Industry Committee on June 16th, 2016

[Julia Deans]

Don't leave out rural Canada. There are lot of our manufacturers, including people in Prince Rupert, B.C., who are not going to get to some makerspace in Vancouver.

[Victoria Lennox]

That's right.

[Julia Deans]

How do we solve the issues for those people too?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Leaving a few minutes to do a couple of housekeeping items, we have enough time to do three questions of three minutes each.

Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Reach for the top. This is the short—

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I'm cutting you off at three.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

An idea that's been floating through this conversation is the embedded executive program that Communitech and others run. I'm thinking of the manufactures having an embedded technology person working with ThreeFortyNine in Guelph, which is another start-up community. They looked at how they could embed technology people into manufacturing plants. Is that something that any of you have seen? Be real quick on that one—or am I coming out of left field?

[Avvey Peters]

I haven't seen it, but I think it's a great idea. Conversely, people who have global market experience from one industry can bring that to another industry. I think there's a great synergy there.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

[Avvey Peters]

Absolutely.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

It's like a talent library from some of our mentors that we could possibly look at as one of the solutions.

We're talking to entrepreneurs across the table here and people who have run not-for-profit organizations, and this is an entrpreneurial challenge. How do we stitch this together in a way that allows people to be creative, so that we are not creating another level of bureaucracy, but providing them with the support they need and then getting out of the way? How could we continue this type of a conversation? What format would this take?

[Julia Deans]

As to carrying on the conversation, I would point out it's not all government either. It's not a matter of connecting people to government programs, and most of them have no idea that there are any—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Absolutely.

[Julia Deans]

—but working with the people like Startup Canada, like Communitech, and like us, who are coming and talking to them—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

And North Forge.

[Julia Deans]

—in person about what they're experiencing. We all have lots of venues. We'd love for you anytime to come and talk to the young people and hear it first hand.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Do you know of any other North Forges out there? I was blown away when I saw what they were doing in Winnipeg.

[Avvey Peters]

It's important not to over-complicate it. There are great assets and networks that already exist, so take advantage of what's there, the lessons learned, and the mistakes made. There are a bunch of organizations. Invest Ottawa has been doing this for over 20 years. There's a lot of memory that can be leveraged around this kind of ecosystem-building.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

This is a complicated network for us to understand. Some of the partners out there are good at selling themselves and others are just quietly doing a good job. It's for us to find those people, if you can help us. Our report will be looking for that type of information.

[Avvey Peters]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

On that note, we'll hear from Mr. Dreeshen.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Julia, you mentioned not forgetting about manufacturers in rural Canada. Coming from the west, I know there's a lot of involvement with food production and that manufacturers are tying into that. One of the studies we did in the last Parliament was on interprovincial trade. The agriculture committee looked at that. No doubt you heard the “Free the Beer” thing that went through the House just a couple of days ago.

We have to look at all the new ways things are happening, and e-commerce is one of those. I'm wondering if any one of the three of you could speak to the way e-commerce is affecting start-up businesses. We know there's a difference between things that are happening in Canada and things that are happening in U.S. There's competition and there are barriers. Perhaps some of your start-up companies, or the people you've worked with, have seen some of those barriers. What are they doing to mitigate some of the potential damage?

[Julia Deans]

I think we all have a perspective. For us, it's a huge levelling of the playing field. I'm thinking of a young Inuit man who lives in the far reaches of Labrador. He's running a trading business right across North America, thanks to e-commerce. He can do that from this place that takes forever to get to. It's a bit of a leveller for any entrepreneur.

It's also an opportunity for people who are creating a business. One of our first people was Harry Chemko of Elastic Path. He has 350 staff in Vancouver. It's created opportunities, a level playing field and access to suppliers that people would never have been able to talk to before.

[Avvey Peters]

There's a great example in Shopify. Locally, he has created those opportunities for small businesses to be able to take advantage of e-commerce. There again, Shopify is on a growth path, but their strength is talent.