Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I call the meeting to order.

It still is the morning. We are here to continue our study on innovation in the energy sector.

You have a point of order, Mr. Gravelle.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

At the last meeting we had the minister appear. I am sure the minister didn't do it on purpose, but I would like to correct the record. I wouldn't want the minister to be accused of doing something on purpose, so I would just like to clear the record.

First, he stated he never had a request for a joint review panel for the massive Ring of Fire development. He said:

I haven't personally received a specific request about that but we're very interested in how we can be helpful to advance development in Ontario's north.

As I said, I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose, but I want to show you this binder full of letters and petitions that went to the ministers. I would like to deposit this as information that the minister did know about a request for a joint review panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay. I really can't speak to that, of course, Mr. Gravelle, but you have noted it. That is fine.

Let's get on with the meeting, then, and with the witnesses. I will now introduce the witnesses for today's meeting.

From the Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow, we have Brent Gilmour, executive director, and Mike Cleland, member, board of directors, and Nexen executive in residence at the Canada West Foundation. That's a long title, but it's good to know where you're coming from. Welcome.

From Devon Canada Corporation, we have Robert Dutton, vice-president, facilities and construction. Welcome to you.

Then, by video conference from Vancouver, British Columbia, from Clean Current Power Systems Inc., we have Christopher Gora, president. Welcome to you, sir, by video conference.

I apologize to all of the witnesses for the delay. It's something that happens around here, especially at this time of the year. Let's get on with the business of the meeting now.

We will get on to the presentations from witnesses in the order that you are listed on the agenda, starting with Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow.

Mr. Gilmour, are you going to start the presentation on that? Go ahead, please, with your presentation. You have up to 10 minutes.

[Brent Gilmour, Executive Director, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow]

Thank you very much. We really appreciate that.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present on what QUEST—Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow—is doing to advance energy and innovation.

My name is Brent Gilmour. I am the executive director. I am joined here today by Mike Cleland, who is a member of the board of directors for QUEST.

We understand there is an immediate need to keep Canada competitive in a global economy in terms of energy costs, ensuring our communities are resilient and adaptable, and minimizing environmental impacts in a meaningful way. In the face of these challenges, integrated community energy solutions offer real value for improving efficiency, capturing lost energy, using all forms of waste as an energy source, and drawing on all types of local alternative energy sources.

QUEST was started by government, industry, academia, and environmental organizations to advance an integrated energy approach versus traditional silo thinking to energy issues in communities. As a national non-profit organization, we're working to make Canada a leader in the design, development, and implementation of integrated community energy solutions. For us, integrated community energy solutions are all about creating smart energy communities by linking energy to land use, buildings, transportation, waste, water, and related infrastructure. We are focused on mobilizing a national network of stakeholders to create and apply integrated community energy solutions. Our focus is on the importance of reducing energy waste, a central approach in the federal government's efforts to advance energy efficiency and innovation.

The solutions provided by ICES are wide-ranging. For some communities, this might mean capturing methane from landfills and using it to generate electricity. For other communities, it might mean taking advantage of solar or geoexchange systems for their space and water heating. The solutions are different for each community. At the end, they are all integrated community energy solutions.

ICES are happening, thanks in part to the continued and directed policy, technical, and innovative support of the federal government. Most recently, ICES was accredited in the report “Moving Forward on Energy Efficiency in Canada”, released at the energy and mines ministers' conference in Charlottetown, P.E.I. It concluded with the importance of ICES to advancing energy efficiency across multiple sectors and to a collaborative approach for energy innovation. This report and other studies by the federal government document the importance of ICES. More importantly, those involved with ICES are growing across Canada quickly, from industries such as manufacturers of solutions, such as GE and Siemens, to utilities doing new models of energy delivery, to academia who are training the next generation of professionals on integrated energy.

My colleague Mike Cleland is going to continue on with some more detailed examples and understandings of ICES.

[Mike Cleland, Member, Board of Directors and Nexen Executive in Residence at the Canada West Foundation, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow]

Thank you, Brent.

