Every Child Matters: A Personal Reflection for the IP Profession

Each year on September 30, Canadians observe the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day established to honour Residential School Survivors, their families, and communities, to remember the children who never returned home, and to reflect on the ongoing work of reconciliation. The day coincides with Orange Shirt Day and the message that has become one of the most recognizable symbols of remembrance in Canada: Every Child Matters.

Earlier this year, I learned that EVERY CHILD MATTERS had been registered as a Canadian trademark by the Orange Shirt Society, the organization founded by Phyllis Webstad, whose story inspired the Orange Shirt Day movement. The registration covers educational services and commemorative goods associated with awareness, healing, and reconciliation.

Although I am a patent professional, I was curious about how registration of this trademark was being used in practice. Perhaps, I thought, this would be an interesting case study about the role trademarks can play in protecting such an important message.

Part of what drew my attention to the trademark was the concern that the phrase Every Child Matters and related Orange Shirt Day imagery had, at times, been used on products sold by businesses with little or no connection to Indigenous artists, communities, survivors, or reconciliation initiatives. In that context, I saw the trademark registration as a tool to help preserve the integrity of a message and ensure that its use remained connected to the purposes for which it was created.

However, I soon came to understand that the story was far more complex than a straightforward trademark registration.

In many ways, the trademark itself can be seen as a case study in stewardship. For some, registration is a necessary step to prevent bad-faith actors from exploiting a message associated with residential school survivors and Orange Shirt Day for commercial gain. For others, placing exclusive legal rights around a phrase that has become deeply communal and symbolic raises difficult questions about ownership, control, and the relationship between Western intellectual property systems and collective cultural values.

Taken together, these competing perspectives illustrate the complexities inherent in applying conventional Western intellectual property concepts to a phrase that carries profound cultural, historical, and social significance.

In an effort to better understand these complexities, I reached out to several local Indigenous scholars and community leaders in my hometown of Kingston, Ontario, with hopes of learning from their perspectives on this issue. This experience by itself reminded me how easy it can be to think about reconciliation as something we acknowledge once a year, on September 30th, rather than something that requires ongoing attention and relationship-building. Meaningful engagement cannot always be scheduled around a date on the calendar, or in my case, a publication deadline. Relationships take time.

One community leader who was kind enough to share some time with me was Brandon Maracle, a Queen’s University Law alum and Executive Director of the Kingston Native Centre and Language Nest (KNCLN), one of a network of friendship centres throughout Ontario supporting Indigenous communities in urban areas.

In discussing the tensions that can arise when legal frameworks designed to protect commercial assets intersect with messages rooted in shared history and community meaning, one observation from our conversation stayed with me. The trademark registration can simultaneously be viewed as an important tool for preventing commercial exploitation of a meaningful message, and as a source of difficult questions about ownership, control, and collective cultural values. Both perspectives can be true.

As lawyers and IP professionals, we are often trained to look for clear answers. In this case, however, the answer may not lie in choosing between those viewpoints, but in understanding why they exist and holding space for both perspectives. Developing that understanding requires continued education, listening, and engagement, all of which take time.

Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission Commissioner Marie Wilson captured this idea well when she observed:

“We must be mindful that a process that will be as long and complicated as the reconciliation of seven generations of inequity will require stewardship, study and ongoing attention.”

Those words resonated with me because study, reflection and ongoing attention are concepts that are familiar to those of us working in intellectual property. Whether helping protect innovation, creative works, or brand assets, our work often begins by understanding why something matters and why it deserves to be recognized and preserved.

As a patent professional, much of my day is spent speaking with inventors and learning about new technologies. Patent law recognizes inventors. Copyright recognizes authors and creators. Trademark law recognizes the source and reputation associated with particular words and symbols.

Reconciliation, in its own way, is also rooted in recognition. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission challenged Canadians to recognize histories, voices, and experiences that for too long were overlooked or ignored. Whether in law or society more broadly, recognition is often the first step toward understanding. Before meaningful action can occur, something must first be seen, acknowledged, and understood.

Viewed through that lens, the EVERY CHILD MATTERS trademark prompted me to think differently about the role of intellectual property. It reminded me that the question is not always whether a particular legal right can be obtained, but also how that right is exercised, whom it serves, and whether it advances the broader purpose it was intended to support. It also reminded me that not every meaningful question has a clear binary answer. Sometimes the most useful insights emerge from examining competing perspectives and understanding why each exists.

In our profession, we often evaluate success through familiar measures: registrations obtained, rights enforced, risks mitigated, and value protected. Yet some forms of value are not primarily commercial.

When intellectual property intersects with history, identity, community, and remembrance, success may be measured not only by the strength of a legal right, but also by how responsibly it is exercised. In this way, stewardship may be just as important as ownership.

For many Canadians, Every Child Matters is far more than a collection of words. It is a reminder of a painful history, an acknowledgement of Survivors and those who never returned home, and an ongoing commitment to learning and reflection.

That reminder has become increasingly visible in everyday life. In recent years, I have encountered the phrase Every Child Matters primarily through Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation events. As a parent, I also see how different my children's experience of learning about this history has been from my own. Conversations about residential schools, reconciliation, and Indigenous history are becoming part of their education in a way that simply was not part of mine.

Watching my children learn about this history has reminded me that many Canadians, myself included, are still catching up on stories and truths that should have been part of our education all along.

September 30 is, first and foremost, a day to honour Survivors, remember the children who never came home, and acknowledge the lasting impacts of the residential school system.

For intellectual property professionals, however, there may be another lesson worth reflecting on.

The legal tools we use every day are powerful. They can protect inventions, brands, and creative works. But they can also intersect with something larger: memory, identity, history, and community. When that happens, success may not be measured solely by the strength of the legal protection, but by how responsibly that authority is exercised and how well it serves the people and purposes it was intended to support.

Looking back, what began as curiosity about a trademark registration became a reflection on recognition, memory, education, and stewardship, and on the responsibility that accompanies all of them.

The phrase Every Child Matters reminds us that some of the most important things we seek to protect are not commercial assets at all. They are stories, memories, and truths. As intellectual property professionals, perhaps part of our responsibility is remembering that these, too, deserve our care.