Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the presenters. I have a particular welcome to Mr. Geralde from the Canadian Standards Association, which is in my riding.
I must say, I wasn't aware of the seriousness of this problem until the Canadian Standards Association briefed me on it and I was introduced to the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network. It is a very serious problem. I'm not able to brief entirely as to where we were under our government, but I can tell you that before the last election we were getting very close to some solutions. I agree with Mr. Henderson that it isn't that complicated. We know what the solutions are; many of them, and perhaps all of them, are outlined here in your summary of recommendations.
I think the challenge is that there are so many departments involved, and it's become a rudderless project. Under our government the Minister of Public Safety took charge of it. We were trying to bring the departments together, but that added to the complexity. I think, too, we often look for the perfect mousetrap when we don't have a mousetrap at all. There were also some interim measures--for example, with respect to the sharing of information to rights holders--that could have been pursued. There were some privacy issues, but they were not insurmountable, and they aren't insurmountable, at least as an interim step. There were also interim solutions with respect to bringing forward quickly some sanctions in the Criminal Code, or to bringing in some law that simply said, as Mr. Henderson pointed out, making counterfeit goods is against the law and illegal, and setting out the sanctions and the fines that are necessary.
I think the government needs to bring forward a package. I think it also has to do with priorities. We know the government asserts that it is committed to fighting crime, and here we have this kind of criminality going on with organized crime very much involved, as you've all pointed out, and the government is proposing to spend close to a billion dollars over a number of years arming our border guards. Think how far a billion dollars would go in dealing with counterfeit goods and pirated goods. We should be ashamed as a G-8 country as to where we are.
I'm going to put the question to Mr. Geralde and maybe to Mr. Murphy. Do you think arming the border guards will help in dealing with the fight against counterfeit goods and pirated goods, recognizing--as Mr. Lipkus pointed out--that counterfeit goods are being manufactured right here in Canada, but that a heck of a lot of counterfeit goods and pirated goods are coming across our border?