Evidence of meeting #4 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 standard.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
We're moving on. We have two more left.
We are going back to you, Mr. Longfield. You have five minutes.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's very good discussion today, at least for those of us who are interested in standards.
4:20 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I'm looking at a standard in regard to one of my constituents who has a brake pad manufacturing company in Guelph. There's a standard in the States whereby asbestos is still allowed in brake pads. We don't have the same standard in Canada. He is having to compete against the company in the States that still has asbestos in the pads.
Could you describe how we can try to get the government—heh heh, we are the government—to, as an example, enforce a Canadian standard on brake pads? If you need to get back to us, that's fine. We can just skip over it, but I did want to bring it up on behalf of his company.
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
I think that in this case it's a regulatory authority. It is Transport Canada that decides what the appropriate standards are for various parts for vehicles.
You have voluntary standards. They're being incorporated in their regulations. Sometimes, regulatory authorities will draft their own documents and call them “standards”, so it's not always a one-to-one correlation there.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Yes. Mr. Head has something to add to this.
4:25 p.m.
Manager, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
I wanted to add this because I've seen it occur a couple of times. Often the confusion stems from the fact that regulatory departments are creating mandatory regulations, which we're not involved in, but they call them standards. Transport Canada will sometimes have regulations. They call them standards, but they are in fact mandatory requirements.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. Maybe we can follow up off-line on that.
This may be an extension of Mr. Nuttall's question, Mr. Girard. From the summary of the operating budget, your forecast deficit in this coming fiscal year is $1.7 million. Is there a reaction plan to that? What are you planning for this year to avoid deficit, or might we see a general statement coming forward?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Yes. You will see the adjustments made in the next version of our corporate plan. We have an ability at SCC to put money aside in a reserve when we don't spend all of our dollars. There was an accumulated reserve that we wanted to use. It's mostly for multi-year contracts that we carry through. The deficit is linked to investments that we made before, contracts that we signed before, and they will be carried over the next year. Then we'll be able to draw from our reserve until a reasonable balance is achieved.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Would you be replenishing that reserve through increased services? Another statement I've seen in your challenges is that you've had cuts in the last few years, and that because of the reduced funding, you haven't been able to have the type of experts or the quantity of experts. Would that impact on your revenue model as well?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
We'll live with the parliamentary appropriations we have. If the reserves get depleted to a certain level, then I guess we will reduce our expenses.
That's what we're planning to do when we get to this equilibrium in a couple of years from now.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
But does having experts reduce your ability to get cost recovery? Do you get funding from the work that the experts could have otherwise done if they were there?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
I don't understand your question. I'm sorry.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I'm thinking that the Standards Council gets paid for the work that you do through the experts. If you don't have the experts, would you also lose revenue?
4:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Our revenues are associated with our accreditation services. If a company wants to become an accredited certification body, they would apply to us and we would audit them. We do this in two ways. We can use our own staff in order to do the audits, or we can hire external consultants to do it, but that's all cost recovered. We would get our clients to pay for those audits.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
I know we have other business to do so I'd like to thank the witnesses for their interventions.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Gentlemen, thank you very much for attending. It was very informative. You are free to go.
4:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Thank you very much, and thank you for having me.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
We're just going to do a couple of housekeeping items and then we're going into subcommittee. If you're not on the subcommittee, you're free to go.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
The first portion of this meeting is now adjourned. We will be going into a subcommittee meeting.