Evidence of meeting #64 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 transfer.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Geist  Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Christine Trauttmansdorff  Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada
Marc Nantel  Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College
Jaipreet Bindra  Manager, Ernst & Young, As an Individual

8:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number 64 of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are starting our study on intellectual property and technology transfer.

We have witnesses with us. We have, as an individual, Michael Geist, Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law, professor of law, University of Ottawa. From Colleges and Institutes Canada, we have Christine Trauttmansdorff, vice-president, government relations and Canadian partnerships. With Niagara College, we have Marc Nantel, associate vice-president, research and innovation. From Ernst & Young, we have Jaipreet Bindra.

Mr. Geist, you have seven minutes.

8:45 a.m.

Dr. Michael Geist Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Thank you very much, and good morning.

As you heard, my name is Michael Geist. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. My areas of specialty include digital policy, intellectual property, and privacy. I have appeared before this committee many times on IP issues and, as always, I appear in a personal capacity representing only my own views.

I'd like to start by welcoming this committee's study on an important aspect of intellectual property. However, I respectfully suggest that the name of the study gets it wrong. I understand the notion that tech transfer has taken hold in some discussions on how Canada can shift innovative research from Canadian campuses to exciting new commercialization opportunities. I'd like to suggest that the real goal is not tech transfer, but knowledge transfer.

Knowledge transfer encompasses a far broader set of policy goals that seek to take the knowledge that emerges from within our labs and classrooms and bring it out to the public, whether for commercialization, better public policies, or a more informed and engaged public. Knowledge transfer certainly includes tech transfer, but it also includes research papers, data trials, educational materials, and highly qualified students and personnel. Simply put, if the target is just IP and tech transfer, we miss out on many of the benefits that come from innovative post-secondary research and run the risk of establishing the wrong incentives within our policy framework.

Further, the potential emphasis on the U.S. Bayh-Dole approach, in my view, is misplaced. As you heard from department officials earlier, there is little evidence that the policies governing who owns IP rights have an overriding impact on the success of tech transfer as measured by volumes of patents and licences.

This should come as little surprise to anyone who has spent time on campuses with academic researchers. The metrics of success in the academic environment, such as publications, grants, tenure, chairs, and successful students, have little correlation with commercialization. Even for those with commercial interests, those are often achieved through consulting arrangements or other mechanisms where the business expertise is by and large left to business people.

I would argue that the emphasis on university-based patenting is misplaced. It can have a corrosive effect on universities, that forgo important publicly funded research in favour of potential licensing or patenting opportunities. With properly funded institutions, there is no need to chase licensing dollars. Instead, cutting-edge research ends up in the hands of businesses that can better leverage it for commercialization opportunities. This should not be viewed as lost revenue for universities or their researchers, but rather as a better return on the public's investment in post-secondary research.

From an IP strategy perspective, I'd like to focus on two broad issues. The first is open access publishing. If the currency of academics is publishing, not patents, then the challenge is how to ensure that the published research ends up as broadly distributed as possible. While it has captured limited attention outside educational circles, the Internet has facilitated the emergence of open access publishing of research, transforming the multi-billion dollar academic publishing industry and making millions of articles freely accessible to a global audience. The move toward open access means that global research is far more accessible to everyone: scientists, researchers, businesses, and the general public.

The three federal research-granting institutions, CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, have adopted open access mandates that require recipients of federal funding to make their published work available under open access. This helps foster greater collaboration between researchers and the business community, with improved access leading to commercialization opportunities that might otherwise be missed.

Further, openly available articles are already being incorporated into teaching materials, thereby replacing conventional textbooks and removing the need for copyright permissions and fees. As for government strategies, open access mandates should only be the beginning. Moving toward open trial data and open book publishing are the next steps in linking significant public funding to enhancing public access to their investment.

From an intellectual property legal barriers perspective, we should start by noting that Canada already meets or exceeds international standards on IP. A key concern, if we're looking to address it, is the abuse of IP rights that may inhibit innovation. The Canadian government could address the issue through an anti-IP abuse law.

There is no shortage of policy possibilities. We can talk about all three areas, but just to give patents as an example, countering patent trolls could include a prohibition against legal demands that are intentionally ambiguous or designed to induce a settlement without considering the merits of the claim. Other reforms could include requiring public disclosure of demand letters, reforming the Competition Act to give the Competition Bureau the power to target anti-competitive activity by patent trolls, and giving courts the power to issue injunctions to stop patent trolls from forum shopping.

