Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Edmonton West comes from another beautiful part of Alberta. When I was a young kid, I grew up there for a little while.
He is absolutely right. Just recently I moved from the environment and sustainable development committee to the industry, science and technology committee. We were studying intellectual property. My learned friend from Alberta was also on that committee last year. One of the first things I noticed when I was reading through a new report on intellectual property was the fact the Liberal government seems to think that everything can only be written, directed, and driven by highly educated people. I see this quite often. I also saw it in the report that we are trying to write at the environment committee.
There seems to be a strong favouritism towards the major universities. The government does not seem to want to recognize the technical schools such as NAIT and SAIT, and also the Drayton Valley eco mile, where clean air technology is being studied. I have to give credit to my Liberal counterparts on the committee for changing the wording with respect to intellectual property to refer to all post-secondary institutions, rather than universities specifically. I was appalled by that oversight in the past.
As I said earlier, I would sometimes listen to a trapper well before I would listen to a biologist, and I would listen to a farmer who has been on the land for 50 years before I would listen to someone who has just got out of agricultural school and has a wealth of book knowledge but not a lot of experience. I think we need to address all avenues of education: post-secondary, technical, and everything else.