Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all of you for being here today. I know some of you have already appeared before the public safety committee and that there was an interesting exchange. I'm going to take it that all of you believe there's a problem with respect to counterfeiting and piracy and the theft of intellectual property in Canada. I think that's a fair assumption. I don't see anybody deviating from that.
However, do you all have the same view in terms of a solution to the many problems? You obviously have a plan that your interdepartmental working group could put together, but what department is actually leading this? You're talking about a problem. This committee recognizes this problem. It put it in terms of a recommendation, number 11. It was done unanimously. I think the previous government had the public safety department take the lead. This time I'm concerned that there's no political leadership. You can talk about this issue until you're blue in the face.
Mr. Chair, I'll leave this with the committee. I see that China's WCT and the WPPT are effective June 9, well before Canada will do that. So while we're doing the work to figure out how to get this right, other nations we've pointed a finger to in the past—even Mr. Emerson did the same thing as recently as today in his press release that calls on China to do more—such as China, are doing more, but Canada is lagging behind.
I want to ask you very simply, who is taking ownership of this? You have some good ideas, but I don't see any coordination leading to one department saying this is how we're going to get it right; we're going to get it done as quickly as we can and we'll get the right framework. Who's doing it?
Mr. George, I'll start with you, and Madame Bincoletto, could you respond as well?