Mr. Chairman, for the record, the long title is actually two different parts of my title. I am here as a member of the board of directors of QUEST.

For your reference, we've handed out copies of a deck. Brent has talked about QUEST in the context of communities more broadly. I'm going to talk about energy innovation.

Something that I'm sure is familiar to all of you is that energy is a long game, and so is energy innovation. Energy's built on long-lived infrastructure and involves natural resource development, inescapably. All of those involve investments that last for a long time. We're living today on energy infrastructure that was built 50 years ago. We will be using energy infrastructure 100 years from now that we're building today. In fact, our energy-using communities are even longer-lived.

Energy technology has evolved slowly but surely. A good example is the incremental improvements to internal combustion engines. Notwithstanding predictions to the contrary, internal combustion engines will continue a long way into the future, albeit in high-efficiency, hybrid applications. Other technologies have come up to the line, but have not been as successful. Small changes eventually add up to very big changes in environmental performance. Occasionally, we get surprises. Hydraulic fracturing has completely unhinged our expectations with respect to natural gas and increasingly with oil.

My point here is simply that none of us is very good at predicting the kinds of changes that might be coming along, and that includes government policy-makers. I think that says something about the way you need to approach energy innovation. Above all, we must remember that reliability and cost are critical. Big leaps that ignore those issues will lead to big surprises, and not very pleasant ones. Finally, public acceptance is fundamental. If we don't have the public with us, the best ideas in the world will go nowhere.

QUEST argues that innovation is about getting the institutional and policy environment right, after which the innovation will follow. I'm going to talk about two different things: policy principles that we need to guide the process, and some technical principles based on what we think is the right kind of engineering for energy in our communities.

With respect to the policy principles, a lot of these go into community design, or at least some of them do. I won't talk about all of them, but let me just flag a few.

It starts with price signals. That means avoiding subsidies, and it means thinking seriously about how you price carbon. It means managing risks and being flexible. You need to maintain technology and fuel diversity. You need to emphasize performance and outcomes in policy, as opposed to prescriptive approaches. Finally, policy should be stable, because investors need that stability.

Then there are the technical principles. The basic point here is that if we get the institutional and regulatory and policy environment right, investors are going to follow it, and they're going to follow it in this order. Small changes are what make sense. It starts with reducing your energy use, and it goes on from there. We need to use the grids strategically. Basically, we have the gas grid, the power grid, and increasingly a thermal grid. These need to interact, and they need to interact so as to bring in a whole variety of technologies that will improve the performance of our energy systems.

Integrated community energy systems are part of a long and growing list of innovations from across the country. Brent mentioned at the outset that this is happening, that serious organizations are engaged in this. That includes serious investors and communities putting these kinds of systems in place. We believe these will grow.

In remote northern Canada, we're increasingly starting to work. Here there isn't the big energy prize that there is in urban Canada, but there is a big prize for the people who live in those communities. There is a big opportunity to reduce the costs of sustaining energy systems in those communities, and there are all sorts of ancillary benefits, such as health benefits, that go with that.

I think this needs to be an increasing focus for what we do on energy innovation in Canada. We are, after all, a northern, resource-based country.

Let me wrap up with the last slide. It enumerates several areas of federal policy interest. I won't go through all of them all in detail. They're there and undoubtedly are familiar to you as committee members.

Let me just speak briefly to the first one: federal policy and organizational support. The amounts of money are small, but for an organization such as QUEST, they are absolutely critical. We receive project funding from Natural Resources Canada in the order of $70,000 or $75,000 a year.

We leverage that 10 times with contributions from private sector companies, foundations, and provincial governments. Part of the reason that turns into leverage is the fact that the federal government is taking this seriously, which is a signal to everyone else that this matters. Federal leadership is the critical starting point for this sort of thing.

Mr. Chairman, I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much to both of you for your presentation from QUEST.

We'll go now to Robert Dutton from Devon Canada. He is vice-president for facilities and construction.

Go ahead with your presentation, Mr. Dutton, for up to 10 minutes.