There is also a need to address IP barriers that may limit the ability to take research from labs into the commercial world. For example, the federal government this year placed a big bet on becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence, AI, yet restrictive copyright rules may hamper the ability of companies and researchers to ultimately test and bring new AI services to market.

What does copyright have to do with AI? Making machines smart, whether engaging in automated translation, big data analytics, or new search capabilities, is dependent upon the data being fed into the system. Machines learn by scanning, reading, listening, or viewing human-created works. The better the input, the better the output. Copyright law crops up because restrictive rules may limit the datasets that can be used for machine learning purposes, resulting in fewer pictures to scan, videos to watch, or text to analyze.

Given the absence of a clear rule to permit machine learning in Canada, often called a text or data mining exception in copyright law, our legal framework trails behind other countries that have reduced the risks associated with using datasets in AI activities.

There are two ways to overcome the copyright AI barrier.

First, Canada could, and I would argue should, emulate the U.S. fair use model by making the current list of fair dealing purposes illustrative rather than exhaustive. The U.S. exception is open to any purpose, as striking a fair balance depends upon the use of the work, not the purpose of the copying. Since machine learning does not harm the primary purposes of the original work, most text and data mining will qualify as fair use.

Second, other countries have tried to address the issue by creating a specific exception for text and data mining or computer informational analysis. For example, Britain's exception allows copies of works to be made without permission of the copyright owner for the purposes of automated analytical techniques to analyze text and data for patterns, trends, and other information. We don't have a similar provision under Canadian copyright law, and as we seek to move from the lab into commercialization opportunities, that may inhibit the ability to do so.

I look forward to your questions.

8:55 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you very much. That was right on time.

We're going to go to Colleges and Institutes Canada. I know that you have Niagara College with you as well, so we're going to split your 10 minutes. You get five minutes each.

8:55 a.m.

Christine Trauttmansdorff Vice-President, Government Relations and Canadian Partnerships, Colleges and Institutes Canada

Terrific. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am pleased to testify this morning on behalf of our large network of colleges, institutes, cegeps and polytechnics. The members of Colleges and Institutes Canada, CICan, serve 1.5 million learners from 3,000 urban, rural, and remote communities right across Canada.

We very much welcome the committee's study on IP and technology transfer and fully recognize the critical role our institutions can play in fostering and commercializing new innovations.

I'm pleased to be appearing today alongside Dr. Marc Nantel, who is from Niagara College in southern Ontario. I'm going to provide some general information about the policies and practices that are found in colleges and institutes across the country and then leave it to Marc to tell you about how it works in practice.

As all of you know, the research that's carried out in colleges and institutes is virtually all applied and partner-driven research. Companies turn to the expertise, facilities, and equipment that we offer to solve problems, create prototypes, develop products, implement new technology, and improve services and processes. Our members offer over 400 specialized research centres and labs, including 49 college centres for the transfer of technology in Quebec, known as CCTTs, and 30 technology access centres, or TACs, across the country.

Colleges and institutes pride themselves on being able to respond quickly to business needs, which is particularly important for the small and medium-sized enterprises they work with most often. The majority of projects are completed in less than one year, and many are done in less than six months.

According to our most recent survey, more than 6,300 private sector firms utilized the R and D services offered by colleges and institutes last year, of which 85% were SMEs and microenterprises. In 90% of these partnerships, the industry partner reserved exclusive IP and commercialization rights. In cases where the college did retain the IP, it was almost always made available to the partners at no cost.

In regard to technology transfer more generally, colleges and institutes see students as the most effective means of moving the results and know-how associated with applied research to the private sector. Last year, our members were able to engage about 3% of their students in applied research projects, giving them the chance to work directly with a partner and gain hands-on experience in solving a real-world problem, and giving employers access to their skills and experience with the latest equipment and techniques.

This represents a very small portion of the students who would benefit from this kind of opportunity and does not come close to meeting the industry demand. We were therefore pleased to see the government's commitment in the federal budget to creating new work-integrated learning opportunities for post-secondary students through research internships.

Many private sector partners choose to work with colleges and institutes because of the access it gives them to highly skilled students, and because of their industry-friendly IP policies. These IP policies are well aligned with the general principle that commercial exploitation of IP is best achieved by the private sector. We see our role as helping firms develop and exploit IP so they are better prepared to compete in the global marketplace.

