Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2006

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

The second part of my question is whether you see any current policy, because ultimately as politicians that's what we're going to effect, the government side of policy on this. Do you have any recommendations on streamlining or what we could do to access this? Technology can sometimes be a communications problem, but it can be other problems too. Do you have any comments on that?

[Dr. Michael Raymont]

I'll put it this way. I had the opportunity to work with our embassies when I was at the National Research Council--to work in a number of our posts--and they do a terrific job. But I think their capability is stretched when it comes to really understanding technology and what technology may be available. And the linkage between that and the private sector is weak. You need perhaps some clearinghouse to be able to work those two sides of it.

We certainly need to be able to facilitate technology cooperation between Canada and the United States, but also Canada and a number of other countries. I think we're a little constipated in Ottawa in the bureaucracy maybe, or generally in Ottawa, in moving forward with some of those agreements. One that I was initially part of in Mr. Martin's day was in trying to sign a science and technology agreement between China and Canada, which has been signed by 60 other countries. Mr. Martin and Hu Jintao agreed that they would like this. My understanding is it's still not delivered. China delivers it very quickly. So we have to speed up our interactions. We have to streamline.

If there is a record being taken, I'll put it on the record, but I want to say strictly in advance that this is third-hand that I was given this information: I'm also told that Canada could have been part of APP, which I think is an interesting initiative, the Asia-Pacific partnership on clean development and climate, with China, India, Korea, the U.S., Australia, and Japan. Japan was only added in later because it was a Kyoto signatory, and Canada was considered as an alternative to Japan and so was Germany. Germany was ruled out for some reason. Canada was ruled out--as I say, I'm told this only third-hand--on the grounds that it would take us three years to make a decision and we would have 57 picky changes to make. Japan signed the APP only six weeks after being officially approached.

We've got to get with it in getting to be part of the global science and technology community on a faster basis. So anything that would streamline that would help, especially when there aren't commitments to resources. Very often these things are joint. I'd go to the Ministry of Science and Technology in China and say, “You put up $1 million, we'll put up $1 million”, and we both want to use it for this purpose. We've got their brains; we've got half their money, half their brains, and what are we giving up? We're advancing more quickly. So I think international cooperation is something we're missing out on in that regard.

In terms of labour and other such things outside the technology area, I'm not very qualified to say.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Okay.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I want to quickly go over something on the innovation and the government's role in the economy. Thank you very much for this presentation. We'll wrap it up quickly.

When you talk about the best practice R and D ratio being three to one, private to public sector, and then I try to bring that back to government's role in the future, and I look at saying, okay, if we give the business regulatory certainty, then I wonder how long is their timeframe for decision-making if we give them regulatory certainty. But when you look at the track record, as is pointed out here, that R and D traditionally hasn't been very high and we're going to have an investment of $125 billion out to 2015, even given that regulatory environment, what's my confidence that business is going to move on the R and D to make this sustainable?

[Dr. Michael Raymont]

I can't tell you. I don't represent industry. I think you have to go and consult with industry: Perrin Beatty's organization, people like that; or in particular, CAPP and the coal guys; the EDG; some of the people who are specifically--and I use this word in a totally non-pejorative sense--lobby groups for the industry and can speak more directly for industry than I can.

But I do believe in free enterprise, and I believe if you provide the right environment they will move relatively quickly to do so; they will move quickly to take advantage of that. I think the big issue is that we can't expect the private sector to ramp up its R and D to get to that three to one in five years--in ten years, probably. What we could do, and I really would like to suggest this for consideration, is have more of the government-funded R and D programs have more private sector pull and governance. Because frankly, I'm not going to name names, but I'm aware of many government labs that industry says are like another university. They get money and they work on what they want to work on. Yes, sometimes it has some relevance to an industry problem, but in other cases it has very little relevance, and they publish papers in journals and they get promoted on the basis of that.

It's purely a personal opinion, but that's not my view of what government should be delivering there. You should be risk sharing with the private sector. One way you could do that and increase the R and D is that while the money itself initially wouldn't come from the private sector, it at least would have the appearance of being private sector money because it would be private sector governed, and the focus of attention and the focus of spending would be on private sector problems and issues.

So that would be a transition method to start that going. If you then found that the government was cost sharing, I think there are ways--and again, it's for those in the finance department who are more expert than I in policy--that the private sector could be required to step up to more R and D, and would step up to more R and D if there was the kind of environment where instead of the moneys being here and here, they saw it more as “Let's put them in a pot in the middle.”

But at the moment, you have government spending and you have private sector spending, and there's not enough of it in the middle.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

With that, I will again thank you, Dr. Raymont, for your appearance today. I thought it was a very useful session, and I appreciate your attendance.

[Dr. Michael Raymont]

Thank you again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

With no further business, I declare the meeting adjourned.