Transport committee  The answer is, in short, yes, yes, and yes. It's one of those clever things about NRC. NRCan has a similar sort of model, in some respects. NRC has IRAP, the industrial research assistance program, which helps, as I mentioned, over 8,000 companies a year. That is a funding mech

Transport committee  Those are the NRCan numbers.

Transport committee  No, we don't, not in the direct science and technology. The money that we use drives our own staff. We also lever that against industry funding and other government funding as well. If I'm looking at a strategic direction, that may be 100% internally funded. If I'm looking at som

Transport committee  Picking winners is always a tough one. The casual response is that markets dictate at the end of the day, so we look at the market for a particular technology and try to understand the markets. The difficulty is the long-term market. Where is it going? Even then, sometimes tech

Transport committee  It pre-dates my time, allegedly. I was on a ship in the middle of an ocean somewhere. I didn't even have a video. We try not to pick. I think we try to focus, and that's different. We try to focus resources. Geoff was talking about not being able to do everything. There are lot

Transport committee  Actually, yes, we are. I'll give you an example of looking at integrating a fuel cell into a light rail transit train that would generate electricity that would then feed motors to drive the wheelset. There are similar sorts of areas with fuel cells in airplanes. In some work w

Transport committee  For whatever reason, you always hear about electric vehicles. You hear about fuel cells, because it's all about flavour of the month, but it's been the flavour of the last couple of decades. There will be electric vehicles and there will be fuel-cell vehicles, but the guts of o

Transport committee  The institute's structure has existed for several decades now. As part of the revised strategic direction, which the minister will be talking about, I believe, in the new fiscal year, we are looking at refocusing many of our activities. Surface transportation will remain within w

Transport committee  That's an excellent question. With regard to the role of innovation, as you are aware, there have been numerous attempts to codify how you actually move it forward successfully over the decades. Unfortunately the parameters around which it's done at any one time always move. Th

Transport committee  The short answer is yes, without getting into the numbers exactly. I don't have all the numbers in my head. I can check on them if you like, but yes, the numbers sound reasonable. The differences come about for a couple of different reasons. The main one is the drive cycle that

Transport committee  That was prior to my time at the National Research Council. If my colleague knows....

Transport committee  It would be my pleasure.

Transport committee  That is an excellent question, and yes, 200 years of history show many things. Whether we like it or not, the military and the wars that we go through are strong drivers of innovation. Also, in parallel to that, is the role of different fuels. Coal was the main fuel 200 years a

Transport committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you for inviting me to address the committee today. Joining me is my colleague, Paul Treboutat. As was mentioned earlier, Paul is the director general for our Centre for Surface Transportation Technology. To give that a context, that is what I woul