Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you for inviting me to address the committee today.
Joining me is my colleague, Paul Treboutat. As was mentioned earlier, Paul is the director general for our Centre for Surface Transportation Technology. To give that a context, that is what I would call the heavy goods types of vehicles, such as trucking, the rail fleet, military types of vehicles, as well as other vehicles such as first responders—police, fire, ambulance, and that sort of area—as opposed to automotive, which is a separate group.
I welcome the opportunity to inform you about some of the technology innovations being developed at the National Research Council of Canada to improve the safety, energy efficiency, productivity, and sustainability of our country’s air, surface, and marine transportation systems, both in urban areas and in remote communities such as those in the north, and even further north into the Arctic.
As you may be aware, the NRC is an agency of the Government of Canada. Its mandate is set out in the National Research Council Act. Under the NRC Act, the NRC is responsible, amongst other things, for undertaking, assisting, and promoting scientific and industrial-based research in different fields of importance to Canada.
To that end, NRC's research and development capabilities span a wide spectrum of disciplines from aerospace and construction to information communications technologies and ocean engineering. We work with our private and public clients and collaborators to develop and deploy business-based solutions that address national science and technology priority areas and help Canadian businesses tackle critical issues that affect our future prosperity, such as economic growth and industrial competitiveness, urban and rural community infrastructure, natural resources, the environment, health, and security.
Our programs are designed and executed in terms of strong value propositions, unique positioning in the value chain, market pull, and timely deployment paths. We have clearly targeted outcomes within our program timeframes of three to eight years, hence delivering in a scale of time that is relevant both to our clients and to our collaborators.
Part of NRC is the industrial research assistance program, or IRAP, as it's colloquially called. This is a very important mechanism for economic development and prosperity for Canadian small and medium enterprises. Delivering technological and business advisory services as well as financial contributions, at the moment the program supports approximately 8,600 companies per year in all of Canada’s industrial sectors, including the transportation industry.
How, then, does NRC address the complexities of our national transportation infrastructure and lead to a safer and more environmentally responsible transportation environment for Canadians?
As you're aware, transportation-related research and technology development permeates many of our activities specifically at NRC. We're actively engaging with industry in the air, on the surface, and in the marine transportation areas to develop technology-based solutions to meet current and future challenges.
Moreover, we occupy a unique and privileged position between the regulatory bodies, such as Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence, by providing objective scientific, technological, and engineering expertise in support of their policy decision-making.
In the area of air transportation, for example, NRC, in conjunction with industry, conducts approximately $55 million worth of research per year and works with more than 300 companies per year to find solutions to increase the safety and the environmental performance of aircraft and reduce the weight and cost of aircraft and their components.
We also work with the original equipment manufacturers and small and medium enterprises, often forging links between them and offering them access to scientific expertise across multiple disciplines and to unparalleled infrastructure, including world-class testing and validation facilities such as the recently opened Global Aerospace Centre for Icing and Environmental Research, or GLACIER, a new cold-weather aircraft engine testing facility in Thompson, Manitoba.
We are also exploring sustainable, cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels. We think that algae could efficiently and profitably convert carbon dioxide emissions at the source and recycle those emissions into valuable products—especially biofuels, including jet fuel—without consuming fresh water or displacing food crop resources.
In the area of surface transportation, NRC works to ensure that the Canadian road and rail transportation systems are safer and cleaner, as well as more secure and cost-efficient.
Operating on a full cost recovery basis—for example, earning an average of $22 million a year for the past three years—we work with world-class domestic and international clients to develop and test products and services for the rail and road transportation industries, the Department of National Defence, Transport Canada, and a wide range of vehicle and equipment manufacturers.
We develop and deliver vehicle mobility technologies to reduce the incidence of rail track derailment in the freight rail transportation system and to improve the operational capability of heavy-duty vehicles under all environmental conditions.
In addition to addressing challenges in wheel and track performance, our current technology priorities include silent watch and idle reduction in heavy-duty, specialty, and rail vehicles; off-road mobility; and heavy-duty and rail vehicle body dynamics and durability.
NRC is also developing, validating, and deploying lightweight and advanced materials technologies and innovative design solutions to build more effective fuel-efficient vehicles for both the automotive and the passenger rail industries.
In collaboration with industry stakeholders all along the supply chain, we expect to achieve a 10% weight reduction in vehicles by 2025 with the introduction of innovative lightweight components based on aluminum and composite materials—these can be biocomposite, by the way—in cars and in other ground transportation vehicles. This reduction should lead to approximately a 7% decrease in fuel consumption, an average saving of about 1.5 billion litres of gasoline per year.
NRC is also investigating the use of the lightweight materials in terms of their potential benefits to the aerospace industry.
Finally, NRC is investing to help find safer, more effective, and less environmentally damaging methods for shipping durable cargo to Canada’s northern regions. NRC will lead the development of an integrated system of technologies, including performance-based navigation decision tools that will work to reduce the cost per tonne of shipping to communities by about 20% and double the frequency of shipments without increasing the assessed risks to society or the environment.
The prospect of alternative technologies such as heavy-lift airships is also an intriguing possibility for some cargo, such as super-sized mining equipment, for locations that are inaccessible by road or water.
I welcome your questions. I thank you for your time this morning. It has been my pleasure to share a little bit of the NRC work and the initiatives that are under way in looking into Canada's transportation infrastructure.
Thank you.