Evidence of meeting #19 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was additive.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
So it's applied research, product development, and what other things?
Director, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies, Sheridan College, Polytechnics Canada
The other things are commercialization and manufacturing and so on.
If we are getting 2.5% to help the SMEs, imagine that you double it to 5%. It makes a huge impact to us. I'm not against university research, because I came from university research, yet I see that in Germany 90% of the activities in research money go there, but in Canada the R and D of Bombardier is almost 0%.
Liberal
Director, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies, Sheridan College, Polytechnics Canada
No, I mean German research going into Germany. A lot of the money is going to research and also applied research. They look at the spectrum and divide the money there.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Thank you very much.
I want to go back to you, Mr. Toma. You talked about food processing. There were discussions earlier regarding South America and Central America and the fact that we have the same time zone but in many cases opposite seasons. I think that's really a critical part of it. We have a trade agreement with Europe and, again, there's a lot of work that is required there, but certainly we have agricultural expertise that is doing some phenomenal things in South America. I'm wondering if we could take a look at that and talk about some of the things that are happening.
The other thing I would like to talk about, which you mentioned, is interprovincial trade barriers. A study done in the last Parliament in the agriculture committee looked at these trade barriers. Of course, one of them was provincial and federal inspections and the issues associated with them. There's a great amount of detail, and perhaps, since you've brought it up, it may be something that we as a committee want to look at.
To get back to the question, could you talk about the whole process of food processing, as well as our agricultural footprint in South America?
Past Chair, Alberta Chambers of Commerce
That's a good question. It's a huge topic unto itself, but it's instructive to know that Canada is and is going to be one of the five or six top exporters in the world. We will continue to be that. Our strength is in every province, in B.C., Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, etc. It's all there. We produce a lot. That's our strength—production—and we could do a lot more.
The other thing is that there is an organization in Costa Rica. It's IICA, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture. It has 35 country nations. Canada is a member too. They love Canada because Canada has a great model of development and collaboration and so on. They're always looking for our Canadian technologies to use in Latin America. Latin America includes the Caribbean and all the countries in Latin America. The U.S. is part of that organization too.
We could do an awful lot more there, but there are some practical regulation and trade barrier problems in Canada that prevent a lot of scale-up. That's one of the reasons we do a lot of commodity exports versus processing exports. We need to do more in processing. Part of it is that you have to go to a Canadian or North American scale of processing, of plant investment, frankly, and that's a bit of a challenge for us.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
I had an opportunity to be at the Global Business Forum last fall, where Brazil was talking about some of their issues, and of course they were looking at scaling up the dairy industry. Again, I think that on some of the issues they were looking for the expertise that Canada has. I believe that ended up going to an Indian company because it was easier for Brazil to work with them than with us. I think that's probably one of those issues.
There's another point I'd like to talk about. Again, it doesn't get mentioned very often. It's about our food security and our food safety and taking that part of our regulations and exporting that throughout the world. Could you comment on that, please?
Past Chair, Alberta Chambers of Commerce
Yes, and you bring up a great point, because one of the things that I think Canada has to come to grips with is that we're a small nation in the world. We have 2% of the stock market and 2% of the finances and so on. We implement a lot of standards and so on that may or may not be wanted or needed by the importing country. It's that sort of thing. We have to look at that a bit.
When you look at the manufacturing field, you'll find that they take design considerations from the customer backwards. That's how they develop the products. For example, in the beef industry, we have had to parallel the U.S. industry, because that's where we sell a lot of our product. We have to, I think, look at setting up processing plants that can be oriented strictly toward export into Japan, China, and Korea, and we also have to look at foreign direct investment partnerships in which they bring in the investment and the market channel from the other side, and we bring in the production side from our ample capacity in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, etc. We can do it, but we need market access and foreign direct investment to help build that bridge.
