The committee met twice this week to continue its study on the Intellectual Property Regime in Canada.
On 25 October, the witnesses included representatives from two organizations and two individuals: Victoria Lennox, Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Waters, Advisor, both for Startup Canada; Kevin Spreekmeester (KS), Vice-President Global Marketing for Canada Goose Inc ; Douglas Barber, Distinguished Professor-in-Residence, McMaster University; and Daniel S.Drapeau, Litigor, Advisor & Trade-Mark Agent, DrapeauLex Inc. As the meeting was delayed by forty five minutes, the witnesses rushed through their presentations while highlighting issues regarding counterfeit products and the weak performance of Canadian businesses in commercializing value-added products. Lennox, Waters and Barber agreed that this is largely due to poor communication contacts between entrepreneurs and the authorities involved such as the government and universities. Mr. Barber commented on how the “cultural commercialization” of Canadians is much more conservative compared to the American markets where there exists a “synergy” of communications between the entrepreneurs, students, government and universities thereby enabling strong support within the intellectual property regime of the U.S.A. Daniel Drapeau emphasized the need to improve the current trademark regulations in Canada to combat counterfeiting. These include the addition of criminal disposition, trademark registrations and statutory damages. Questions and answers between the witnesses and the committee members were short. At 11.45am, the committee voted to quickly end the meeting for the public.