Canada Called the USTR Report “Flawed and One-Sided”

Canada has been a US "watch list" candidate for a while, due to “failing” intellectual property protections. In response, the country claimed that the USTR process was flawed as driven by one-sided copyright industry claims.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issues its Special 301 Report every year, listing the countries that fail to live up to the US copyright standards. It repeatedly included Canada there for a variety of reasons, the main being that Canada fails to properly deter piracy. This is despite the fact that Canada has revamped its copyright law, including a mandatory piracy notice scheme, and extended the copyright term to 70 years after publication. In fact, Canada now has some of the toughest anti-piracy laws in the world. But even this is not enough for Hollywood.

As a result, Canada announced that it had little faith in the USTR report, refusing to recognize its validity and considering the process and the Report to be flawed due to its failure to employ a clear methodology and its findings relying on industry allegations instead of empirical evidence and objective analysis. This statement was made last year after the 2016 USTR report was published. The statement pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that Canada didn’t recognize the validity of the 301 process and included several talking points for the media.

In 2017, US copyright owners have once again labeled Canada a “piracy haven”, so it wouldn’t be surprising to find it in the list again. However, the Canadian Government didn’t even comment on the situation, which means that the country still has little faith in the USTR report. Independent researchers also describe the yearly 301 report as biased.