Let me give you an example of how this has worked at the CCTT located at the Cégep de Trois-Rivières. The CEGEP hosts the Quebec Metallurgy Center, which specializes in metal processing. They were approached by an entrepreneur from the Gaspé region who saw opportunities in the growing Canadian market for windmill maintenance. The goal was to provide a higher-performing, lower-cost emergency brake pad for the thousands of windmills that now operate in Canada.

With the help of the CCTT, the company reverse-engineered conventional components from Europe and optimized the process for fabricating higher-performing brake pads. The company retained all the rights to exploit the intellectual property. They opened their pilot plant in Gaspé, hired six local people, and started production on a product that performs better than the European alternative at a much lower price point.

I'm going to close with another example that's rather fitting this week as we watch the Stanley Cup finals.

The British Columbia Institute of Technology worked with a Penticton-based entrepreneur to develop a hockey skate that tracks various aspects of a player's stride, timing, coordination, and balance. Within six months, they had a prototype that was leveraged to generate funding for the next phase. They are now getting ready for production, with brand new technology that will have a great impact on ice sports. BCIT's industry-friendly IP policies, along with their equipment, facilities, and expertise, make them an ideal partner for a company at this stage of the commercialization process.

Mr. Chair, in closing, I want to convey our strong commitment to working with this committee, the government, and our partners in universities, industry, and communities to leverage the full potential of our institutions to contribute to Canada's innovation agenda. I look forward to the discussion and am pleased to take questions.

Thanks.

9 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you.

Mr. Nantel.

9 a.m.

Dr. Marc Nantel Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College

Thank you very much.

Hello. My name is Marc Nantel.

I am the associate vice-president of research and innovation at Niagara College. I've been in this position for six years. Before that, I spent 13 years plus at the Ontario Centres of Excellence in dealing with IP and programs and all that. I'm currently the chair of heads of applied research in Ontario, and I sit on the national research advisory committee with CICan, so I think I can represent broadly the applied research professionals in the context of the Canadian colleges system.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today on this issue. I read the briefings you received from the folks at ISED, Mr. Schaan and Ms. McDermott, which focused mostly on university technology transfer. Although I was an adjunct professor at U of T in physics for 10 years and have patents, and I know that side of the equation, today I'm talking mostly about tech transfer and knowledge transfer in the college system.

It's important to understand the difference between colleges and universities here. The research conducted in the colleges is mostly in response to industry needs, and the companies typically contribute to the projects one to one, in cash and in kind. Any time there's a dollar coming down from the government, there is a dollar coming from industry, so they're actually invested in it.

The applied research conducted at colleges is much closer to commercialization. We are not looking for a cure for cancer or for the Higg's boson. We try instead to create prototypes, new products, new processes, new services that businesses can offer their clients.

College faculties are not hired to conduct research, unlike the typical and maybe mythical 40-40-20 model at universities, where 40% is supposed to be professors doing research. They must released from their teaching in order to work on projects. This means that the ideas for the project are typically not from the faculty, they're from the company. We typically at research offices and colleges match the industry problem or aspiration with the best prof and best students to do the job. The pursuit of knowledge is not the main thing here, it's about solving a problem for industry.

These companies sometimes come to us for IP guidance and we do our best to help them. Of course, we don't have much of a technology transfer office. Colleges don't have the benefits of the indirect cost of research, or as it's called now “the research support fund”, which generally supports that type of activity, but we do our best.

A key differentiator between colleges and universities lies in how they handle intellectual property and tech transfer. As my colleague said, mostly the IP generated in colleges is given back to the company. Although universities might have two different models—sometimes inventor-owned, sometimes university-owned, and any mix of these—we have a third way, which is to give it to the industry mostly.

Our projects are closer to commercialization generally, so much of the initiation and motivation for the project comes from the company. The industry partner contributes significantly to the funding of the project in cash and in kind, so they're into it, and we want the commercialization to happen as soon and as painlessly as possible. Colleges usually have a clear economic development mandate in their region and they want that to happen as much as possible. We want industry to create wealth and jobs for our students. Often they hire the student who worked on the project with them, so that's great for us, and the colleges don't want to carry a large IP portfolio generally. We just don't have the money to pay for that and we just want to make sure that it gets out there and generates jobs and wealth.

We try to eliminate as many barriers as possible between us and the commercialization of the product. Our ultimate objective is economic development.

