Transport committee  Exactly.

Transport committee  I think the private sector should take care of protecting its own intellectual property, but I think the government can play a role in opening dialogue with other governments for the sharing of best practices and aligning of systems for protection, and certainly with regard to some of the litigation that may emerge from it.

Transport committee  Our core business is to develop the underlying technology and then to partner with other organizations to manufacture and deploy it.

Transport committee  No two partnerships are the same. For example, with Cummins, we have a joint venture. It's 50-50 ownership with a joint board. The management team is all established in Vancouver as an independent company, and yet the manufacturing is done at Cummins plants, and the distribution and supply of those engines is done through the standard Cummins distribution network.

Transport committee  Yes, intellectual property, expertise on how to use and develop it. Typically we'll bring people to the table as well, in terms of management and whatnot, and also market development activities.

Transport committee  In some cases. For example, with our heavy-duty business, the engines that Transport Robert in Quebec and Vedder Transport in British Columbia are operating, the final assembly of those engines is done by our employees at a facility on Annacis Island in Delta. So it's a mix. It all depends on what is most appropriate to the partnership.

Transport committee  Sure. One area we're focused on is we've been able to establish the identical performance profiles of a diesel engine, for example, using natural gas. Now our goal, for example, with our research and development program with groups like General Motors is to go to the next step.

Transport committee  We have a very large patent portfolio. In fact we have one of the strongest patent portfolios around the world in natural gas engine technologies, and we're often cited by our partners and our competitors for the underlying patents we have. We have a very large team in Vancouver that is focused on protecting our intellectual property and establishing and maintaining our patent portfolio.

Transport committee  It certainly drives who we partner with in the United States in terms of manufacturing partnerships. All of our transit bus engines have been delivered through our Cummins Westport joint venture, in which the majority of the engines have been assembled in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Transport committee  Yes, that's correct. Also, importantly, U.S. transit properties have been very aggressive in their switch to alternative fuels. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority operates no diesel buses. They've done over a billion miles on natural gas. They retired their last diesel bus a year ago.

Transport committee  Monsieur Coderre, I would say the principal reason we see more adoption in the U.S., and certainly in larger economies, is the fact that we're naturally more risk averse here in Canada. Our industries are more susceptible, if we make the wrong decisions, to failure, given their relative size.

Transport committee  Other than the fact that we love to live in Canada, and we love Vancouver especially, and our home was the University of British Columbia and we're quite loyal to that. But a lot of our manufacturing is already done in the United States. We sell to U.S. transit agencies. We sell to U.S. government entities and whatnot.

Transport committee  It's a relatively simply process, but it's relatively complicated in that it costs us $200 million to get there. It's an injector that has two nozzles. Importantly, a diesel engine doesn't use a spark plug; it uses compression ignition. It compresses the air and then injects fuel and the fuel auto-ignites.

Transport committee  That's an interesting point you make. Our engines have to meet all the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards that a diesel engine would, or a gasoline engine, for that matter. Whether it's a Ford F-250 or a forklift—we do forklift engines as well—or a locomotive, we have to meet all those minimum emissions criteria, and maximum emissions criteria, for that matter, that are prescribed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and correspondingly adopted by the Canadian government.

Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much to the committee for having me here today. I want to start with a brief description of who Westport Innovations is, for those of you who may not be familiar. From humble beginnings at the University of British Columbia in 1995, the company was spun out of the university through the industry liaison office.