Transport committee  Good morning. There are a number of ways to approach the history of aviation, especially from the point of view of innovation and technology. Very quickly, each period in history can be used to bring about and illustrate certain aspects of it. For example, in the early days of

Transport committee  You have research and education, for example. There are a number of engineering schools in Canada that teach aerospace engineering. You have to help research; therefore, you need to have researchers—NRC, for example. They need equipment in order to conduct this high-tech research

Transport committee  I must say, being a historian, I tend to be a bit more interested in the past than in the future, although we have been asked in our corporation to be a lot more open to that aspect at present and in future. The exhibition we have now on energy looks at new material, so I've lear

Transport committee  There are so many cases. In some cases the right decision.... It's hard. You do the best you can at the time. But one of the main things, in my mind, would be continuity. You come up with issues, you want to help, and consult as broadly as possible with the provinces—and intern

Transport committee  A partial lock would be good. It's the idea of having—being able to change it if need be—some sort of guidelines and having a direction whereby everyone paddles in the same direction. That might be difficult in a federal country, especially with international affairs as well that

Transport committee  Certainly there were efforts. In some cases it was reactive efforts. When the government took over Canadair and de Havilland—in a way they didn't have much of a choice, the companies might have gone under—those were reactive policies, which were very good in that case. It support

Transport committee  But you need to have good products. To support a company or an industry that is sort of paddling and going around in circles, may not be very helpful. In this case the industry was strong, the people were well trained, and the factories were well equipped. They had a product, th

Transport committee  May I add?

Transport committee  There is some biofuel research being done in Canada, because some of the plants that will be used for that will grow here. I completely forget the names of them, but they're mustard-like plants. You sort of take the seeds—Camelina and Brassica, I think—that can be used for that.

Transport committee  If I may, commercial aviation has a relatively small impact at the moment. I think it's around 3% or 4% of the overall global emission. The problem is, if you increase the number of aircraft, then the expectations, hopes, provisions, are that the number of airliners will sort of

Transport committee  It can happen. It's probably not only Canada; that sort of thing can happen in different countries. You might have to remind me about the first aspect of your question. On the second one, the purchase from a European consortium, I'm not all that familiar with all the details,

Transport committee  Okay, that's my mistake. I was not aware of that, but eventually it became partners when it was sold to Bombardier. The idea might have been they wanted to have some sort of control over it.

Transport committee  Historically speaking, I'll give you a foreign example. The airline industry in the interwar years in Europe very often was government-owned, and very often they ordered aircraft that were built in their country. In some cases, they were not necessarily the best aircraft availab

Transport committee  Politics do play a role and you have large players like Bombardier. In the United States it's the same thing. You have “senators from Boeing”, they're called, probably behind their backs. There's a lot of lobbying that takes place. In some cases, some areas of the country will co

Transport committee  I have to say I'm not familiar enough with the file to actually look at it.