Government Operations committee  If I could just add one comment, I think it is very instructive to look at some examples. It's very interesting how this program has such a profound impact. I can give you an example. We had a company that had offices in St. John's and Victoria. They had a product that was call

Government Operations committee  I'd just like to add one thing and use real world examples, because I think they're very instructive of how these things take place. Referring to the earlier question about DND, we had a company that brought forward an innovation. It was a company called 2G Robotics. Their innova

Government Operations committee  I can add to that because I used to work in that program. I'm that old. This goes back to the 1980s and the early 1990s. At that time, we did have a UPP, an unsolicited proposals program, with a fund. That was intended in some ways to do some of this thing, but it also focused on

Government Operations committee  But it is solicited in the sense that the government is asking firms to bring it their innovative products.

Government Operations committee  I just want to say that because of the OSME activity, we are working with Industry Canada. We do an awful lot of outreach, as you can imagine, for the OSME program right across Canada. We attend many different events, support businesses, and communicate the advantages of this pro

Government Operations committee  Yes, I can provide a bit more detail. Basically, the work we do is really divided into two broad streams. One is actually the development of standards and maintaining standards, and then the certification activities that take place after. It's an interesting comment you make

Government Operations committee  I can add a little to that. That's a good question. Of course, you're absolutely right. ISO is like the United Nations. It's sort of the global level of standards. It's like a world body. It's in Geneva. It has about 20,000 standards globally. Canada participates in ISO along wi

Government Operations committee  Just one comment on the certification side. As Pablo said, for a number of things that we buy in the Government of Canada, in the bid documents we actually refer to a standard, and people who bid must either attest or in some cases, be certified to...in terms of that product. So

Government Operations committee  I think it's an interesting question. Coming back to the previous comment, certainly the regime of certification is one that's very important. If you see a mark, and you cannot have confidence that the mark actually means something in terms of the product's performance, then, of

Government Operations committee  I have two comments, and one is on the SME side. It comes back to some of the previous questions. In the past, because sometimes there is a challenge in terms of quality and consumer confidence in the marketplace, sometimes one of the solutions that private business looks to is t

Government Operations committee  The reason for that of course is that it's not just about CGSB. It's about CSA, ULC, and all these different entities so that Canadians understand.

Government Operations committee  They do, because of course what they're doing is they want to instill the notion of confidence and quality and the fact that you can rely on the product that they produce, that they certify.

Government Operations committee  You're absolutely right in the sense that where we certify we'll have a mark. It will be ours and it will be very clear. But any certification body in Canada can certify and we can too. We can certify to another organization's standard. We are not limited to certifying to our own

Government Operations committee  It's possible. This is, again, where you have to understand what the relative costs of the product are. But I would say this. There's a lot of misunderstanding so, for example, often you will see a CSA mark on a product. If it's an electrical product it does not certify the qual

Government Operations committee  It would be under $100,000 for sure.