitive issue for political reasons and to get funding for the next election, when a level-headed, more scientific approach would be more appropriate?

[Dairy Producers, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will do something I usually do not do, which is to actually give my speech in English this time. The reason is that in Quebec, there is no debate about supply management. People get it. There is no controversy about it.

When I read economists or pundits from large urban centres such as Montreal, Toronto, or Quebec—actually, rarely from Montreal, but from Toronto, Vancouver, or any other large setting—they are always against supply management. It does not make sense to me.

It happens largely in urban centres because they take the perspective of the consumer, even though they are wrong in this perspective or they are wrong in their statements. I would like to explain why supply management actually makes sense from an economic perspective.

It makes sense because there are coordination problems that are unique to agriculture. Some other domains can have those problems, but we witness them in agriculture. If in natural resources, for example, the price of copper decreases, the mining company or processor will tend to reduce supply by laying off people and reducing its production until prices rise again. The people on the boards making those decisions will make them without fearing for their livelihoods: the company will still be standing, so they can afford to make the decision to reduce supply.

For farmers faced with the same type of decision—if the price of milk drops, for example—the sensible move would be to do the same thing and decrease supply. That is what we might see if there was coordination. However, the lack of coordination in a pure market in determining the need for milk, for example, makes it impossible for the individual farmer to do that, because the farmer relies on production for a livelihood. Even though the individual decision should be to reduce supply, the mass of farmers will actually increase their supply, because they need to sell more to compensate for the drop in price. This is what we call the “tragedy of the commons”: individually it makes sense, but as a collective decision, it is a call for disaster.

The other point is that there is also a problem of asymmetry in market power. In the pure market economy, the individual farmer is a price taker. He has to take the price. He has no market power compared to the large processors, the large buyers of his product. Those companies, such as Agropur, Parmalat, or Saputo, are the price setters.

If there is no coordination among farmers, obviously the power in itself is really unbalanced. This is why there is a need for a countervailing power to make sure that the farmers can actually get organized. In some other jurisdictions, it takes different forms. In Canada, we have chosen to go with supply management.

To address this type of market failure, different countries have taken different routes. We often hear from the opponents of supply management that New Zealand is the way to go. New Zealand used to have supply management, but scrapped it. According to opponents of supply management, New Zealand let the market do its part.

The example is actually a fallacy, because in New Zealand there are now fewer farmers and fewer milk-producing farms. They decided to go a different route. Basically there is only one buyer, the Fonterra Co-operative Group, which is the result of the merger of 12 co-ops in New Zealand. Fonterra is buying 95% of the milk produced. Basically it is a large co-op that exports to about 140 countries.

There is one single buyer for all the milk. That means that the farmer actually has some protection. This process is very reminiscent of the Canadian Wheat Board, which we scrapped here in Canada thanks to the Conservative government. That is the way New Zealand decided to go. It is not a pure market economy. They have not scrapped supply management. They are not leaving anything behind. They left that large co-op, that large single buyer.

Looking at the European Union or even the United States, we see that they have taken the direction of subsidies. Even though there has been some progress in decreasing the level of subsidies in the European Union, it is still significantly high, to the point where the gains that we could make in the dairy industry in Europe are very theoretical at this point.

Obviously if the dairy products from Europe actually come to Canada, they are supposed to come without any subsidy to help production. On the other side, if we are exporting, we will be faced with a subsidized industry in Europe, so it is not sure at this point if we are going to be on a level playing field with the European Union on its own turf.

The United States is often referred to when we talk about the “high cost” of supply management because we tend to compare our prices to the consumer here with those in the U.S. We look at the U.S. and think the prices there are much lower. We say supply management has been a failure, but the prices are subsidized either directly or indirectly by the U.S. government or by the individual state's government.

Between 1995 and 2012, a period of 17 years, U.S. farmers actually received over $5 billion in direct subsidies from the federal government in the U.S. That is an average of $313 million a year. Looking at the last year available, 2012, it was actually close to $450 million in subsidies to the farmers in the U.S. The prices we see there are largely subsidized, which makes many economists say that basically the U.S. consumer is paying twice. The consumer is paying the regular retail price and paying through taxes as well, which is not the case here. Supply management is not something that the taxpayer is subsidizing. It is a mechanism that actually helps to ensure stability in the price that the producer receives.

Looking at Australia, which is probably the closest example of the liberalized market, it is almost liberalized, but it had so many problems when it decided to scrap what was akin to supply management that it basically had to subsidize those farmers who were in jeopardy. At the time when it started to fully deregulate at the end of the 1990s, it attached to the deregulation bill about $1.8 billion Australian, to actually help the transition. If things were not bad enough, because the farmers could not actually live on what they were getting, they had to add about $122 million Australian by the end of 2000, to help the industry, and that was given to about 7,750 producers.

As an example of the impact this deregulation had on farmers, the number of dairy farms actually dropped from 2000 to 2007 from 13,000 to 8,000, while the average herd, which is an important number to evaluate the productivity of the farm, increased from 170 cows to 225 cows during the same period. Therefore, we are seeing increased productivity, but supply management has also increased productivity. In my riding and in my region, even small family farms are a lot more productive than they used to be.

Economists say that prices are much higher here. There are many more aspects to the equation than just supply management. If we look at the price for pork in the U.S., for example, which is not a supply managed industry, and compare it to Canada, often it is half the price. It is not supply managed.

There are many more reasons, and I know my time is limited, so I will not be able to address some of those criticisms, but we know that supply management is not something that is a hindrance to our international trade negotiations. It is not detrimental to our processors, who are doing very well, and the criticism that it does not give incentive to make efficiency gains is not accurate, because obviously if they are working through a quota system, producers have to decrease their costs and be more productive, so they can make a better living.

For all these reasons, supply management is a productive and positive element of our dairy industry. We urge all members to support it by voting yes on this motion.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his eloquent speech. He spoke a lot about accountability, which I think is important. He indicated, in a very articulate manner, that the bill serves as little more than window dressing designed to instil confidence in people, that it does not have enough teeth and that the government does not have enough political will to enforce it. That does not just apply to this case but also to a wide range of government activities related to oversight.

I would like to ask my colleague a question about the parallel that can be drawn with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which has standards to enforce. If there is not enough staff to enforce the rules or employees are not given the power to enforce them, then there are going to be more problems like the ones we have already experienced. I would like my colleague to compare what is happening with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with the changes to the regulations set out in this bill.