Industry Committee on May 11th, 2010

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

[Dr. Robert Thirsk]

And that would reinvigorate us.

Some of the sleep studies, by the way, are Canadian, from Toronto.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Dr. Thirsk.

Go ahead, Madame Lavallée.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I am not a regular member of this committee--although I feel I am becoming one. As a matter of fact, I am only a substitute here. My regular committee is the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I am here today because I am very interested in the Canadian Space Agency, its headquarters being in my riding of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert. So, my questions will be a bit different.

I also want to apologize somewhat because I know--I am intelligent enough to know-- that you are playing in the highest spheres, if I may use that expression, of space exploration rather than in politics. In Saint-Hubert, we have enormous respect for the greatness, the usefulness and the complexity of your projects. We are really very proud of you. Everyone respects you on the South Shore.

Your head is in space but, of course, your feet are in Saint-Hubert, a region people call the “aéro” region because we have an “aéroport”, which we are very proud of, the École nationale d'aérotechnique, which produces aeronautics technicians, as well as Pratt & Whitney and a whole range of aerospace companies. We are very proud to have the Canadian Space Agency in our region.

That being said, the Agency has nearly no contact with the region. As an MP, I wrote to one of your predecessors--not Marc Garneau--who did not even bother to answer my letter. One day, the industry commissioner of the region, Jacques Spencer, wanted to communicate with the Canadian Space Agency. I invited him to Ottawa and introduced him to Marc Garneau who opened your door to him, Mr. McLean, for which I am very appreciative. Since then, his economic development project is running smoothly. However, you will understand that this is not a proper way to operate.

People of the region are very aware of the aerospace industry. There are all kinds of aerospace projects in the region. There are economic development projects but people would also like to have cultural development projects. We also have organizations promoting aerospace jobs, up to the job of astronaut, to our youth.

People in my riding would certainly scold me if I did not ask you a specific question. I do feel I have to ask you this: what do I have to do, as the MP for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, to improve cooperation between the region and the Canadian Space Agency so that its leaders, or their representatives, educate themselves about what is happening in the region and take the time to tell us what they do? How can we get some cooperation?

[Steve MacLean]

First of all, I have to say that the work done by the region around the Saint-Hubert Airport is quite impressive. I have been in the region for 20 years. I am from Ottawa but I have known the South Shore since 1972.

I do not have any detailed answer for you but I can tell you that being active in the region and promoting ourselves are very important mandates for the Agency. To date, we have put our material in 40,000 classrooms of 25,000 schools across the country. We do try to make ourselves known.

It is sometimes said that space is a magnet for talent and an innovation stimulator. However, we do not have a huge budget for that. I believe that our public relations budget is about $6 million per year, which is not very much compared to NASA which spends $150 million on education. So, it is hard to do.

That being said, we do try to do better. We are proud to be in Saint-Bruno, Saint-Hubert and Saint-Lambert. It is a beautiful region with its mountains. This year, we have decided to organize an exhibition which started two weeks ago. I do not know if you have visited the Agency recently but you would have seen a big tent which will act as a museum.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I did not even know that.

[Steve MacLean]

Yes, it's a kind of museum.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I was not invited, I was not informed, and there was nothing about it in the papers.

[Steve MacLean]

It has not yet opened its doors to the public, that will be in June.

[A voice]

It will be announced this week. It is not yet open.

[Steve MacLean]

It is not yet open but the tent is there.

What I would like to do is to open a museum in the Saint-Hubert region. We would show our work there in the medical field since we do lots of work on the cardiovascular, neurological and immune systems. We do very impressive things in those fields. We have to explain that to everyone. We want everyone to understand that is very important to invest in aerospace. That is what we will do.

The other thing I want to do is to invite you to come and visit us. You will be my special, or spatial, guest.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. McLean, I had to register for a guided tour organized in relation of a conference in Saint-Hyacinthe to be able to visit the Canadian Space Agency. I will be there in August. However, if you want to send me another invitation, I will be very pleased to accept.

I just want you to understand that your neighbours are your allies in all respects. We want to collaborate with you, we want to be in contact with your people in order to do things together. As far as your museum is concerned, I am absolutely in favour of that idea. There are also other projects being talked about and we would like to share them with you.

We do not necessarily need money. It is not a matter of money, only a matter of collaboration. We should definitely talk to develop projects together so that people in the riding become more aware of who you are and vice versa.

I will give you my address so that you can put me down on your list of guests.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mrs. Lavallée and Mr. MacLean.

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the guests for coming today. It's been a really interesting meeting, for sure.

