The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission, which is the government’s independent research and advisory body on a range of economic, social and environmental issues affecting the welfare of Australians, has released a new report on the impact of bilateral and regional trade agreements.  The report, which contains some key lessons for Canada given our current trade negotiations activities with Europe, India, and South American countries, warns against the inclusion of intellectual property within these trade agreements.  The report concludes:

The Commission considers that Australia should not generally seek to include IP provisions in further BRTAs, and that any IP provisions that are proposed for a particular agreement should only be included after an economic assessment of the impacts, including on consumers, in Australia and partner countries. To safeguard against the prospect that acceptance of ‘negative sum game’ proposals, the assessment would need to find that implementing the provisions would likely generate overall net benefits for members of the agreement.

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