International Trade Committee on Nov. 26th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We're going to split the time between our last questioners; you have four minutes each.

Mr. Chisholm, go ahead.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to our guests.

We've been sitting here for a couple of days now, talking with folks about the deal, asking them what impact a deal is going to have on their sector in particular and what they know about it. As my colleague said, it's a technical summary, and we are trying to find out a little more about it and what impacts it has, positive and negative.

You both have raised more questions, frankly, and more potential and possibilities than anything. There are a couple of issues, including the patent stuff and the standardization issue, which is something we need to get some answers to. We tried to get some information from the Manufacturers and Exporters about whether they know what sectors are going to benefit and what sectors aren't, and by how much. Do either one of your institutions plan to do any research on this, so that we, as Atlantic Canadians, know better what the story is here before we're asked to sign on?

[Dr. Martha Crago]

Yes. As I said, one of the four themes of the Centre for European Studies for this next five-year period of funding is on European trade relations. So we have people who are studying it right now. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them, but we have them, and you can certainly access them.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Will they have access to the deal?

[Dr. Martha Crago]

I don't know.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

It would be helpful, right?

[Dr. Martha Crago]

It would be helpful, but they sent me animated emails over the weekend about how happy they are and how eager they are to share any information they have.

[Dr. J. Colin Dodds]

If I could just add something, we know that in this area the largest concentration of business is small and medium-sized enterprises, and certainly in terms of our business development centre and our Sobey School of Business with trade nations and so on, we're there to assist. Frankly, a lot of that work in the past has focused on South America or Asia, but it can easily be transferable to countries in the European Union.

We stand ready to assist any of the small businesses in that kind of work. We have students who can use it as part of their course work. There is a very minimal charge for this kind of work. The students are all supervised.

We're ready, and it's a question of our going out and knocking on doors and firms coming back asking how we can help them, if we have people with particular language skills who could help them in a market, whether it's Germany or wherever it is, because we teach all these languages. If we had all the languages that we teach in the city, with Dalhousie and ourselves, we have it covered.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

We'll now move to our last questioner, Mr. Cannan.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and to our witnesses.

Dr. Crago and Dr. Dodds, thank you for taking time from your faculties. I have the honour of representing constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country, the home of UBC Okanagan and Dr. Deborah Buszard. I had a good conversation with her on Friday. We have about 8,500 students, and the university just continues to grow and bring so much to the community.

I know that your institutions have a great reputation, not only locally but around the world.

Part of budget 2013 is $23 million over the next two years for Canada's international education strategy. Dr. Dodds, you've been working with Minister Fast on that, and I appreciate that.

One of the issues that you talked about, and I know it's a passion with Dr. Buszard at my university and at Okanagan College and throughout Canada, is innovation and commercialization. You talked about the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and we have Mitacs as well, which was in Ottawa last week making some presentations for some recipients of great ideas.

Do you think there are some opportunities for the post-secondary sector to partner with the private sector, and even some European partnerships for innovation and commercialization, for your R and D from your post-secondary campuses?

[Dr. Martha Crago]

Yes. Let me just talk a bit more about this German-Dalhousie program that has these Ph.D. students, because they come and they are funded by a CREATE grant, which is something that NSERC funds. It insists that the graduate students get placed in industry and get placed in foreign country laboratories. In this case, they're going into German laboratories, they're going into German industries, and the Germans are coming into our industries and to our laboratories, both university and government laboratories here in Halifax.

When they had their workshop, they did a “Dragons' Den”, at which they had to present ideas for what they could commercialize from their science. This was such a fascinating and powerful evening as they talked about how they had to work as a partnership, a German and a Canadian student, and present what might come out of their science as a commercializable entity.

So that is an objective of that program. It's all focused around ocean science and technology, and what technology is needed to promote ocean science and make it better.

They had wonderful ideas, and many of the spinoffs that have come from Dalhousie, like the one that invented the tags and receivers, and like Satlantic, are from scientists who need a tool to do their research.

The sooner we start these students, and if we start them together.... This is a brilliant program, where the funding came partly from Germany, partly from Canada, and it was hooked together. They're feeding back and forth, and of course Germany is a very strong nation in terms of commercialization and manufacturing. This should provide a very powerful set of students coming out of this over six years.

Meanwhile, would you send regards to my good friend Deborah?

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

I'd be happy to.

[Dr. J. Colin Dodds]

Can I reciprocate? I know Deborah as well.

The whole area of entrepreneurship is key, not just for this region but for Canada. We have a new program that is attracting students from overseas; it's a master's in entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology. Again, that has an internship component. These are, in many instances, not necessarily 21- or 22-year-olds; these are more mature people. Many of them have already started businesses. Again, I see a great potential.

We have various programs on our campus that are based on pitching ideas—“What's the big idea?”, that kind of thing.

We can do more. I think there are areas where we can cooperate, Dalhousie and Saint Mary's, for example, and if we take Mount Saint Vincent, it has a women in business centre. There are a lot of things that we could actually do together.

This agreement is a broader agreement. It might provide, if you like, the dynamism and the impetus to move forward. A lot of our students, of course, speak both English and French. Again, from a European context, when our students study abroad, a lot of them actually do want to go to Europe.

So I think we can start to marry these things together. If we sat down as institutional leaders in this area of Halifax and Nova Scotia, we could come up with ideas as to how we can actually move this forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That takes you to the end of our session.

With trade deals, usually you think trade; you don't think of our educational institutions and the advantage that is presented. This has been refreshing, in the sense of educating Canadians, and certainly to our trade committee with regard to what you're doing to capitalize on those opportunities.

Congratulations for doing that. We look forward to a great success because of the deal.

Dr. Crago and Dr. Dodds, thank you for testifying. And Dr. Dodds, happy birthday.

[Dr. J. Colin Dodds]

I don't know how you knew that, but it is—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We're from the government.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. J. Colin Dodds]

You know everything.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Yes.

That takes us to the end of the session. Thank you very much.

We are adjourned.