I'm more of a traditional intellectual property lawyer. These IP statutes exist for a reason, and they've been on the books for a long time for a reason. People have debated this. We're not here asking for the passage of intellectual property rights legislation. It's there.
And there are good reasons for the Patent Act and the Trade-marks Act and the Copyright Act: to reward inventive ingenuity, to protect consumer deception. It's all there. All we have to do is just fine-tune it.
It's well established that IP and the information economy are directly linked. You can't have a strong information economy without intellectual property rights. It's almost self-evident. Maybe the Canadian consumer doesn't get it. Maybe the Canadian public doesn't get it. Maybe we're not getting the message out. But these issues have all been addressed long ago in the past.
It's just a question of making these things work. It's fundamental to the future of Canada.