Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I share his concern about privacy, both personal privacy in a very general way and particularly, as he expressed it, privacy in this incredible technological age.
The hon. member mentioned miniaturization. The University of Alberta is the national centre for nanotechnology. People are working on their own advances in miniaturization, making things much smaller than they were, also providing our national centre expertise in how we deal with these matters.
In thinking of privacy, we can pass laws against this or that, but in the end we cannot put a bag over our head and in that way protect ourselves from advances in miniaturization and in nanotechnology, which goes on around the world.
In the end the only way we can deal with the privacy aspects of these stunning advances in technology is by having people on top of those advances. The 12 or 13 science foundations, which are the main focus of the motion, are our way of doing that. They are a way of implementing a long term, teaching and research project reaching out over eight or ten years, something that cannot be done within the lifetime of a government. Thereby the country and our citizens can be in a position to protect themselves properly from the dangers of technology, and take advantage of them.
I would urge my colleague to express his support for these foundations and to continue supporting the area of public policy which they represent, which is to keep Canada on the forefront of technology in the 21st century.