Mr. Speaker, one Quebecker's ingenuity is bringing honour to our entire nation on the international stage. Gilles Brassard, a professor at the University of Montreal, has been given the Turing Award, the world’s highest honour in computer science.
This prize, often compared to the Nobel Prize, is a crowning achievement in a long career dedicated to advancing quantum computing and cryptography, the secure transfer of information. In the words of the Association for Computing Machinery, which awards this honour, Gilles Brassard’s work has “expanded the boundaries of computing and set in motion decades of discovery across disciplines”. This marks the culmination of a career that began in the 1970s for this prodigy, who began his studies at the University of Montreal at the age of 13.
On behalf of the Bloc Québécois, I congratulate Gilles Brassard and thank him for continuing to shine the international spotlight on Quebec intellect. We must also commend his decision not to travel to the United States to receive his award, in protest of the economic war launched by Donald Trump. I thank and congratulate Mr. Brassard.