Industry Committee on Oct. 19th, 2011

[Karna Gupta]

Several issues will need to be addressed. One is managing your credentials. I'll give you one example from an energy point of view. If you have an electric car and I come to your house and plug in my car, who pays for the car? Do you pay or do I pay? Carrying your credentials with you and putting in a receptor somewhere to transfer that data and information will become paramount in mobile transactions at every stage. It requires the underlying technical capabilities, and it also requires products and solutions to be built in that area. We don't have sufficient demand today to incubate that part of the business. But as the network gets built and the surrounding infrastructure, in terms of the regulatory regime and the adoption issues, starts to move, I'm sure all of this will come.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Maybe, Mr. Elliott, I'll tap you for your expertise on some of this.

Say I have my credit card information in here and I lose my phone. The fear is that there's a new app coming out every day, you know, in the BlackBerry app world, created by some great entrepreneur who may take a little piece of that pie. There's a lot of fear out there on the consumer side. If I have my credentials in the phone, and I lose my phone or it's stolen, how do I shut it off all of a sudden?

[Morgan Elliott]

Well, if you're using a BlackBerry, you're safe.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Perrin Beatty]

You should charge him for that.

[Morgan Elliott]

I was just going to say, we'll talk about that afterwards.

Of course, I'm here in my capacity as chair of the innovation committee, but I'm also happy to answer your question.

Yes, security will be paramount in the future. Not to toot RIM's own horn, but we do have an application called Protect Me that's available in the app world, so that if you do lose your BlackBerry, you can remotely wipe your device that has those credentials. Or you can find it via GPS as well, and you can make it flash and ring, too, as you want. Things like that will be very important.

You talk about interchange fees and that. I think there's a lot of opportunity in terms of micropayments, which will definitely bring down the costs for small entrepreneurs and offer some really interesting opportunities taking away from traditional systems.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Elliott, and Mr. Thibeault.

The only thing we can hope for is that you have an app called “Now Come Home Doggie” and it will walk back to you, right?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Now on to Mr. Carmichael for five minutes.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to our witnesses.

I'm hoping, Mr. Elliott, before you go today we're going to have a short tutorial to help us through the use of our BlackBerries.

I'd like to turn to the human side of this. Mr. Gupta specifically referred to the talent pool as a major hurdle in technology today. I come from an SME background, so I've experienced the frustration with a pipeline of qualified potential employees who could come in and help me get to the goal line....

As I listened to both you, and specifically the chambers of commerce, I was thinking about the small business internship program for post-secondary students that Industry Canada talked to us about. We've had good input from universities and colleges over the past few days and some very exciting revelations about the work that's being done.

With regard to the internship program--and I would like to start with Mr. Gupta, then Mr. Beatty and Mr. Elliott--is that program working and worth our while putting money into? That's number one.

When you talk about where we're lagging behind these other countries, such as Australia, I know a lot of it is relevant to infrastructure, etc., but how about the talent side of it? Are they doing anything that we should be looking at as we try to learn how to do this better and to close the gap?

Mr. Gupta, if I could start with you. And then, Mr. Beatty, it's over to you.

[Karna Gupta]

Thank you.

I think the internship or co-op program in universities is critical. It should almost be doled out with all of the science programs in every university and every college. It should be part of the curriculum going forward, because nowadays as the kids come....

I'll give you my personal experience. For 30 years I've been running businesses, and I tell my son, “When you graduate and I have to hire somebody, there is a chance that I may not hire you because I will hire the best person and that person might be sitting in Seoul or Hong Kong”.

So they need to have hands-on working experience as they go through their schooling, which is absolutely critical in today's world, as well as multi-disciplinary teaching. Kids come out with a single-threaded education. It is no good to a business. They need to understand the business side of the education as well. How do you take a product to the market? What does developing a product mean? How do you launch a product? These are critical skills that need to be weaved even into technical training. Without that, the individual coming out is not quite complete and the businesses often tend to go where they can get that knowledge. So the training piece not only needs to be a compulsory part of the program but also needs to be expanded into the other dimension of multi-disciplinary training. It is critical for business today to survive.

[Perrin Beatty]

Ian can probably talk with regard to the Industry Canada program. He's there where the rubber meets the road and it's his members who are the SMEs looking for staff.

What I can say to you, though, is that Canada has a skills problem that is well on its way to becoming a skills crisis. It doesn't matter where I go in the country, what I'm hearing from employers is that their inability to get their hands on the skills they need is increasingly creating a serious impediment to their ability to grow their business, or even to maintain their position. Anything that helps to increase the skills base, anything that helps to ensure that young Canadians get those first-time jobs, and get experience in the workplace, and develop good work habits, and have a better understanding of how the workplace works is all to the good. We are in intense global competition today, and skills are really the capital that is going to be absolutely critical to our success.

Ian, did you want to comment on the program itself?

[Ian McLean]

Yes. We have Wilfred Laurier University, one the best business schools in the country; and the University of Waterloo, in technology. And this type of program gets well used. It provides great international experience, as has been talked about in a lot of cases, in being able to understand the global marketplace. But it also serve as a great resource for the small and medium size businesses that can access it. I guess the real challenge is that it would be great if there were more companies that had access to it.

So I think it's a program that is well utilized—certainly in our neck of the woods—because we are fortunate to have two universities and a community college. It serves both small business and the growth of future business leaders or talent in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

You have about 15 seconds, Mr. Carmichael.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you very much. My time is now over.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Members, we'll go on to Madame LeBlanc right now.

I'm going to verify whether those are the bells. If they are, we'll adjourn right away, but we might as well go to Madame LeBlanc while we're confirming that.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Thank you very much for your very valuable presentations.

After a few meetings like this, I realize that there seem to be gaps. Just now, we talked about gaps in being able to find employees in information technology.

There seem to be gaps between...

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Madame LeBlanc, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but our Standing Orders specify that when the bells ring, we need to adjourn. The bells are ringing and we need to return to the House for a vote.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

I understand. That's twice I've done it, but at least now you know that I'll do it to anybody.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

The meeting is adjourned.