Michael Geist:
This is Law Bytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.
CBC News:
Signed sealed and now delivered to the House of Commons. Just last hour the Federal Government tabled a bill to implement the new NAFTA a deal that Canada the US and Mexico reached six months ago after 15 months of negotiations.
Justin Trudeau:
Canada the US and Mexico are at our most efficient most secure and most profitable. When we work together. And it’s about time we got back to that way of thinking. Mr Speaker, the new NAFTA will secure access to a trading zone that accounts for more than a quarter of the global economy. And it’s now time for the members of this House to ratify it.
Donald Trump:
Likewise it will be the most advanced trade deal in the world with ambitious provisions on the digital economy, patents very important.
Michael Geist:
The new NAFTA, dubbed the USMCA or CUSMA depending on where you live, took a significant step forward recently with the introduction of Canadian legislation designed to ratify the treaty. Bill C-100 comes near the end of the legislative session and just months before a federal election but the government may still work to rush it through the parliamentary process. The economic implications of the agreement are enormous. As Professor Myra Tawfik, my guest on this week’s podcast has noted it, touches on everything from cows to cars to copyright. Professor Tawfik is a leading copyright expert at the University of Windsor and a senior fellow with CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation. She joined me to talk about Canada’s long standing history of facing external pressure on copyright, the role that trade negotiations now play with that pressure, and the implications of the USMCA.
Michael Geist:
Mayra thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
Myra Tawfik:
Thank you for having me it’s a pleasure to be here.
Michael Geist:
Well it’s great to have you and it comes at a time where there is a lot certainly taking place from an intellectual property perspective. We’ve had just this week as we’re recording this another copyright review which will have significant consequences for where things go but but even more there is now a bill at the house that deals with the implementation and ratification of the new NAFTA, the USMCA, which has significant implications for intellectual property as well. And so I thought we could focus a bit on what’s in the bill but even more the very issue that that IP becomes an important part of these trade deals which we can take people by surprise. So why don’t we start there.
Myra Tawfik:
IP hasn’t always been a big part of trade deals. I mean it was NAFTA actually that the first NAFTA, the original NAFTA that introduced the concept of having intellectual property rights as part of international free trade agreements.
Bill Clinton:
I’d also like to welcome here the representatives from Mexico and Canada and tell them they are in fact welcome here. They are our partners in the future that we are trying to make together.
Myra Tawfik:
And that was a significant shift. So we’re talking sort of what are we talking about sort of 25, 30 years ago where the the U.S. particularly started to think about ways in which it could maintain and grow its advantage in the international trade landscape and IP of course in the U.S. is sort of a huge developer and exporter of intellectual property. And I think that’s has had a fundamental shift in the way intellectual property rights have been viewed both domestically and within the international framework. So NAFTA was the first to do it. So it’s a fairly you know in the grand scheme of things it’s it’s not that that long ago. But from NAFTA to the WTO TRIPS and onward to every international trade negotiation and trade agreement since then there has been an intellectual property code in most of them.
Michael Geist:
Ok. And when you talk about international code and these trade agreements I assume we’re talking about everything from the new Canada- EU trade agreement, the TPP the Asia trade agreement, this isn’t just a U.S. Canada Mexico thing. This is global in scope.
Myra Tawfik:
It is global in scope. It is although if you if you look at some of the bilateral trade agreements that Canada has entered into since NAFTA and TRIPS sort of you know a number of them with some some of