We consider that it's essentially not the job of the college to do the commercialization. It's not the government's job. It's not the university's or the college's job. It's the company's job, and I think that they're the best people to do that. Government and post-secondary institutions can reduce barriers, de-risk, co-fund, serve as the research arm of the company, but in the end I still think that it's the company's job to actually take the IP and commercialize the thing. They are where the rubber hits the road.

One example—I have 457—is a machine shop in Niagara that mostly dealt with automotive and has now actually entered the racking industry for wineries, breweries and other beverage companies. They came to us and said, “we want to explore what we can do”. We did both the commercialization and the market study for them to make sure it was indeed a good idea economically. Then, of course, with our advanced manufacturing research we helped them design, build, prototype, test, do everything including stress tests for the metal in the structure. Now they're selling these across the province and are looking at B.C.

Another example is MADD Virgin Drinks. Mothers Against Drunk Driving have their brand on a bunch of products. They're non-alcoholic. They wanted a good-tasting lager that was non-alcoholic and these people came to us. With our brewery at Niagara College, we designed a beer, from an expert panel telling us what a lager should taste like, to brewing it, to magically making sure there's no alcohol in it—that's where the IP is—to having consumer tests. Now this beer is on the market across Walgreens in the United States, Shoppers Drug Marts in Canada, in thousands of outlets, and generating income and job creation for that company.

The examples are all over there, whether it's gluten-free pasta for Gabriella's Kitchen, red apple cider for Reinhart Foods, which is now available in LCBO—go and buy some—duck sausages for Black Angus Meats in Costco and food services everywhere. There's a HACCP food plant, a food safety plant, for Vij's at Home, the celebrity chef, who can now sell across Canada because we made their food plant safer. They didn't have that until we got there. Ten-tonne aluminum cranes, baseboard humidifiers.... There are a lot of different things, but they're mostly things and services that are ready to commercialize.

I'm asking that you consider the college model as you go through this study. You'll hear a lot about university IP and how universities handle IP. Please consider how we handle IP, too, because I think we have a different way that sometimes, because of how we work, actually works for us. There are both strengths and weaknesses in both types of models.

I thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and I look forward to your questions.

9:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you very much.

I would have thought you would have brought some samples of food with you.

9:05 a.m.

Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College

Dr. Marc Nantel

I don't know if it would have gone through security.

9:05 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Mr. Bindra, for five minutes please.

June 1st, 2017 / 9:05 a.m.

Jaipreet Bindra Manager, Ernst & Young, As an Individual

Good morning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present here.

I come from a different background from the rest of my peers because I've worked in technology consulting for a number of years. In fact, sitting right here is the person who trained me initially. After that, I worked in technology commercialization with one of the largest networks in southern Ontario.

About a decade ago there was a mindset of putting consortiums together for technology commercialization. There was an advantage to those, because they allowed the pooling of resources across some of these universities and colleges that have limited resources, and they facilitated contact between colleges and universities.

The limitation was the lack of compatibility. There were bottlenecks because each of these institutions had 50- or 60-year-old policies that they were trying to change. Industry, especially looking at Ontario where there are primarily small and medium-sized enterprises, doesn't have that kind of bandwidth to wait for the universities and colleges to go ahead with pooling all the agreements.

The second thing is that some of the institutions have inventor-owned and others institution-owned policies. I've worked with both of those, inventor as well as institution. Where it's inventor-owned, they have more of an entrepreneurship mindset, because they go and talk with venture capitalists to see how a framework can be put together to test that initial prototype.

I've travelled across the world, in the U.S. as well as doing commercialization work in India, Southeast Asia, Singapore, and China. In Canada we can have the best technology, but our market is limited. We are great people, but we are only 30 million. Countries like India and Singapore have a lot in common with the Canadian system because the legal systems are based on British common law, so the ease of doing business is really there.

I have some successful examples where Canadian technologies have been commercialized in joint partnerships with companies in China and India. That's a good model to look at, where there are economies of scale due to the size of their population but they don't have that initial IP that's being developed at colleges and universities in Canada.

The other thing is that one needs specific milestones, because the researchers have a mindset of having that fund available, whether it's from the Tri-Council or an industry partner. After that, they fall through in terms of the specific milestones that should be met to get that initial product to market.

I've done several projects with institutions in the U.S. It's interesting because in Canada, researchers mostly get paid for the whole 12 months, whereas in a number of institutions in the U.S., academic researchers are paid for eight months. For four months they are forced to think outside the box and see how they can come up with more ideas. There is closer collaboration with industry over there. That may be another model one can explore here.