Liberal
NDP
Sheri Benson NDP Saskatoon West, SK
I will give each one of you an opportunity to leave us with one last comment. Of everything we've heard today, what do you think is the most important thing coming forward for us?
Before that, I think one of the issues around immigration is that we can't look at immigration just for jobs. For young people, it has to be a path towards citizenship. I think those two things should be ranked together instead of having them isolated. When someone comes to do a degree and a job, they're only here for two years. They really want to become citizens, but the systems don't work well together. We do it in other places. We do it with industry with people who have already qualified, so that is one thing. Thanks for bringing that forward. I've heard that a lot—that it's a path to citizenship—so we can't disconnect those things. Otherwise, people aren't going to stay. It's too hard. It's too difficult, and no one is supporting them.
Mr. Toma, I'll start with you. What's the most important thing you'd like us to take away from this conversation today? It obviously can be focused on Alberta.
Past Chair, Alberta Chambers of Commerce
Sure, and I appreciate the time.
I guess I would come back to how innovation is the kind of fundamental that keeps industries and businesses strong and countries competitive. It's like Michael Porter said back in 1980 or 1990 or so when he reviewed Canada and said that we had to do things differently. I come back to the need to change some of the tools and delivery methods that we're using now.
Practically, remember that not every SME or company has professional staff that can write applications and chase after funds and all that stuff. The system has to be dumbed down so that anybody can use it, and it has to be accessible for the entrepreneurs who are going to invest the dollars.
On the immigration thing, I'll just make a comment. One thing is that we don't do a good job of using the ethnic knowledge that these people bring to the country, such as when people come to Alberta, for example. When an Iranian engineer comes to Alberta, he has to become part of an occupation and has to get qualified. That's a bit of the barrier, and I know that, but they also have a lot of ethnic networks. The Chinese do, the Indians in B.C. do, and so on. That gives us great access to foreign direct investment and so on, but we don't do a good job of helping them. They stay, they don't integrate, and they don't participate well, but they do a great job of innovating, and that's how the country is built, right?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision ADM
Would you like general comments at this point in time?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision ADM
One big area that I think we've overlooked and haven't talked about at all is our health care system and how advanced manufacturing and looking at procurement locally versus across borders can definitely save costs.
We haven't talked about that, but just to give you an example of where additive manufacturing can go, the average cost of an implant system in Manitoba is roughly $2,500 for a total joint replacement. We know that with additive manufacturing, that part actually costs about $100 off the machine, so we have to think about what we're doing locally versus.... We have the capabilities now locally, so how do we expand that network? How do we create that capability?
When I talk about Canada investing $200 million to $300 million, it's a serious number. It's not something that only I created or developed; this is a number that actually came from U.S. partners, partners that were bought by General Electric, actually, when we were looking at developing medical devices for them. They talked to us about it and said that our government needs to invest. In the U.S., they said, they have a hard time collaborating and a hard time networking, but they said that in Canada we have an advantage because we can network together and we work a lot better together among provinces. That was their recommendation to us.
At this point in time, I think it's very important that we look at these numbers seriously in terms of how much we want to invest in advanced manufacturing, and that we look at our health care system and scrutinize how we're actually spending our dollars, because we can spend them better locally.
Director, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies, Sheridan College, Polytechnics Canada
I believe that small and medium-sized companies are at the heart of economic development in any region in Canada. They need help, and one part of the help from the Polytechnics Canada perspective is helping us to help them. That is one of the elements that I suggest.
Manufacturing is changing. It is value-added manufacturing. It is knowledge-based manufacturing. We are missing that part. The product is not the hardware or software anymore. We call these bundled products.
I asked what the value-added of China is to this. It is only $7. That is, China puts in $7. Who cares? Let them assemble that. Use your knowledge base here to produce the apps, the technology, the electronics, and all of that, and let them assemble it, because only $7 is the value-added for a $400 product. Since we are dealing with clean energy and all these things, we don't care about that $7. Concentrate on the $300, on the rest of the money.