[Robert Dutton, Vice-President, Facilities and Construction, Devon Canada Corporation]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to provide information and perspective on your study on innovation in the energy sector. My name is Rob Dutton. I'm the vice-president, facilities, for Devon Canada Corp. Devon is an upstream oil and gas company with its Canadian headquarters in Calgary and nine field offices in Alberta and British Columbia. Our job is to responsibly explore for and produce oil and natural gas.

I and the 2,000 people who work for Devon in Canada are proud of the work we do. We believe it's possible to be a strong economic contributor to this country and be a leader on innovative land stewardship techniques. The team I lead, the facilities team, is responsible for building the infrastructure of our business. We build roads, install pipelines, and build the plants that process oil and natural gas. Ostensibly, we are in the construction business.

We are also a team of innovators. While in some cases it's about the use of new technology, for the most part it's about looking at old problems in new ways and coming up with collaborative solutions to improve our performance. As you can see, not all innovators are guys in lab coats. Like me, my guys are 20-, 30-, and 40-year veterans of the construction business, and they have a passion for finding better ways to do it.

The focus of my discussion today is an innovative solution we've come up with for the installation of small-bore pipelines. Just to add some context, you may be surprised to learn that there are hundreds of thousands of kilometres of pipelines just within the province of Alberta. On average, 13,000 kilometres a year, give or take, are added to that inventory. Of that, 85% are what we consider to be small-bore pipelines. Those are pipelines that are less than 16 inches.

Most of the pipeline network within that province is gathering oil and gas from wellheads. They aren't transmission lines. About 40% of that installation happens on agricultural land. Traditionally—and by traditionally, I mean in the very near and recent past—when a pipeline is built, the topsoil is segregated from the subsoil. It's stripped along a big stretch that goes down the length of that pipeline. When the pipeline is then lowered back into that ditch, of course the subsoil is put back, and so is that topsoil.

Without compaction, without a number of different elements, that ditch line will subside over time, which doesn't sound like a very big deal, but I know many of you represent areas with agricultural operations—I, myself, come from one—and know what this may mean to farmers. This method can reduce the quality of the topsoil and have a negative impact on crop growth and yield.

Sunken ditches aren't visible until a farmer drives over them, largely because the crop has grown over top. Why is that important? During a growing season, these depressions are passed over hundreds of times, forcing adjustments to speed, spray, and fertilizer rates, so to the individual farmer, there's a long-term impact.

We, of course, as industry, come back and do repairs to those lines, but we felt it was something we wanted to address more fully. For my company, for Devon, it meant some strained relationships and high repair costs to land and equipment, which were not acceptable to us. The innovative pipelining strategies challenge this 40-year-old standard practice I just walked you through. In partnership with Alberta's department of the environment, the landowners, our contractors, and people on my team, we turned that around.

Our focus was threefold. The first was conservation versus reclamation: if you minimize the impact initially, there will be less to reclaim later. Second was to reduce the industry impact of operations on the land. The third was to increase stakeholder participation in decision-making.

This isn't a very technical innovation. It really challenged a long-standing practice of how it was always done.

What we did was minimize the topsoil we moved, minimize the main pipeline trench to reduce the width of it, and reduce the amount of subsoil being moved, but the big one was that once the pipeline was lowered back into the trench, we came back and added the additional step of compacting that earth in and around the pipeline, and on top as well, to constrain that pipeline and to minimize the future impact that we would have going forward.

What did that get us? The stakeholders came together to solve a problem before it was regulated. Through that, a social trust was built between the agricultural community and our industry.

Depending on the project, we have seen very small to very large reduction in surface disturbance. To put that into perspective, Devon Canada will traditionally install between 150 and 200 kilometres of pipeline. In the three quarters of 2012, the amount of topsoil or deforestation that we avoided.... It's usually measured in hectares, and I obviously have to put it into something I can relate to, so it's football fields. Over 150 football fields of disturbance was avoided by using this technique.

We have not had to re-enter land to repair sunken ditches, and landowners expressed satisfaction with early engagement and results. Their farmland can, immediately after our work, return to workable condition.

It can also be done in frozen-ground conditions. Then we asked ourselves, if this could be done in agricultural land, why not forested land? We've done work in northeastern British Columbia and we've had great success in doing that, as well with our SAGD operations north of Cold Lake.

