67. Canada would like to thank the United States, the European Union, Chinese Taipei and Japan for the interesting presentations on their regimes for the protection of trade secrets and is pleased to respond to their interest in presenting on the systems in place in other Members.
68. Canada has a strong regime for the protection and enforcement of trade secrets. For example, the 2014 OECD study titled "Uncovering Trade Secrets - An Empirical Assessment of Economic Implications of Protection for Undisclosed Data", as was noted by my United States colleague, established a "Trade Secrets Protection Index" that ranked Canada's overall regime second among the 37 major economies that were assessed in the study.
69. In Canada, trade secrets protection and enforcement has roots in contract, equity, tort, and property law, both at the federal level as well as at the sub-level provincial level. While Canada does not have a single federal trade secrets act, trade secrets are addressed in several pieces of federal legislation. For instance, Canada's Security of Information Act criminalizes economic espionage, including through the theft of trade secrets. The communication of a trade secret to another person, group or organization, as well as the acts of obtaining, retaining or destroying trade secrets "to the detriment of Canada's economic interests, international relations or national defence or national security" are considered criminal offenses under Section 19 of that Act. As well, Section 9(3)(b) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act establishes the framework for the protection of commercial confidential information by the Government of Canada. Several other pieces of federal legislation address the treatment of commercial confidential information of businesses with which the Government of Canada interacts in its operations, for example, the Access to Information Act, the Canadian Space Agency Act, the National Energy Board Act and the Telecommunications Act.
70. Civil causes of action for pursuing trade secret enforcement in Canada stem primarily from contractual liability, such as a breach of an employment contract or tort law, such as unjust enrichment or breach of a fiduciary duty. In terms of remedies, the Canadian system generally can provide a range of measures that include: preliminary and permanent injunctions (as long as the trade secret remains secret); injunctions to eliminate wrongful head starts; destruction of infringing materials; compensatory damages; orders to protect the confidentiality of trade secrets in litigation; and ex parte emergency search measures. Defences to trade secret actions can include independent creation, reverse engineering and in some cases the public interest of the defence.
71. In conclusion, I would just like to once again thank the United States and European Union for bringing this item forward. We think this is an area that has been a little bit understudied in terms of international discussion. We were pleased to be a part of the discussion today.
