Government Operations committee  I'll take the example of the bicycle helmets as a good one. For example, CSA runs a certification program. Let's say you're a manufacturer and you decided that suddenly you're in the market and you want to start manufacturing a bicycle helmet, a new innovation, but you want to h

Government Operations committee  No, I think I can answer that, because I was involved in that process. Because of the rise of ISO 9000 at that time, we were getting demands not only from entities in Canada but entities in the United States and Mexico under NAFTA, who were interested in getting access to our ser

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.

Government Operations committee  A bigger enterprise.... There is another side of that because all the work that we do is also reflected in the work that is done by the Standards Council of Canada, and they have an extensive budget for promoting the national standards system and the standards that are developed

Government Operations committee  I think it's a really good comment. Part of the mandate of the Standards Council of Canada is to support education, including working with consumer groups, for example, to educate Canadians. So a part of that budget is dedicated to that. I don't have the figures here.

Government Operations committee  No, that's ours, theirs is much bigger.

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  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  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 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  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