With this innovation, we decided to take it one step further. We've started to employ horizontal drilling techniques that have provided for the opportunity to have no trench at all. There are only intermittent bell holes where we can reach the extent of our drilling to connect to the next line that goes out.

In cooperation with the municipal government of Grande Prairie, which helped to build the centre of excellence in research at Evergreen Park, we have engaged the local community to make sure there's an area where we can test these techniques in real conditions.

It's taken us over five years to get here, and we still have a long way to go. We feel that the more exposure this technique can be given, the better the opportunity for others in the industry to have the opportunity to try it out.

A barrier to innovation is the fear of failure. Certainly that is something that has to be managed and mitigated. Although it sounds very simple and you ask yourself why this hasn't been done previously or in other constituencies, the answer is that there is a higher degree of technical expertise required to pull this off correctly.

On that note, I would extend the invitation to you or any of your colleagues to come and see this work in person. There's nothing like seeing it in person to gauge the true impact.

Thank you for the opportunity to tell our story. I would be pleased to answer any of your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Dutton, from Devon Canada.

We now go by video conference to Vancouver, British Columbia, to Clean Current Power Systems Incorporated and Christopher Gora, the president.

Mr. Gora, please go ahead with your presentation for up to 10 minutes. Thanks again for being with us today.

[Christopher Gora, President, Clean Current Power Systems Inc.]

Thank you for the opportunity to provide input on this question.

By way of a brief introduction to our company, Clean Current is a technology developer of river and tidal turbines that generate renewable electricity through water currents. We have been around since 2001, and I think it is safe to say that we're recognized as one of the pioneers globally.

I'll be giving a perspective on your questions from the standpoint of marine energy because that is where our experience lies. We sent over a document, so I won't repeat every word, but I will follow that general outline and the questions asked of us.

On where the marine renewable energy sector is at the moment, I would characterize it as being at the pre-commercial stage. There have been a number of R and D initiatives. The technology has been under development in a meaningful and material way for about 10 or 15 years, and in various other ways for the last 30 years. At the moment, there are also an increasing number of pre-commercial demonstration projects, consisting mainly of single-unit installations at either a test centre or another control centre where data can be gathered on performance and environmental impact and that sort of thing.

The next stage of the technology development, I would say, is to move from this pre-commercial stage to a commercial stage consisting of multi-unit arrays, either in rivers or in the ocean, in the form of multi-unit power projects.

In which areas is Canada a leader, and in what areas can it improve? It is safe to say that the U.K. is the recognized global leader in marine renewable energy. It created one of the first and the largest marine energy test centres and has demonstrated clear political support for marine energy. This has been demonstrated in things like funding for R and D and market studies and the like; funding for the creation of quasi-governmental, governmental, and non-governmental agencies; financial support for the demonstration of technologies; the introduction of feed-in tariffs and other market-pull mechanisms; and the active delineation of resources and, as of a few years ago, the active licensing of areas that can be exploited for tidal energy production.

That said, Canada is also recognized as one of the leaders. The vast majority of the work in this area is taking place in the U.K., Canada, France, and increasingly in Asian countries like Korea. As I said, Canada is recognized as a leader. It has, of course, an immense amount of potential resources and it has certainly contributed to the development of the industry in various ways. The test centre set up in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, the FORCE centre, is recognized worldwide and is one of the largest grid-connected test centres.

Of course, Canada is also a leader of in-river electricity generation. That is recognized by a number of projects that have taken place across the country, including here in British Columbia and a number of initiatives in Quebec. There are new initiatives popping up in Manitoba.

Although there has been a great deal of effort, there are certainly areas in which Canada can improve. The need for a greater number of funding mechanisms bears repeating, even though it sounds trite. Other areas include a more established feed-in tariff mechanism or other market incentive programs and a greater engagement of the academic community and more applied academic-industry collaborations. That is one of the things that stands out for me—and, by the way, I've just returned from an international tidal energy conference in London last week, where I got a very useful perspective on where the industry is and how things are progressing in the U.K.

