Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Let's see, MP Chambers. We'll let the witnesses stay and we'll see how this goes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Well, I think we should buckle up, because this motion is missing a few things. It's a good thing, I guess, that we have virtual Parliament now, because we usually have some time limits. If this was the old days, we would go late into the night.

We are missing “no presence from the minister” in the motion. I recognize that Mr. Beech indicated the minister would prefer or look to come prior to the 18th, but I think we should have that in the motion, just for good hygiene and measure. This will be the third or fourth motion that includes a request of the minister's presence. Unfortunately, she has not accepted the previous three.

I think we've been pretty clear on this side of the table that this is not a majority Parliament. This is a minority Parliament, and a minority Parliament committee has requested the presence of the minister on multiple occasions, which she has declined.

If you have a majority, that's one thing, but in a minority, when a committee expresses its view and requests the presence of a minister to discuss inflation and discuss what's happening, I think it's incumbent on that minister to not ignore the invitation. It would seem to me that if the minister would like to, as is reported, potentially grow her portfolio, she should welcome the opportunity to come and answer questions from parliamentarians.

I'll leave my suggestions on some amendments to my colleague Mr. Lawrence, but this is 100% a non-starter if we do not reference the minister and request her to attend. I would recommend that it be for at least two hours. Two hours seems reasonable to me given that the Bank of Canada governor has come here at least three or four times and spent 90 minutes with us on three of those occasions, and the Deputy Prime Minister has not yet appeared to talk about inflation.

I will yield the time to my friend Mr. Lawrence or whoever is next on your list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers.

MP Lawrence, you're on next. Then I have MP Morantz and MP Dzerowicz after that.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would repeat the comment of my colleague that maybe we can dismiss the officials, as they have some work to do to cut 3% from their budgets according to the budget put out. Maybe we could give them that extra time to start planning for 2024 and the impending cuts that this Liberal government has put on the public service. That was without the relationship.

Once again, Mr. Chair, I would ask you to dismiss the officials, because we are not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, I think I'm going to hold on to the witnesses. We will see how this discussion goes, but we still have some 20-odd minutes. The witnesses are here. We hope maybe we can get to their questions.

MP Lawrence, the floor is yours.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Okay.

I want to proceed in a way that is professional and that does not waste anyone's time. I would also ask, if we had unanimous consent, to suspend the meeting and allow for some further negotiation. I'm more than willing to sit down in good faith, as I have with the parliamentary secretary, whom I have tremendous respect for.

I just don't see the need.... We can continue, and I'm happy to talk for as long as I need to, but if we suspend, I'm open to having those conversations again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead, PS Beech.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Could I fancy up that ask to suspend? Is there a way to get unanimous consent to continue questioning the witnesses for, say, five minutes while Philip and I have a discussion?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'm okay if that's procedurally allowed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

The clerk says yes. Okay.

Members, I'm looking for consent for that.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We are going to get back to questioning the witnesses.

Mr. MacDonald, you're ceding your time to MP Chatel. Is that what I see?

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Okay. We have MP Chatel for three minutes.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Turcot, I want to follow up on the examples I asked you about earlier. How will the NRC help mainly small and medium-sized businesses with production and innovation? The idea is to improve their competitiveness so they can drive the economy of tomorrow.

[Marcel Turcot]

Thank you for the question. I'm going to answer in English this time.

My name is Marcel Turcot. I am the DG of policy at the National Research Council.

Essentially, the National Research Council holds a series of facilities—126 R and D facilities across the country at 24 locations. We work directly with SMEs and other Canadian companies on collaborative research products and technical services, and they can bring an innovation or a problem if they have one. They come to our facilities and hire our expert teams. Often they hire them with the assistance of another program as well so that the government system is working together to support them.

We help to work out their problem and the technology they're trying to develop, and we help them bring it up to what we call the TRL scale, the technology readiness level. They may come with a problem at mid-stage. They're still developing it, but they're not sure how to commercialize it because they are encountering an innovation problem. We will lean on our innovation team and our facility. “Facility” means, for example, our photonics lab just down on Montreal Road.

Companies that are trying to innovate in a digital space into photonics and quantum space can come to that facility, hire our team, use our facility—which they wouldn't be able to afford themselves—and work out a new product or a new process technology that leads to them having a new innovation that they can then deploy into the market. Essentially we're helping with their competitive advantage so they can compete better in the global marketplace.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

There was a lot of discussion about information technology, because a lot of the funding will be for investing in and modernizing facilities. Can you explain to Canadians what information technology is?

[Marcel Turcot]

The question is about information technology. The Canadian economy, as a global economy, is becoming increasingly digital, so often products that we were manufacturing in the 20th century are now digital in the 21st century. Information technology is essentially the process of creating a digital product, such as your phone, that could be used for digital processing or to move information technology.

In our reinvestment in our facilities, we're prioritizing a lot of digital solutions and digital innovations. For example, there's the photonics example that I was providing, which is photonic-based chips. We also do laser technologies. More importantly to your question, we have a digital technologies research centre specifically focused on, for example, developing capabilities in AI, which is the next-generation technology, as well as capabilities in quantum. As we know, quantum is an important next stage of digital technology. Essentially, information technology allows you to be globally competitive in the digital economic space.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Turcot, and thank you, MP Chatel.

Now we're moving over to the Conservatives and MP Morantz, although I do see PS Beech and MP Lawrence—

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

We're still going.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

They're still working. Okay.

We have MP Morantz, please, for five minutes.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the officials for being here today.

For those watching, it might be difficult to see, but when I walked into the meeting room today, I saw all these people here and I thought, wow, there's such interest in what we're doing here today. However, then I found out that there were about 50 public servants here in the room, so it burst my bubble.

I wanted to ask about division 12 and amending the Service Fees Act. Is there someone here who can respond to those questions?

Thank you, Ms. Thomas. What does this—

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I'm just being prudent, because I know we said five minutes, and I'm guessing we're tipping up to that on our UC. We probably just need another five, so perhaps you could keep asking the witnesses—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, PS Beech, we're going to continue with questions until you come back in the room and we hear otherwise.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Thank you.