Mr. Speaker, the recent announcement in Oslo, Norway that nearly 90 countries had agreed on a treaty that would ban anti-personnel landmines is a tremendous achievement for Canadian diplomacy.
Everyone in the House should be extremely proud of the role played by the Prime Minister, the Canadian delegation in Oslo and especially the Minister of Foreign Affairs who has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. While the landmines treaty to be signed in Ottawa on December 3 is a first step toward a solution, the next phase will be to get these landmines out of the ground.
I am pleased and proud that two companies in my riding of Nepean—Carleton, Computing Devices of Canada and Thomson CSF, are actively engaged in leading edge technology for landmine detection and clearance, technology which will save lives.
With the help of funding from the government, these two companies are working to ensure that Canada remains in the forefront of a solution to this serious international problem.