In this area, academic and industry and governmental collaborations have struck me as being significant.

There's also a need to focus on how to accelerate the really strategic parts of this industry. There are some key challenges to generating energy, either in rivers or in the tides, and there are some significant obstacles that I think can be overcome if resources are targeted towards them.

I think we also need a better identification of our tidal and river sites. There are initiatives here in Canada that identify potentially useful and resource-rich sites, both in river and in tidal, but a more specific and targeted initiative would be very useful.

Finally, I think there could be improvement in the way that regulators approach this kind of energy development scenario.

As for what the most promising technologies are, I'll speak from the perspective of river and tidal. There's no doubt that there are some significant river innovations. Utilities in Quebec and in British Columbia in particular, but also elsewhere, have been participating in various demonstration projects in order to assess the performance and the viability of these technologies. Nova Scotia is revealing itself as one of the leaders in Canada in the marine energy sector, not only because it hosts the Fundy FORCE installation, but also because of its own feed-in tariff initiatives for both community and larger-scale tidal energy projects.

In building a viable industry, there are two main challenges: reliability of the technology and cost reduction, or cost-competitiveness. The reliability seems obvious, but it bears repeating that we operate in a very hostile environment. Rivers and most certainly oceans present a very difficult environment in which to operate machinery. Not only is it difficult to install machinery, but maintenance is also very difficult. To access machinery and equipment on a regular basis is certainly a challenge. The cost of building prototypes and performing larger-scale tests is high, and it takes a long time to develop a prototype, test it, and bring it to market. This is also very much a challenge for our industry.

At this point, I would most definitely like to add our voice of support for organizations such as Sustainable Development Technology Canada. We have benefited from support that SDTC has provided to us for our pre-commercial demonstrations. Without that support and without the funding we got, which we were also able to leverage with private funds, we would not be in the position we are in today. I would strongly encourage the government to further support SDTC.

What can the Canadian government do? I think number one on my list relates to scientific research and experimental development credits, SR and ED credits. I'm aware that as of January 1, 2014, capital expenditures for SR and ED credits will no longer qualify. I have to underline that this will have a very important impact on small and medium-sized enterprises like our own that are engaged in what is undeniably technology development with a high capital cost. Without the ability to access the kinds of tax credits that we have had in the past, we will be at a real disadvantage. One suggestion is that small and medium-sized enterprises should be exempted from this new rule under the SR and ED credit system.

The other way in which the Canadian government can assist is by developing and implementing a feed-in tariff that would apply to all marine renewable energy projects. We suggest that this type of tariff be applied to the life of the project. That sends a real message of predictability and bankability to the various players that need to be involved in projects.

We also think a one-window regulatory process is an extremely important element. We have recently been through a very rigorous regulatory process in Manitoba, which involved, I would say, over a dozen different departments and permits. It took a very long time and was very resource intensive.

Finally, we need shared infrastructure: I think initiatives like FORCE in Nova Scotia, to which the government has contributed, are really useful, and there should be more.

That brings my remarks to a conclusion, but I would hasten to say that there have certainly been many ways in which the Canadian government has supported renewable energy in the past. My remarks are by no means meant to be a criticism. Hopefully they are delivered as a set of constructive suggestions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Gora, president of Clean Current Power Systems.

We'll now go directly to questions and comments, starting with a seven-minute round. Mr. Anderson, you have up to seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today.

We don't have a lot of time, but Mr. Gora, would you take a couple of minutes to identify what specific technologies you are working on? You mentioned various technologies. Could you quickly give us a summary of what some of those might be? Where do you see the real promise being in the future, in terms of the technologies you're dealing with? Do you see one that stands out for the next five to 10 years? Where do you think your industry is going?

[Christopher Gora]

As I said, we developed turbines for the generation of electricity through water currents, so we currently have two product lines. One is for river currents, so it's a smaller turbine that will sit on the riverbed and generate electricity through the current. The second product line, which is effectively a scaled-up version of our river turbine, would be installed in the ocean to generate electricity from tidal streams.

