Mr. Speaker, I respect my hon. colleague's opinion and I share some of the opinions he just put forward.
However there is a contradiction. I recall in my presentation saying that if there was an epiphenomenal moment in Canada where we said goodbye to high tech it was when we said goodbye to the Avro Arrow 35 years or so ago. We were world leaders and we said goodbye to it. Ever since that time we have relied on offshore industries for our high tech aircraft or high tech defence materiel. The nucleus, the germ of it comes from offshore. I agree 100 per cent.
Therefore, if I agree with that and the contention that my hon. colleague brought forward, he must also agree that if we are getting that high tech initiative offshore we cannot also be getting it onshore. We cannot depend on both. The defence industry has been a high tech driver in Canada. Of that there is no question.
We look at the satellites and Canadarm and those kinds of things. They could be considered defence and defence oriented, but those things are not going to come to an end. We are still going to have satellites going up. We should all say a prayer for Anik E2 up there somewhere. God knows what it is doing. However, the whole high tech industry is not going to dry up and go away.
We need the vision of the people who are the shareholders of those companies that were in that business. That is what their job is. The job of the directors of those companies is to anticipate, to see where they should be putting their energies in the future. Perhaps it is in the environment. Perhaps it is in extracting minerals from difficult places.
My point is that it is not the role of government to decide what that initiative should be. It should be the role of industry and the owners of industry. They will do a far better job than we will. When we went through our orientation, no one said all of a
sudden when we passed through these doors that we would become venture capitalists with the ability to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. It did not happen.