Mr. Speaker, I will not stand here in the House of Commons and summarize the concerns of the opposition. I will talk about the concerns of the Canadian people, the people who actually need to use the Internet, the people who actually need to download information to do their jobs and the people who actually need to download information to pass a course in school.
The current regime we have regarding Internet protocols and copyright legislation is antiquated. Sections of the current bill that refer to education talk about flip charts and overhead projectors. This is so antiquated that it does not apply at all to modern education.
That is why the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations is in support of this bill. It states that “the government has demonstrated a commitment to...Canada’s education community”. It goes on to state that students across Canada are greatly encouraged. It goes on to state that “the federal government has a clear understanding of how this bill will impact Canada's students, educators and researchers”.
On time allocation, this is the same bill that was debated for many hours in the last Parliament and all sides of the House at that time voted to send it to committee. Since we supported it and sent it to committee the last time, why would anyone want to delay sending it to committee again? We have waited 15 years and that is long enough.