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David Durand is a lawyer, co-founder of Minimum Viable Intellectual Property (MVIP) and president of the International Intellectual Property Forum – Quebec (FORPIQ). Aaron Shull is the managing director and general counsel at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Canada’s geographic isolation has led to a false sense of security. The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed North America earlier last month before it was shot down by the U.S. military, combined with recent media reports about Chinese interference in the 2021 federal election and monitoring buoys in the Arctic, have all but destroyed the Canadian illusion of safety.
The world around us is rapidly being reoriented. There is an urgent need for a new Canadian national security policy that considers new and emerging threats.
Such a policy should begin with a strong economic foundation that privileges the domestic development of intangible assets, IP, and the use and commercialization of data, as well as the strategic injection of Canadian technology into international markets. That, in turn, requires a better understanding of the relationship between IP and national security.
Observers have long linked the inadequate safeguarding of IP to Canada’s long-standing innovation problem and this country’s lack of technology champions compared with the United States. Governments, which have set up various agencies to help commercialize domestic patents, have long focused their policies in that direction. But IP is not just a commercial or economic issue.
As things stand, the trend is worrying. Technology, in particular the knowledge assets of Canadian businesses, universities and research centres, appear to be ripe for picking.