When Canada’s national police threw around the statistic of $30 billion as the annual losses from counterfeiting, no one debunked the claim. Until now. A law professor has discovered that Canadian cops are relying on shady sources to support this data.
Digital Journal — Fear mongering is alive and well in Canadian counterfeiting claims. Although authorities like to use the figure of $30 billion as the annual cost of product counterfeiting, it looks like that number was never substantiated. Law professor Michael Geist recently debunked statistics cited by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), discovering how the Canadian cops swore by numbers found on the Internet.
Anyone reading media reports on anti-piracy usually comes across the statistic of $30 billion, as the amount of losses each year to counterfeiting (usually relating to fake clothing, drugs and entertainment products). Law enforcement loves using this figure as a way to bolster support to prioritize anti-counterfeiting measures. The government has been listening, because $30 billion is no small amount.
But Geist, a Toronto Star columnist and law professor at the University of Ottawa, always found that statistic fishy. After filing an Access to Information Act request to find the sources of the statistical claim, Canada’s national police force confessed the figure was pulled from the Web.
As Geist says on his blog:
..the RCMP did not conduct any independent research on the scope or impact of counterfeiting in Canada, but rather merely searched for news stories on the Internet and then stood silent while lobby groups trumpeted the figure before Parliament.
Geist found that the RCMP relied on two main sources for the $30 billion amount: a March 2005 CTV news story interviewing the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a lobby group consisting of brand owners and law firms, and a PowerPoint presentation from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, which used a single bullet-point to estimate counterfeiting’s impact. Both sources have ties to the manufacturing industry that endures monumental losses when their products get copied and sold on the black market.
Geist says unreliable data on counterfeiting isn’t just the domain of Canadian police.
The International Chamber of Commerce has long maintained that counterfeiting represents 5 to 7 per cent of global trade (those figures were also raised before the Canadian House of Commons committees). However, a recent study by the independent U.S. Government Accountability Office found that of 287,000 randomly inspected shipments from 2000 to 2005, counterfeiting violations were only found in 0.06 per cent – less than one tenth of one per cent.
He goes on to bash the RCMP for using the $30 billion stat as a way to hype Canada’s role in counterfeiting rings. In fact, Geist explains, Canada isn’t the hot-bed of piracy the RCMP is claiming. As he rightly points out, the Canadian government should ask for accurate objective data before signing any further anti-counterfeiting legislative action. It seems Canada’s national police can’t be trusted.
What should raise the ire of the Canadian public is the central issue of spin. When an agency as supposedly reputable as the RCMP begins using unreliable stats to support their projects, distrust sows the seeds of skepticism. What other half-truths are finding their way into headlines? While some of the onus lies on the RCMP for supporting verifiable data, the responsibility also lies on journalists to dig deeper into trumpeted claims. We not only need more investigate writers and professors like Michael Geist (why is he doing the work of journalists, anyway?), but we also need a curious citizenry who are quick to debunk any theories that sound half-baked.