It's interesting, because in all the years that I was in technology commercialization, one technology that was developed by a group of mechanical engineers was for curling. There had been no innovation in that industry for over 20 years. Curling is a sport that is very popular across Canada. They came up with a new design for a broom. We worked out the business model, and there are over a million curlers across Canada. Each of these brooms is sold for anywhere between $30 and $35, so it's an annual recurring market of $30 million.

There are a number of these small technologies, especially coming from some of the colleges, but what is required is an incentive for industry. NSERC has a program called Idea to Innovation, but it's significantly underutilized because that program and Tri-Council are two silos that don't talk to each other.

Thank you.

9:10 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you very much. Before we go on, I want to take a moment and thank the witnesses. You were called in on very short notice. We appreciate that you took the time to put together interesting presentations in such a short period of time. Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Sheehan. You have seven minutes.

9:10 a.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Thank you. I'll be sharing my time with Lloyd.

Thank you very much for the presentation. It was very, very informative. No, I did not train Bindra, but I do curl. Before this life, I worked for the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities - Ontario and I worked with the colleges' community development officers, so I know the importance they play.

In Sault Ste. Marie, we have Sault College and Algoma University. We have a number of Ph.D.s. We have a number of research centres related to forestry, invasive species, and the Great Lakes. Per capita, we have some of the most. We have incubators. We have a number of things in place, a sort of microcosm of the country.

I've been talking with the universities and colleges about how we can improve taking the tech transfer to market, and commercializing. Taking Sault Ste. Marie as an example, what are some of the challenges that have been present in the country over the last while? Over the last five or 10 years, have they gotten better or worse? Perhaps also compare our processes to those in the United States. We're a border town, so we're always looking across the river.

I'll start in order of the presentations. Michael first and then everybody else can have a chance.

9:15 a.m.

Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Dr. Michael Geist

I can start by saying that there clearly has been, over the last number of years, an increased emphasis in this area. Certainly, I feel it on my own campus at the University of Ottawa, and we see it through incubators that exist in a number of communities across the country or on individual campuses. I also think that we have recognized over time the need for real investment on the research side, and at times there has been increased focus on where some of those dollars are going, as well as an emphasis on the commercialization piece.

To bring back the cross-border issue that you referenced, I saw that during the last hearing there was some discussion about people often looking.... Bayh-Dole seems to be a model, and we just heard examples in the United States. I hadn't heard of the idea of eight and four, although the idea of not getting paid for four months sends a bit of a shiver down my spine. I also would suggest that it runs counter to the model that many have, at least on university campuses, where much of those eight months is dedicated to teaching and interaction with students, and much of the research takes place over that four-month period. The idea that we should shift away from that model where we have people having the time to do that is a bit concerning.

What we've seen in the United States, especially under Bayh-Dole, is that there are a couple of winners where at times universities have hit the golden ticket: Stanford and Google are always used as a classic example. The reality is that many universities haven't generated significant revenues out of this. We have hits and misses in Canada as well. All of this comes back to the point that I thought was fairly consistent from a number of panellists, that if we are looking solely at commercialization coming out of universities and colleges, we're looking in the wrong place. It's businesses that do this well. This can happen, as you've heard, by transferring this in students; by specific projects; through open access, OA; and through ensuring that we remove some of the IP impediments that I tried to highlight.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON

I'll let Lloyd pick up from here, because I'm sharing my time, then you'll all have a chance to answer.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thanks, Terry.

Thanks for great presentations. They give us a very good foundation for our study, because we are looking at the three levels of tech transfer through universities, colleges, and directly with businesses.

I want to pick up with Mr. Nantel in terms of our cluster strategy, where we're looking at some key sectors where IP will be stronger in some sectors than others, more opportunity in some sectors than others. In the area of precision agriculture, I know, Niagara College is working with the University of Guelph. It's also working with the Vineland research centre. I've seen machines developed in mushroom picking at Vineland, where you're using growing technology, picking technology, and smart machine technology.

Could you comment on how you work with the university and with business, and what role does the college play in that?

9:15 a.m.

Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College

Dr. Marc Nantel

Interestingly, on the mushroom picking one, Vineland needed to have their machine learn how to pick the mushrooms, so we 3-D printed a bunch of mushrooms for them in plastic of different sizes and also different types of suction cups. For example, that's very close to material. We do that type of stuff, but it had to be figured out, simulated, and tested.

