The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has now released its IP recommendations report – A Time For Change: Toward A New Era for Intellectual Property Rights in Canada.  The report is largely a rehash of the CACN's Roadmap for Change report of 2007 with many of the same anecdotes, discredited statistics, and recommendations for reform.  The report unsurprisingly makes no reference to:

• the problems associated with anti-circumvention legislation
• the consumer outrage over Bill C-61
• the absence of reliable data on counterfeiting
• the absence of Canada as a top source of counterfeit products in the U.S.
• the growing number of Canadian arrests using current law
• the disagreements from some members of the Chamber on IP policy
• the business opportunities from open source and open platforms
• the benefits of open access for research purposes
• the large amount of independent Canadian academic work that arrives at a far different conclusion on intellectual property reform

The Chamber should be an important voice on these issues.  Instead, it sells its positions to member companies (virtually none of whom are Canadian-based) willing to pony up the fees to become part of its IP Council and in the process undermines its credibility as a genuine voice of Canadian business.