Official Languages Committee on March 8th, 2012

[Jean-Pierre Lavoie]

I have a list of the dates of our meetings in recent years. You asked me whether we had met with them.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes, go ahead; I'm interested in that.

[Jean-Pierre Lavoie]

We met them on April 16, 2010, May 19 and 20, 2010, September 23, 2010, October 6, 2010 and November 19, 2010.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

What did you discuss that each of those meetings?

[Jean-Pierre Lavoie]

There was one meeting on the economic development of the official language minority communities, the day of dialogue that we discussed earlier.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Are you consulting them in order to prepare your plan?

[Jean-Pierre Lavoie]

On a more ongoing basis, the dialogue really focuses on the plan, on the programming and on the strategy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Is my time up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Yes.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I will continue later if I have time.

[Le président, Conservative, Michael Chong]

All right.

Mr. Boughen.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to everyone on the panel for sharing part of your day with us. We appreciate the information you're able to put on the table and also your comments.

I have one question. I was very interested in what Mr. Watson was saying about the partnership between the various parts of Canada at the Olympics. I'm just wondering if that partnership has been able to continue and to develop and encompass more Canadians, because it was indeed very effective, from my point of view anyway, and certainly the whole Olympic movement was done extremely well.

What has happened since? I guess that's the question.

[Daniel Watson]

Thank you very much for the question.

In a moment, I'll turn to my colleague, Mr. Meddings, who will talk a bit about some of the multiplier effects.

One of the things we do at WD in all of our investments is try to actually get much better leverage. In other words, it's not just what we invest, but what we can encourage others to invest in.

I think the question goes much beyond the financial in so many cases, because what is interesting, particularly in western Canada, is the number of people who don't understand as much as sometimes they would like to—or where no one is available to understand—about the value of francophone communities there, and what they can add and do add to the overall economy of western Canada.

If you'll permit it, my colleague Mr. Meddings has some numbers that show some of the multiplication factors. Just to give you a bit of context, our annual budget is roughly $120 million a year for core programming, so that will give a bit of a sense of the scale of some of these multipliers.

[James Meddings, Assistant Deputy Minister, Western Economic Diversification Canada]

Mr. Chairman, with respect to the EDI funding, WD receives $3 million, but we've managed to lever $6.2 million through partnerships on these projects.

With respect to our core programming in the WDP, $5.7 million has been directed towards projects in support of official language communities, but when that is included with the partnerships we have, that number grows to $33 million.

Finally, and just very quickly, in terms of the economic action plan, about $10 million in funding was directed again to official language communities, but with the partnerships that came in with this, that number went to $22.7 million.

Quickly, to add the three together, approximately $19 million in funding through WD levered $62 million in partnership funding in support of those communities.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Boughen.

Mr. Harris.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

Again, thanks to everyone for coming. I apologize, but I will be mostly ignoring the right side of the room. As deputy critic for science and technology for the opposition, I'm going to focus on NRC and ask questions in order to follow up from some of the other ones.

First is something that is partially but not quite related: would the technology being developed be applicable to glyph-based languages? I ask that in the context of first nations languages.

[Charles-Antoine Gauthier]

I believe the answer is yes. The reason I say yes is that we've done work in Inuktitut. I'm guessing that would apply to Cree as well, but I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to commit to saying yes on Cree.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

That's good. And it's good that it could be used for that, because protecting all of our languages is of course important.

Following on that, you spoke earlier about the intellectual property around the technology. At the end of the day, who owns and controls that intellectual property? Is it the NRC, or is it the partner companies that are involved in the project?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

In general, when we develop technologies our intent is to make it available to any Canadian firm that can make use of it. We retain ownership of the technology and we license it on a case-by-case basis to other firms.

In other instances—and this is more of a general comment on intellectual property—where we've shared the risk and the cost of doing the R and D, we would actually be more open to other ways to deal with the IP.

It's rare that we would assign the IP or transfer the IP to another firm, but we would in some cases give an exclusive licence for work in a specific area. That still reserves the opportunity for NRC to create benefits for Canada by licensing the technology in other areas outside of the core business of our original partner.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I definitely think keeping control of the IP is critical for the future, especially as governments seek new sources of revenue to ensure we fund programs like official languages.

Of course, there is the $10 million that's gone into this project in the last several years, and until the end of the road map.

I'm also looking at the main estimates from Industry Canada showing that ICT and emerging technologies are going to be facing cutbacks of approximately $24.5 million, which is far greater than this entire program. Could that have a negative impact on future development of this and other software?

Before you answer, because I'm sure my time will run out by the time you're done, with regard to this offer in particular—and coming from an IT background—continuing development will require continued funds. As Monsieur Gourde said, version 1, version 2, version 3....

As we keep moving forward, what kinds of investments will NRC need to keep this project going? Would you rather see that kind of funding come out of, say, a future-type road map or become more permanent stable funding for the NRC for continued development?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

I've lost track of the first part of your question.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

ICT and emerging technologies are—

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

The main estimates—