Industry committee  Our database is quite up to date. They can use the manufacturer's name, or brand name, or model number to search our database. We had mentioned General Electric or Philips earlier. You can type General Electric into our database, and you'll come up with 300 pages of certified p

Industry committee  We have a lot of clients there. We have four offices in China right now, and our inspectors work with the Chinese government to inspect our client factories to ensure they're maintaining their standards while manufacturing products. The factories are being inspected. There are

Industry committee  That's right.

Industry committee  The retailers do have a buying process. Some of the retailers are specifically asking for CSA-certified products, so the manufacturers are providing documentation to support their manufacturing. Unfortunately, some manufacturers either forge or counterfeit the CSA documents as we

Industry committee  You're correct. I've been spending time with a lot of our retailers, providing training for their buyers to use our database to verify.

Industry committee  Not very confident.

Industry committee  I've been with the Canadian Standards Association for three years, and I've been contacted by CBSA on one occasion, with no follow-up.

Industry committee  What we do is give them some basic knowledge and awareness that anything can be counterfeited. We share what the trends are right now, what products are being counterfeited. For example, earlier I said that components of other products are being counterfeited. What's happening ri

Industry committee  I'd like to see our border services have the ability to question the product coming in, go to the IP owner and verify that IP—who it belongs to and whether it belongs on that product.

Industry committee  That's correct, but when we get a photograph of whatever they're inspecting, I look at the model number, UPC codes, and all the different elements of the product, and I verify with our database as to whether it's authentic or counterfeit.

Industry committee  That's correct. They'll tell me on occasion about the manufacturer of origin.

Industry committee  It is around the supply chain, security of supply chains, and verifying each step of your product's manufacturing and shipping. One of the biggest problems we're seeing right now is that it's not the complete unit that's counterfeit, it's components of the unit that are counterf

Industry committee  What they do is randomly inspect certain items. Then they'll send me a photograph of a CSA mark on a product and I'll identify it as being counterfeit or not. So it's just random checks, or audits, I would say, of containers. They don't have to be experts. They just have to che

Industry committee  There are a number of private companies out there that deal with levels of security to protect from counterfeiting, and it comes within labels or synthetic DNA. For example, some of our labels have synthetic DNAs built into the label itself, so that label can't be counterfeited.

Industry committee  That's right. We certify products to Canadian and U.S. standards. We would use our mark in the U.S. as well.