There is always a good way to work. People want to work with each other, that's clear, but we each have different ways or different parts of the problem we address. If I work with the University of Guelph on precision agriculture on wheat or corn, the professor at that university will want to look into the genomics of corn and how to make a better strain of corn. The professor will sequence all this, figure it out, and do big data, whereas the chair in precision agriculture at the college, funded by NSERC, will ask how can we make sure the company, the farmer, gets more out of the ground for less money put in—less fertilizer, fewer seeds. Farmers are business operators. If they figured out that they could make more money growing rocks, we'd be in trouble.

Part of what we do is to make sure the company can take the intellectual property and make money and create jobs from it.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Ernst & Young is making a bridge between.... How does business grab the strengths from colleges or universities, and what role can our policy play in helping that along?

9:15 a.m.

Manager, Ernst & Young, As an Individual

Jaipreet Bindra

I am part of the technology incentives group within EY. A number of funding programs are out there, but companies are very unfamiliar with them. They are more involved with product development, so we have strategic discussions with them. We look at whether there is a technology that can fit into what they are developing and help increase their productivity or efficiency. I worked in technology commercialization, and I know a number of people in that field.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you very much.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Dreeshen. You have seven minutes.

9:20 a.m.

Conservative

Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all our witnesses. For full disclosure, I was a math and physics teacher, but I also didn't work with Mr. Bindra. So we'll work our way down the line on that.

In my riding I have Red Deer College and Olds College. They do some amazing work with our local industry and then engage globally. These are critical things that are required, and each of us can tell fantastic stories about the great institutions we have.

There's a discussion on the agriculture side of things. Mr. Nantel, you brought it up, and Lloyd talked about it as well, You described your gluten-free pasta, and so on. We started looking at things that are market driven, not necessarily health driven. As we are aware, only 0.7% of the population has a problem with gluten, and if you can increase it to 3% or 4% for that market share, unfortunately, you're getting 2.3% of the population that isn't getting the benefit from gluten, which is what their body needs.

Not only do you have IT groups, but you also have marketing groups as well that tie into this. I think it's important. The reason I mention that is that we have the same issue on GMOs and so many other things where, exactly as you said, you can design, have the plants that can reduce the amount of chemical that you require, the precision agriculture that is needed, so you are using less energy and fewer pesticides, but that never gets through because other forces continue to speak to that. That was my soapbox. I appreciate that opportunity.

One of the key things we're looking at is how we find ways for the private sector to work with academic institutions. I'm looking at a report that we got from the Association of University Technology Managers. They looked at ideas like ease of contracting, the ownership of arising IP and the confidentiality associated with that. Are these issues that the colleges and universities discuss, and do you have some way of going forward with those types of programs?

9:20 a.m.

Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College

Dr. Marc Nantel

Essentially, whenever a company comes to us we discuss with them their aspirations, their problem for that particular project. We make the scope of the project, but also we make sure that up front they know what their contribution is going to be to the project, in cash and in kind, and also what's going to happen to the intellectual property, from the beginning.

Most of the time—99% of the time—we know that it's going to go straight to the company, that we're not going to own it. The company knows that from the beginning, which also means that they're involving themselves more in the project.

We also don't take every project, because some of them suck.

9:20 a.m.

Some hon. members

Oh, oh!

9:20 a.m.

Associate Vice President, Research and Innovation, Niagara College

Dr. Marc Nantel

We are the stewards of the taxpayers' money through NSERC or provincial funding, so we don't take every project. Some of them are just stupid. We just want to make the good ones, those that will actually have a chance for, in our particular case, good training, good intellectual property, good economic development.

We make sure the company knows. They sign a whole slew of papers, including media releases. The students sign non-disclosure agreements and all this from the beginning, so they know what's going to happen to the IP before the project is even started.

9:20 a.m.

Conservative

Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB

Thank you.

Mr. Geist, I remember now where we have spoken before.

Privacy and open data is a critical part. One thing we look at—and that as an educator I understand—is the need to have material and information that can be readily given to students. I also have many people coming to talk about guaranteeing that their copyright and everything else is going to be assured.

One thing we heard when we were down in the U.S. had to do with patent trolls. You were the one who spoke of that issue and gave us some ideas as to how we can manage it, but I'm not sure everyone understands the significance of it in a Canadian context. Could you perhaps expand on that and give us some sort of insight as to what we should be preparing for, if that is to continue?