Mr. Speaker, May 27 was the date of the 1999 Fernand Séguin award ceremony. This award for journalism is presented annually by the Association des communicateurs scientifiques du Québec and the Société Radio-Canada. Its purpose is to encourage and stimulate careers in science writing.
This year the jury's choice was Sophie Payeur, a master's student at the Université de Sherbrooke. She wrote an excellent scientific article about the brain's capacity to adapt. The article explains that blind people have a heightened sense of hearing that enables them to locate with considerable accuracy the origin of sounds.
In addition to a $12,000 grant, she will benefit from a six month internship writing about science, including three months for the broadcast Découvertes .
My congratulations to Ms. Payeur, who has shown that the complexity of scientific endeavour does not in any way mean that it cannot be written about in a manner that any curious reader or listener can understand.