Industry Committee on June 3rd, 2008

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

And you've had no difficulties in competing with industry or with academia in terms of attracting the kinds of scientific expertise we need.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Dan McTeague]

The next question is for Dr. Dodds. You have about 30 seconds.

[Dr. Karen Dodds]

Thank you.

As my colleague said, in all our areas you see scientists who are in their jobs for their whole career in the same area. You can see the attractiveness. We recently posted one job at a biologist's classification, a level 3, and in 48 hours we had 500 applications. So the government is an attractive workforce at present. One of our issues is maintaining it. Certainly one of the things I think you could look toward is that increasingly it's hard to say what area of science is going to cause the advancement.

You asked a question about DFO and energy, which might before have been thought of as a Natural Resources Canada issue.

So things are crossing departmental lines, and we need increased flexibility in terms of our ability to respond, both from a financial perspective and a program management perspective, because it's very difficult. We work extensively with Environment Canada, but there's one environmental management stream, one financial stream, a health stream, and more and more we're crossing over in science and technology.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Dan McTeague]

Thank you, Ms. Dodds. Thank you, Ms. Nash.

I will now turn to Mr. Brison.

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

Thank you very much to all of you for being with us this morning.

I have a question focused on commercialization. In many ways our departments represent and have within them the same sort of research capacity that universities have. In fact, it's in an even more practical and applied sense, so there are advantages for the kinds of research you're doing in government departments because you have a particular application in mind.

Recognizing the relationship between universities and industry, particularly venture capital, biotech, cleantech, and all these various emerging industry groups, there wouldn't have been a Silicon Valley without a Stanford University. Across the country we have research facilities operated by government with applied research going on. What should we be doing to increase the linkage with the engagement of and the information sharing with the venture capital communities, for instance? They are identifying the cleantech industry and environmental technologies, and I'm thinking most specifically in terms of emerging areas of interest there. Some of what you're developing right now would be areas where I think it's safe to say private capital would be interested in partnering with government to invest and to help nurture and bring other investors to the fray to develop and commercialize those technologies. It strikes me as being sensible that we would engage them early as opposed to later.

What is being done to accomplish that? I'd really appreciate your views on that individually, as you may each have a perspective on it. Whoever feels compelled to comment....

[Geoff Munro]

Thank you. The example I'd like to give, to respond to the question you asked around what's being done, is trying to get a collaboration in place that gets the industry at the table at the outset of the technology development that is going on.

As I said in my overarching introductory remarks, the example I'd like to table with you is we're moving a laboratory that's doing materials technology from Ottawa to the McMaster University campus in Hamilton, in this particular example. The reason for that is that the lab needed an upgrade anyway. It wasn't as though it was at the leading edge. So we've engaged the manufacturing industry, the steel industry, and the auto industry in the development of the agenda right from the get-go and essentially said, put your money where your mouth is: come to the table with us; work with us; develop the collaboration among university, government, and industry so that the products can be commercialized in the context of those industries.

Not every example has that kind of opportunity to do it new, but building on that kind of a model gives us the opportunity to do exactly as you say.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have about a minute and a half.

I have Mr. Carey.

[John Carey]

Thank you.

As I mentioned earlier, it's slightly different for Environment Canada than for a resource department. We have adopted the philosophy of trying to ensure that the private sector is able to capitalize on the opportunities if they wish. I'm not sure it's necessarily the venture capitalists so much as the entrepreneurs who would take it and go with it. They obviously need the venture capital. It's the entrepreneurial community that needs to be aware of it and make those decisions.

In some cases, we have found that the decision was not to go ahead. For example, as my colleague from DND said, DND has a small clientele. Weather services has an even smaller client base. The actual market may be too small, but it's trying to ensure.... We've tried to do it systematically, but I think we don't necessarily do it well enough. Communication of the opportunities is the crucial thing we seem to not do well enough.

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

Yes, if there could be greater information sharing of what you're actually working on, such that people on the outside could be engaged with it earlier, I think maybe that would be a healthy way to help incubate.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We are out of time, Mr. LaRose. Do you want to say something briefly?

[René LaRose]

In our own experience, and I will reinforce what's just been said, the entrepreneur is the real key, because technology on its own is not that useful. Most of the technology needs to be integrated into something else to see the market. The vertical chain is a very challenging form. In our case, one of our most successful approaches is our technology demonstration program. We allow people to come in and demonstrate some of their elements of technology in a larger context, which gives people the awareness and allows them to connect the entrepreneurs with the larger market.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren, please.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming.

