Industry Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

So there could be a role that our study or the federal government could play in convening some of those conversations?

[Paul Lansbergen]

Probably in the innovation agenda that was mentioned in the budget—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right, that's it.

[Paul Lansbergen]

—and how it is geared to support networks and clusters. There are also geographic clusters: the Bio-Mile in Drayton Valley, Alberta, or the biochemical cluster in Sarnia-Lambton, those types of things.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

If you could feed on that idea, the others I'd encourage as well because we are trying to develop the strategy of clusters, sharing of ideas.

A business in Guelph has been supplying parts into the oil fields. Their business is off by 75%. They're pivoting their business to supply parts to advanced manufacturing in aerospace and trying to get into that supply chain. They've got brand new CNC machines, they've got process. The guy is a process guy. He's an entrepreneur but unfortunately he's not a salesperson as much as he is a process person.

Does your association help with some type of mentorship or bringing people into the supply chain that might be off the mark because of a change in the sectors?

[Iain Christie]

Yes. We certainly encourage a lot of networking and the whole point of the association is that we want the community to get together and talk. We've had a partnership at our annual event to try to get more auto companies that may want to make the pivot to aerospace and have conversations with them about what's required.

There are a lot of barriers to doing it. It's a very particular kind of industry.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Totally.

[Iain Christie]

So it's not for the faint of heart. But, yes, we would be happy to be helping people like that.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's something we'll take off-line.

[Iain Christie]

Yes, absolutely.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I heard you have a sector, but I hadn't heard whether the steel industry has some type of a cluster that might share information and maybe share networks with the universities and colleges.

[Joseph Galimberti]

I mentioned the relationship ArcelorMittal has with McMaster. That's ongoing. The advanced manufacturing chair there and some of our other members maintain scholarship programs. There's a lot of recruitment and training for the workforce out of technical colleges, and that kind of thing.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

But let's say between the steel mills in Manitoba and the steel mills in Quebec or Ontario?

[Joseph Galimberti]

Generally because our members are international, it's more between, for instance, the mill in Hamilton and the mill in ArcelorMittal's other facility in Luxembourg, Tenaris's other facility in Argentina, or EVRAZ's in the United States.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

It's more global.

[Joseph Galimberti]

It's corporate sharing.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's very good.

But there are material opportunities possibly with some of the universities in the development of material.

[Joseph Galimberti]

Yes, absolutely, material in process. And although it's not a university, the National Research Council work that is going on in Sorel-Tracy outside Quebec with Rio Tinto is a great example of that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Masse, you've got two minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to finish with the aerospace industry. The cargo hub that was developed in Windsor is a $20-million investment via the federal government, $2 million from the city, and there is other investment as well. They've had a difficult time attracting additional business and that's where, for example, a lot of the workforce came in from out of town because there weren't the training opportunities or they weren't in the forefront. How much of a struggle is cargo repair and maintenance in Canada versus other jurisdictions, similar to the discussion with Mr. Lobb with regard to the aerospace industry in general?

[Iain Christie]

You have me at a loss because of course we don't represent airlines, so I don't represent anybody who's in the cargo business except KF Aerospace a little. It's not an area that I know much about.

On the maintenance repair and overhaul side, it's the same discussion. The way the whole aerospace industry is going it's all about scale. You have to be big enough for people to take you seriously, and so places that are already big are growing and it's very hard to get started from the ground up to be an MRO facility for large operations.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Right. They basically had one secure contract, and that was probably a difficult thing to build from in terms of where you're at now.

[Iain Christie]

Yes, and as I said, in aerospace these days, there's no such thing as a secure contract. There really isn't.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Fair enough.

I'll just conclude with this though. There's been a remarkable turnaround in the mould-making industry in Windsor for aerospace, and the diversity in the steel and forest...it's amazing. The innovation aspect of our manufacturing base is right here on a revolution that is significant.

[Iain Christie]

It is. It's the only thing that's keeping us in the game.