Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today.
I'd like to focus my brief time on the automotive sector and manufacturing.
Mr. Knubley, you spoke to both areas in your opening comments. I happen to be a big supporter of the automotive innovation fund, and we've seen some significant success with that fund, specifically in southwestern Ontario. I look at the Ford plant where they have now built a global centre for developing right-hand drive vehicles that are manufactured and shipped overseas. With CETA coming down the pipe fairly soon, we're going to have a great market opportunity for that company, and there are others who have also had successful results with the automotive innovation fund.
I'd like to direct today's discussion more to the supplier innovation program, if you could, and you spoke to that. I wonder if you could talk about the importance of this fund. Clearly when we have manufacturing sectors, there are clusters of suppliers, parts manufacturers, etc., that are around these. They tend to create a type of hub environment around these manufacturing facilities. Would you be good enough to speak to, from your perspective, the objective of the supplier program and the scale of it? What's the timing of this program to bring it on stream?