You've raised a number of points here.
I don't know where all the counterfeit items are. I can tell you that I have a fairly substantial amount of them in my office; they're on the marketplace.
Why should we have stronger protection? Let's talk about other jurisdictions. For those of you who have been to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, there are actually signs in Charles de Gaulle saying that if you come in with a counterfeit handbag--never mind for importation or resale, for personal use--the customs officers are authorized to seize it.
I am not of the view that the problem is just as bad in other countries. First of all, one has to look at each country on its own. There are countries that have more population. There are countries that have a bigger marketplace. There are countries in which certain products are more in demand. I think it's very difficult to compare country by country. What I know is that in Canada we have a counterfeiting problem.
You've asked me, why should we be doing something on this? Is it only to get ourselves off the U.S. list? And for those who are not familiar with this, the United States has a list of countries that it considers to be not proactive enough on intellectual property. We are on the list.
My testimony has not mentioned this for the specific reason that I think we need to be strong on anti-counterfeiting not because some other country is telling us to; we need to be strong for our own values. We don't want to live in a society where it's okay to cheat, it's okay to lie, it's okay to sell things that are fake. That's not the way I was raised, and I'm sure that's not the way the majority of the people around this table were raised.
It is your job, as legislators, to make sure that you preserve the integrity of that culture. I don't know how you develop a culture in a country, but that is probably one aspect of it.