Our unit looks like a jet engine. It has a set of blades inside a ducted device.

In terms of where I see the shorter term, the five-year to 10-year horizon, I think the most promising applications of our technology, or technology like this, is on the river side. It would be with off-grid or remote-grid communities. These are communities that spend a great deal of money on diesel generation.

A study was recently undertaken to look at the sources of energy generation for these remote communities. A vast majority of them still generate with expensive diesel. I'm told that in Quebec, in the north, diesel generation cost can be as much as $1.40 per kilowatt hour. We see a real opportunity here not only to introduce a renewable energy system, but to introduce one that will save these communities money.

In terms of tidal generation, there are a very few key areas in Canada that have strong tides that do have a real potential to generate electricity. The Bay of Fundy is the most obvious, but it is certainly not the only one.

There is a cost-competitiveness challenge right now. That challenge can certainly be met in the next five to 10 years, but it will take a multisectoral approach from industry, academia, and government.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

You talked a little about commercialization challenges. cost-competitiveness is one of those, and reliability of technology as well.

Mr. Dutton, you'd argue that yours is probably cost-competitive already and on the market.

QUEST, you've been at the committee before. We've had some of these discussions about the cost-competitiveness of integrated systems prior to this as well. Have you been able to deal with some of those challenges over the last few years? We probably spoke four or five years ago. How are you dealing with those challenges of cost-competitiveness?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We'll hear from QUEST first. Go ahead, Mr. Cleland.

[Mike Cleland]

I'll start, and Brent may want to add to this.

One of the key things is doing it incrementally. By that I mean there are examples of projects that have been built, and if you don't overbuild supply beyond what the load will take, you can make it work.

Another one is putting the infrastructure in place that will allow you to bring in renewable sources but also use natural gas. I'm not here to advocate for natural gas; it's just that at current prices, if you're putting in thermal systems, you can run them on natural gas but you can also have them set up so you are able to incorporate solar, geothermal, biomass, or other sources.

If you take it in small bites and demonstrate the technology and its application, you can get at some of the cost issues incrementally. That's one approach, at least.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay. Good.

The natural gas situation has changed since you were here last, I think.

[Mike Cleland]

A little bit.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Dutton, you're comfortable with your....

You're commercialized, so that's not an issue for you folks in terms of cost-competitiveness and so on.

[Robert Dutton]

Not in the same way, no.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

To switch direction, how do you see your innovations and the things you folks are doing influencing either international markets or international technology developments? You talked a little about how you're tied into the international level. I think Mr. Gora probably will have something to say about this a little bit later.

At QUEST do you deal externally as well? We know you're doing a good job internally within the country. I'll let you answer those questions.

[Brent Gilmour]

We recently hosted an international conference, so directly on that point, we had representation from Alaska, from China, and from of course Scandinavia, particularly Sweden.

The point here is that the innovations going on there are reflective of what we're seeing here in the sense that the people focusing on community-scale applications, such as thermal energy systems, as Mike was referring to, are looking to deploy here in terms of business operations and opportunities.

Our focus in Winnipeg was reflective of the Government of Canada's encouragement of international investment. I think we're starting to see that now in integrated community solutions, such as—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

If I can I interrupt you for a second, did you see anything there that would be promising technology for the next decade? Did anything stand out?

[Brent Gilmour]

I think what you're seeing now is a lot more focus on waste-to-energy and how you can apply that. The conversations, particularly for communities, were on landfill; gas capture was another big area, particularly because of the stress that communities are facing where they can't flare anymore, particularly in Ontario, and what innovations can be brought forward so that they can turn that to renewable natural gas. That has been a real point of conversation as well.

That's what we're seeing. I'm not naming companies, but there were companies there—Bizcat, an international company, and Ericsson—all with existing technologies in play throughout Europe, looking to see if they had application here.

If you were to look anywhere here to see what was going on as international opportunity, the city of Edmonton would probably be your first example. You'll see Ericsson and some other big companies trying to install.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

Mr. Dutton, I think I'm probably running out of time fairly quickly, but your technology obviously can be applied internationally. Have you done anything to develop that or to carry that forward?