Finance Committee on Oct. 7th, 2014

[Ian London]

Organizations like General Electric, Siemens, the Asea Brown Bover, and the Europeans are looking for alternate sources of supply, as are the Chinese.

Could the Chinese or any company in a free market system want to get acquisitions of those companies, that's possibility. But new innovation, new technologies, are going to be driven off of the availability of materials, and Canada, with European, Japanese, Korean partners, can innovate and leapfrog some of the traditional businesses that have existed to date.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

A number of your recommendations focus on research and development support.

The members of the Canadian Rare Earth Element Network, known as CREEN, include a number of universities, such as the University of Toronto, Université Laval and the University of Saskatchewan. With members like those, what are your specific R and D needs, given that you already have universities that can seek out the relevant funding on their end?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, a very brief response, please.

[Ian London]

That's an interesting one.

This would be member-driven: driven by solutions, not driven by research. The traditional terminology is R and D. What industry needs are practical solutions to bring projects into production. It would be membership-driven. The academic community can support it. The traditional mechanisms are for education purposes and pure research, not industrial development. These universities are interested in getting involved in industrial development and seeking a solution for today. If the research does not give you the right answer, you shut that project down and find a solution. The aim: go into production and then expand the value chain.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

I apologize, but members are limited in their time.

Merci, Monsieur Caron.

Mr. Saxton, please, for your round.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today.

My first questions will be for Polytechnics Canada, so here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Historically it was thought that Canadian youth needed university degrees to succeed in the job market, but polytechnics are proving that this is no longer the case.

Can you share with us what your member institutions are doing to help prepare Canadian youth for the job market and what barriers still exist from encouraging more Canadian youth to go into skilled trades?

[Nobina Robinson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton, for your question.

I'm sure that my time is limited, Mr. Chair, so the main point is that I'm going to pick up on a question that Mr. Keddy asked of our university friends the other day.

We have data to show you on all of our programs, whether they be one-year certificates, our four-year stand-alone bachelor's degrees, the new credentials we have for the general arts and science bachelor's graduate from a university, who needs to come to us to get career-specific certification. I can certainly provide you with the full scope of all of our data points. We also had 41,000 apprentices last year alone, going through our 11 members.

There's a range of options that a large urban, research-intensive, trades-training focused polytechnic can offer the learning population. Many of our institutions are also doing things that I don't usually talk to you about. In their large areas, they're servicing newcomer integration needs as well.

I think the issue is the barriers. That's the part that I will go to. In general, when you're talking on so many issues here, let me keep it at a high level. There is societal bias that we have to break that says that going to university is the only surest way to guarantee income security over the course of one's working career. There is now a corpus of data that shows that is not so. Some of our western Canadian schools would show you graduates with earning powers that far exceed that of a bachelor's graduate.

We need to get this information. That's the barrier, that people don't know. As soon as I tell you, then you'll say, “Yea, but I know someone who's son...and my nephew went...”. The plural of anecdote is not data. We really need the data on our talent supply. When Canadians have it, then they'll be able to make choices. I think that's the next step.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

Can you explain how the apprenticeship loan program that we introduced in Budget 2014 is going to help encourage more young Canadians to go into the skills trade?

[Nobina Robinson]

You're asking me to talk about the past. It's in a state now where the regs are being designed by ESDC. So, with respect, I don't know the nitty-gritty yet. It hasn't been announced to the public.

But I know in regard to what we lobbied and advocated so strongly for, that one of the disincentives to coming back to our schools and to level up...because the way apprenticeship works is that you have to come back, leave your employer, and spend eight to ten weeks in class, 40 hours a week, training.... One of the barriers was the cost of leaving the employer and the cost of training.

When we looked at it, the philosophical case that you can be a student in a university, take a 60% course load and get a Canada student loan that I think is tax free—but I can be corrected on that—and you're an apprentice and you get no help and you've got to pay out of pocket for the training.... That was the change that the Canada apprentice loan aimed at addressing, and I'm so delighted it was put through by Budget 2014. We're waiting now for the regs to go through, because it is causing a bureaucratic crunch: how are we going to actually do this and will they use the loan?

My commitment is to publicize the loan as soon as it is launched.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you very much for that.

My next questions are for Mr. Bagger of TRIUMF. Mr. Bagger, as you know, I recently had the opportunity to tour your very impressive facility at the University of British Columbia. Thank you for making that tour available to me.

Canada has long been considered a leader in medical isotopes. How will your proposal help to keep Canada a leader in this area globally?

[Dr. Jonathan Bagger]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable member.

TRIUMF has a long history of working and developing medical isotopes that stretches back to the founding of the lab some 35 years ago. This new facility, ARIEL, will allow the laboratory to expand that program by developing new medical isotopes that which will enable new types of diagnostic procedures to occur, and therapeutic treatments as well.

One can imagine taking the radioactive isotopes and delivering them to cancer cells where they will kill those cells.

So what the laboratory will be doing is embarking on a new research area with focus on the health of Canadians.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

What commercial value will this proposal add to the Canadian economy?

[Dr. Jonathan Bagger]

There are multiple venues for commercializing the new developments that will occur through this laboratory. We are certainly talking with partners right now, including Nordion, and other companies as well, for ways we can supply the isotopes to them, so that they can then put them into the drug supply.

We are not going to become a drug producer ourselves, but we will be inventing the techniques and developing the tools that these companies can use to sell their products, both in Canada and abroad.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you very much.

My last question is for Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies. Last year our government made a major investment in post-secondary research with the Canada first research excellence fund. How can we ensure that pharmaceutical research succeeds into the future through this framework?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A brief response.

[Mark Fleming]

Certainly.

I think it's critical that the Canadian government continue to put forward programs like the one that you mentioned. Others, such as SR and ED, CIHR, that help to put Canada on the global map as far as attracting research and development investment from our major companies....

It is a competitive environment out there. Each and every day we compete not with the Pfizers, the Mercks, and Glaxos, but with our own operating companies within the J and J world globally.

Canada needs to put its best foot forward through programs like the one you mentioned, like the IP enhancements through CETA, that allow us to better compete for those global R and D dollars. We can then in turn bring to Canada programs like the one I mentioned earlier at the University of Toronto, a neuroscience catalyst, and as well even in your backyard when you think about the Centre of Excellence for HIV and CDRD.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much.

We're asking very good questions, but I encourage members to leave enough time for witness responses as well.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Shame, [Inaudible — Editor].

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Actually I'm going to the one who's the expert at it.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We'll go to Mr. Brison.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Chair, that gratuitous and nasty comment cut into my time. Can we start the clock again, please?