Ms. Gonçalves, I don't know if you have this information, but I'd like to get it. Do you know the breakdown of what is spent in the Great Lakes area? The reason I'm asking this question is because we have a real situation there. What used to be known as drains now have become fish habitat. The minute anybody starts to do anything to a drain or anything, it's like there's radar on these people. They're descended upon and told to stop. I come from southwestern Ontario. This is a serious problem. This is something I really want to know about. I'm concerned that maybe the scientific part of it has gone overboard.

The same problem exists with bridges. Because our area is flat, the number one cost in the municipality is bridges. The cost of bridges has almost doubled as a result of the studies and everything else. That's just a quick note. Maybe that could be investigated, and again, I'd like to know how much money is being spent in that area.

On NRC, Mr. Munro, are there 22 centres? Is that how many you have?

[Geoff Munro]

It depends how you count. If you look at the characteristic of the major centres the government has, we have 18.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Can they be amalgamated somewhat? Do you need 18 or 22 centres? Is there something you're looking at in the future? I don't need a lengthy answer. I'm just asking.

[Geoff Munro]

We are always looking at ways to be more effective and efficient, yes. But we are also distributed across the country, because much of our work is done in the regions on the ground, in association with the industry.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Ms. Dodds, again, this is a tough question for you to answer. How many people work on Canada's food guide?

[Dr. Karen Dodds]

The way Canada's food guide was developed, it actually used two advisory committees that were external to the department. One was a scientifically based advisory panel and one had broad stakeholder input. I believe each panel had probably around 25 people. The staff within Health Canada who have the primary mandate for the food guide are in the office of nutrition policy and promotion. It's a fairly small office. It might have about, again, 20 people.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Do you have a budget? Do you know how much that thing costs to produce?

[Dr. Karen Dodds]

I don't know specifically for the food guide what the budget is. The office of nutrition policy and promotion would have a budget, and there was a budget for translating. It's been translated now into I think about 18 different languages.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Is flax on the food guide? It should be.

[Dr. Karen Dodds]

I would have to check.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Can you find out for me? Can you find out for me how much you spent on that?

As a little footnote, too, as a kid growing up in a big family--we were certainly not a wealthy family--I remember taking that thing home to my mother and thinking “My Lord, I'm going to die of malnutrition.” I remember going to the dentist when I was 16 years old and the dentist calling over his nurses because he'd never seen a 16-year-old without any cavities. Since that time, that has deteriorated somewhat.

My point is, I really wonder about Canada's food guide. I remember the cartoon about the theologian sitting on top of the mountain and the scientist climbing up, and he says, “I've been here all along”. I remember my dad saying, too, that—I'm going to give you some Dutch—Doe maar gewoan, dan doe je gek genoeg, which basically means just be normal and you'll be crazy enough. I'm wondering if we don't simply need to introduce some normality into people's diets.

Finally, on national defence, I'm really surprised, and, believe me, I'm a proponent for national defence. I think we need to spend. I think we've shortchanged.... But I'm really surprised that we spent $350 million in scientific research. Again, I'd really like to maybe see some examples of our world-class defence products. But before you do that, isn't that something that manufacturers do? If you want to get a gun that shoots around a corner, don't you tell the manufacturer this is what you want? Isn't that something, rather than us paying the scientists to do it, the manufacturers would do?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

Mr. LaRose, you have less than a minute.

[René LaRose]

Thank you very much.

I would say that this question is often asked, and it's amazing how often we have to come back with a similar perceived answer: the context--being able to have the context in a department like Defence to make a decision.

You have the threat that is evolving very rapidly, you have the technology that is evolving rapidly, and there is the way the government uses the armed forces when you look at the type of conflict we're engaged in now as compared with the type of conflict of the past. So there is a huge need to understand the context, to be able to translate the context into how technology can really help.

Is $350 million a lot? I invite you to look at our S and T strategy, and I would also like to invite you to visit one of our centres. I think it would be very useful for a committee like this to have a deeper appreciation of the breadth of all that is involved in the ability to conduct operations.

I would also suggest that when you look at the ability of Canada to evolve in the current operation in Afghanistan, it has injected a lot of technology on the go in an operation. Having the capacity to understand the environment and the science has allowed us to save many lives through this conflict. So there are many dimensions to this.

When you look at $350 million, half of which is spent in industry to advance the concept, the ideas, up to the product—because we are not into the insertion of products into the services, the commercial world is doing that—I would say you correctly realize that it's probably reasonable; it's not that big of an investment for a domain like this.