Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a very easy process, actually. We have two vessels out there. One is called a DOT-111, which is now prohibited from using hydrocarbon transportation, right? Because of the incidents that we've had with rail in transporting hydrocarbons in North America, we now have the DOT-117s, which are a heavier, bigger product, but our DOT-111s that are out there are safe for this product.

Natural Resources committee  A DOT-111 is a railcar that you see on pretty much every rail track that transports crude oil. It's a cylinder vessel that they fill up with oil. They move it from one location to another.

Natural Resources committee  The answer is rail, absolutely.

Natural Resources committee  We can also move it in a shipping container, because that shipping container becomes that new transport vessel as well. We have the ability to take that product, bitumen, put it into a shipping container as a liquid, let it set up as a solid, and move it to the west coast. We've talked to Minister Carr's office.

Natural Resources committee  Correct.

Natural Resources committee  In the end, yes.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I made some allusion to three things that are really difficult processes for a small innovator. One is to get through the door of who might use that product. For instance, I have a challenge of getting through the door of oil sands companies. I have the challenge of getting through their door because they don't understand what I'm talking about, but I usually don't know who's on the other side of the door, so I need somebody who knows who's on the other side of the door to let me through, and that's very difficult, first of all.

Natural Resources committee  I think it's a combination. The biggest inertia is we have innovation and we have change, and they're really the same word for the same thing, but the industry I'm trying to get into, the oil and gas industry, is not receptive to change. Change is frightening to people, and that's in all industries.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Webber. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The process has been used for 130 years. It's a distillation process of hydrocarbon, pure and simple. It was invented by the Rockefellers. We take hydrocarbon and we boil it. We add heat to it and we pull off hydrocarbons, light carbons.

Natural Resources committee  Commercialization is a challenge for us because we're a small entity, a small organization. As alluded to by one of the speakers, small and medium-sized enterprises have been the backbone of our economy. They are the growth, but we face different and unique challenges. For instance, you heard from MEG, which is—

Natural Resources committee  Sure. You heard from MEG, which has the funds to be able to fund these things, and they can utilize and set aside the funds within the SDTCs and the Western Economic Diversifications. Small firms cannot. We can't do that, so we have a different challenge. Our biggest challenge is funding, bar none.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Tan. Yes, with every process there are going to be extra costs. Just to give you a bit of background on myself, I was an accountant in a previous career for 20 years, so I looked at numbers day in and day out. Going into this process, I looked at the numbers, because if it didn't make sense economically, I wasn't going to waste my time or spend my time on it.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Cal Broder. I represent a company I have called BFH Corporation. I struggled with coming here today, not in the sense that it's not an honour to be here but in the sense of what to talk about, because it's such a broad area.