Industry Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[Bernard Courtois]

Yes, I would say the same thing. We went through a similar experience in terms of satellite signals. We need a package. We need the law to give the right protection and we need enforcement to send the right signal. One of the advantages that a law, rightly done, can do is that instead of going after the poor consumer, it can go after the bad guys who are cheating and making money on this, but that requires enforcement. Then, accompanied with education of the public about the right behaviour, those things together will provide the solution.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Ivis, did you want to briefly comment?

[Matthew Ivis]

I assume I wouldn't have two seconds to touch the S and T strategy question.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, just very briefly.

[Matthew Ivis]

One of the most important things that came out of that is the fact that we're focusing on four priority areas where we think we are or can be world leaders. That's important in a global environment where you have to pick your areas of competitive advantage. On some of the questions we've talked about today, such as whether we are aligning some of the necessary infrastructure, whether it be legal, which you just mentioned, or education, in aligning against those priorities that's where the role of government and industry can interplay. We can collaborate and ask how we best align our infrastructure to achieve these goals that I think we all believe are the right ones, to pick out the strategic areas where we can drive the most growth and prosperity moving forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Albrecht.

We'll go to Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I'm going to pick up where Mr. Albrecht took us with respect to S and T. I was very happy to hear some of your remarks.

I'm wondering if any of you here share the view that $167 million funding for the centres for excellence and commercialization research is sufficient; If indeed there is a requirement, above all, that there be substantial private sector funding needed; if in fact it only provides for the same old, who've been in the past, benefactors of this particular strategy, and the eligibility criteria and procedural rules having changed, if you see that as a positive step forward in terms of a strategy on S and T.

I'm of course not trying to be partisan here. I don't want to create that impression. I am, however, interested in your take on the adequacy of the centres of excellence and commercialization research, given its limited funding and the four other deficiencies, as I see them.

[Bernard Courtois]

There are a number of moving pieces with TPC. Others may be downscaled and some things going the right way. The concept is very much the right one. The future has to be based on developing collaboratively between enterprises and where we have the most advanced research skills, in universities, and maybe collaboration across different enterprises, to really seize the opportunity and develop the most advanced solutions. So it is a very welcome step.

Will it suffice? I don't think so. I think we're going to find ourselves, though, going in that direction, I hope, quite a bit more. They don't necessarily have to be big, formal centres of excellence. They have to be areas where we've had a lot of demand in education from within our industry, that people are prepared to sometimes even have big companies have smaller companies coat-tail with them and develop something collaboratively. Governments have a unique role to play in being able to bring the educational institutions and these enterprises get together and collaborate. With centres of excellence sometimes it's a formal title and a formal type of institution. It is the right concept, but we need to do more of those kinds of things. That's the way of the future, to secure our future for a developed economy like ours.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I had an opportunity to speak to some people in the province of Ontario in the Ministry of Research and Innovation who were almost off the record about this, but said that the particular proposal was a disaster. The problem was that it was limited; because of the eligibility criteria changing all the time, it's somewhat of a moving target and there'd be only a handful of people who would continue to qualify. There would be no new entrants and no realistic chance of commercializing R and D being done here in Canada, certainly in smaller institutions or smaller groups.

I appreciate that you represent much larger organizations, so allow me to shift to something that is of grave concern to the committee and I think of grave concern to Canadians in general. In your industries generally, do you have a concern with respect to the implications for the service sector in terms of lawful access questions? There has been some concern that other service sectors seem to be having some difficulty--ISPs pitted against ISPs--on subjects that maybe have delved into areas of law but that nevertheless have an impact on services.

[Bernard Courtois]

Obviously we have the carriers, the ISPs--just about everybody involved in lawful access--within our membership, so we've been following that file very closely.

I will just mention on the centres of excellence, though, that I'm certainly aware of projects that are going to be great if they go ahead. They will start a lot of small enterprises and so on, but I agree with you that it all happened very fast and it had to be done, so there are a lot of great things that will not get to the finish line.

On lawful access, the view of our industry is a balanced one. To the extent that you can do a lot of law enforcement with the old technology, we say there is certainly no reason not to do law enforcement with the new technology, so by all means let's have lawful access legislation that applies to the new technology.

The important element there is that there is no problem today. Collaboration on an ad hoc basis between the authorities and the industry is working very well. The purpose of legislation would be to develop more standards-based approaches, and to make sure everybody is obligated and not simply proceeding on the collaborative basis that takes place today.

It's a burden on our industry, a burden that our industry is prepared to take on, provided it applies to generally commercially available or standards-based equipment that the manufacturers will have and also provided that they continue to get reimbursed for the considerable efforts they make on a seven-day, 24-hour basis to the public authorities. There is actually an opportunity for legislation to clarify a couple of exceptional cases in which there is some friction going on and to resolve that problem.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Courtois, in the less than ten seconds I have left, that point is the most salient in the question of how enforcement agencies in this country are able to afford to apprehend those who are responsible for the dissemination of information that is terribly unlawful.

In other jurisdictions they have simply a question of thou shalt provide. It's a question of cost. In my city of Toronto or in Durham Region, the cost is $1 million per case. When there are tens of thousands of these, it makes it impossible without cooperation, so we're pleased to hear that.

[Bernard Courtois]

Yes, our industry spends a lot of money on providing expert technical advice for that. In many other jurisdictions the government clearly funds that capability, and obviously we will need to do that in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. McTeague and Mr. Courtois.

I know that members would like to continue this discussion, but we do have to go in camera.

I just want to make a few comments to wrap this up. I thought we had an excellent discussion on labour. If you have anything further you'd like to submit to the committee on that, you can.

Also, Mr. Courtois, you mentioned the SR&ED review. I received a copy of your organization's submission, but you may want to send that to all members of the committee; it's a very good submission. If the other two organizations have anything on that, please let us know. It is an issue that is raised in both of the studies we're doing now.

With respect to questions about IP, obviously it was in the throne speech, and there is talk of a bill coming forward, so I just want to highlight that for you.

As for the international trade aspect you raised, Mr. Ivis, if there's anything further you want to submit on that, you can do so.

The last thing I want to point out—and I think you're all going to agree with this—is that you, Mr. Courtois, pointed to the trends in resource extraction, manufacturing, and services in looking at ICT. One of the things that struck this committee when we did our manufacturing tour, and when we've done other sessions, is the way that ICT has transformed manufacturing and resource extraction. We did an auto tour, and if you look at the robotics in Oshawa, in Mr. Carrie's riding, you will see that because of the simulations they do at the GM research centre, they no longer crash as many vehicles as they used to; they actually do this on a computer. It was astounding. When we did the manufacturing tour of the forestry centres, they actually measured with a computer system each and every piece of wood they cut. At the oil sands, every single truck is on GPS at a massive centre. At the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories, every single thing is tracked. Technology is also transforming electronic health records. And this thing here, the BlackBerry, has transformed politics more than anything else in the last twenty years.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

And there is tourism, travel, financial services and banking online. It's amazing the way your sector has transformed everything, right from resource extraction on through. I would just point that out, as the chair. I assume you all agree with that.

I want to thank you for coming forward. If there's anything further you want to submit on any of those topics or anything else, please feel free to submit that.

We are going to take a break and then we'll go in camera.

Members, if you perhaps want to thank the witnesses briefly, we'll then move in camera in a couple of minutes.

Thank you very much for appearing here today.

[Proceedings continue in camera]