Dr. MacLean, I want to re-address the budget question, just because I do want to get a little bit of clarity, because it seems like it's a little bit confusing, as these processes tend to be. The numbers you're referring to are the base budget, I imagine, so the $110 million that we're talking about from Budget 2009 would be additional--

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

The numbers he has there are the totals. The $300 million is a base, and when it adds up to $358 million.... The $390 million is the reprofiling. Those are part of a stimulus budget and left over from the old project.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Are the $110 million from Budget 2009 and the $397 million over five years from Budget 2010 the project funding that you were talking about, the additional funding?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

Yes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Then there's an ongoing conversation; that's what this is part of, as it relates to maybe what might be in future budgets or not as we move forward.

I think you're making an argument that there are certain things that we might want to consider as we move forward, if I'm hearing you correctly.

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

If you want to do a first-rate job on some of these examples that I gave you--if we're discussing agriculture, if we're discussing ocean science, if we're discussing safety, sovereignty, and security, if we're discussing our possible or potential role in exploration--you are looking at an additional budget of $2 billion over five years. That will put us at the table. That will drive innovation, and the reason is that any plan cannot be a list of projects, because if it's a list of projects, you're just a list of projects.

What you have to do is have a series of programs that, when integrated together, meet a priority. For example, precision farming takes four different satellites, including one that measures precipitation, one that measures soil moisture, and one that measures the life cycle of the crop. Right now, we actually measure how fast wheat grows in the country. We give it to Agriculture Canada every week, and the Canadian Wheat Board uses those data to set the price of wheat. We also give them how fast China's wheat is growing and how fast Russia's wheat is growing. It's a very important economic driver to have those data, but to make the whole plan work, you need to merge data from several different areas, and in order to do that at a first stage, it's an extra $2 billion over five years.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I want to go back to some of the comments you're making around climate change. I thought that was interesting.

It's always a little bit dangerous to go into that topic. It sounded as though what you're really saying is you're talking about the evidence base and the opportunities that exist through our efforts in space to maybe identify holes in the evidence base, in a sense, and to actually impact our decisions based on actual evidence. Maybe you could comment on the evidence base as it relates to climate change.

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

This is a fascinating area, because climate change really is an opportunity. The way I look at this is that the atmosphere is fragile, very fragile. From the pictures that Bob, Frank, and Koichi showed you, it's incredibly thin. Trace element analysis of that incredibly thin atmosphere is pretty important. We know from the ozone hole that if you just change chlorine content a little bit, you will really change how much ozone is out there and you will really change how much light comes to Earth's surface.

The important thing to do is to measure it and to measure it accurately. When China had its Olympics, we put seven optical instruments in the hills around Beijing. The Chinese would shut off a factory, and we would measure what would happen to the air. They would turn that factory on, shut off another one, and we would measure what would happen to the air. What they did was to optimize which factories had to be shut down to give the impression that the air was clean—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

—over Beijing for those two weeks. It's not clean air over Beijing, and you can see that from space.

There will be changes. There will be melting in the north. That is clear. There will be some sea level changes depending on what happens.

The way I look at it is twofold. First, we have to stop putting emissions into the atmosphere, because we don't know what is going to happen to the atmosphere, so we should just minimize that. We need to look for new renewable resources. It's very important to understand how to develop energy without having fossil fuel emissions.

Second, on the other hand, you need to be evidence-based so you can decide where to do your development. Canada will move up into the north over the next 30 years because of climate change. If you're evidence-based so that you understand the climate, the geology, and the infrastructure—and what I mean by infrastructure is what the soil is like—you'll know where to go up there.

My feeling is that if you build it, they will come. It's like building the railroad: it was then that we moved west. Now if we build a space infrastructure so that we have communications, weather, and climate-based evidence about what's going to happen, we'll develop the north much, much faster, and I think that's something that's not only powerful to do but also visionary.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay.

I'm going to go back to the money question. I'm going to jump all over the place here, but I'll finish with this, because it is an interesting argument. Today you're before us, but Canadians, of course, can view this testimony, the evidence, online afterwards and see what you had to say.

You're talking about $2 billion over five years, which I think is the number you mentioned. It's a substantial amount of money. Of course, here in Canada we've been renowned around the world for our handling of this global crisis that we've gone through and the fiscal prudence of the government's handling of this over time.

What argument would you make to a regular Canadian constituent of ours sitting in their living room going over their taxes for why we should take $2 billion of their money, really, and hand it over to the Canadian Space Agency for the things you're talking about?