Industry committee  A lot of companies already do that. Depending on the type of product, they have certificates with the product. With software and things like that, they have to have certificates of authenticity, or COA, labels affixed. A lot of companies are doing this, so when they do come acros

Industry committee  With patents, you're looking at a whole different type of law as well. In Canada, currently the patent laws on the criminal side of it are weak. In my 10 years I never did a patent case, because we never looked at that sort of thing. In any system you put in place to help ident

Industry committee  It would be really hard to do something like that. There are so many different types of products and industries that have different products coming in. I don't know what the current statistics are even for legitimate products being examined at the border, but I think about 1% t

Industry committee  If they'll do that for you. Under the current structure, if you want to target a shipment, customs want the departure date, the container number, the name, address, and birthdate of the bad guy. It's impossible for--

Industry committee  Yes, if they have the training to...which a lot of them have come to at the lower levels. The lower levels, in the people I've dealt with in the field, want to stop this stuff; they don't want it coming into the country. It's the upper levels and into the government that don't se

Industry committee  I don't think there's any legitimate reason. What I'm hearing is it just takes more study. There are people who come up with reasons, saying it's not a serious issue, that industry has exaggerated the claims of organized crime, health and safety, things like that. To be honest,

Industry committee  They're starting with a legitimate product going through a legitimate market. Where we're dealing with counterfeit products, there's no legitimate market for a counterfeit product. Counterfeiters don't keep any types of records. So who knows where it's manufactured at the end? Wh

Industry committee  Okay, now I understand that. I know they're doing that with pharmaceuticals in the States, where they have to be tracked. So if a legitimate retailer says he'll buy only if you can show the steps to it.... But then again, documents are counterfeited; forgeries are put in place; f

Industry committee  No. If something comes into Canada, you don't need a court order to inspect it. The thing is, customs in Canada don't have the mandate; they don't have the legislation to actively look for counterfeit products. If they come across something in a shipment, the next step is to co

Industry committee  You're exactly right. It's beyond ludicrous that a border services agency cannot actually search out hazardous products and things like this. It's beyond me why they don't have the authority already. This issue has been beaten to death for many years, and I'm glad it's coming to

Industry committee  Retailers have been penalized and charged criminally. I mean, if they're caught with this particular type of product and then they resell it and resell it, they're charged. With the national chains, when I was in the RCMP, we did go after that. I think a big part of it is educat

Industry committee  If it's a director of a corporation or something, and it can be proved in a criminal court that they were negligent or wilfully blind or had a guilty mind and knew what they were doing, then certainly they will be prosecuted, and hopefully convicted.

Industry committee  There's no disincentive. You have to look at the different levels of criminality. Of course, there are smaller operations that are doing it because other people are doing it and it's accepted. If they get a knock on the door from the police, they're going to give it up. But the

Industry committee  There are a lot of people within Canada who have connections to other countries that are either family related or through organized crime, whether they're involved with factories, whether it be family members, or connections, or partners back in different countries. For instance,

Industry committee  When I started this 10 years ago, essentially I was laughed out of court; in a lot of cases the prosecutors wouldn't even look at these cases. It's changed somewhat, but still, within the judiciary, I don't know if it's a lack of education or if they don't want to take the proble