Evidence of meeting #34 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm really pleased that you're here because there is a wealth of history in what you've said to us, and we need to learn from that history.
My riding is in Toronto, and in fact, either Toronto's or Canada's first airfield—I'm not sure which—is in my riding. It's the Trethewey property, and that was in 1911, I think, when they had an airfield there.
And of course I'm wearing a pin that's the Avro Arrow, so there is some Canadian history that is less stellar. I'm also aware that there's a museum that's closed and an historic property that is being destroyed at 65 Carl Hall Road that must give you some sadness.
But I want to come to the Bombardier example that we talked about. Bombardier is now building incredibly advanced wings in Northern Ireland. Not here in Canada, but in Northern Ireland, and Mr. Holder and I went to see this, and I was absolutely blown away by the use of new technologies. However, their view—it was quite surprising—was that they're not a manufacturer. They are an engineering firm, and they leave the manufacturing to subsidiaries, or it's an afterthought. The last time the CFO of a company told me that they were not a manufacturer, they were an engineering firm, it was Nortel, and it's something I'm very alarmed about.
Bombardier is also in the process of building factories in low-wage jurisdictions because free trade agreements allow them to build their products offshore and still sell them in Canada and elsewhere. So it's not necessary to have a Bombardier plant in Mr. Adler's riding in the future.
Like with Aveos and other recent announcements of a loss of Canadian aviation infrastructure, is the government's hands-off approach going to be harmful to our continuing as an aviation player? I won't say we're a superpower, but at least we're a player in the aviation world.
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
If you look at the past of the aerospace industry, you had companies, any company—let's take Boeing, for example, during the Second World War. You have aircraft manufacturers, but lots of the components of the aircraft—the landing gear, the engines, the instruments, the navigation equipment, the computers—come from outside. So it's been quite a while since aircraft manufacturers have been more assemblers of components that have been made elsewhere. So they make the airframe, and all the bits and pieces are put on it, and you have the airplane.
What has changed in more recent years is that the airframe is in Europe. Airbus might have been a pioneer of that, it's possible. I'm not familiar enough, but they certainly did it a lot, where you have the central assembly plant, which happened to be in France. You have the bodies—the airframe itself is in pieces, so you have the tail section that comes from Spain, the front fuselage comes from France, and another section, and they assemble the thing. Even when building the airframe itself, they are assembling components of the airframe together, attaching the components like the engines, the electronics, and sort of selling that. Well, the French will tell you it's a French airplane. The Airbus will tell you that it's a European airplane, because aviation is extremely nationalistic in that sense. But the internationalization of the industry has been going on, and Bombardier has decided to take that route.
The CSeries, for example, is a case in point. But now that, for example, Bombardier has factories in Northern Ireland, as you've said, which has expertise in composite production going back to possibly an all-composite aircraft that came out in the 1980s, if I remember. There is certainly expertise there in terms of curing composites. It's not like cooking pies, but it's almost like cooking the materials in order to create this fuselage.
Bombardier Toronto and Bombardier Montreal also do work with Learjet in the United States, so they are certainly integrating the aircraft manufacturing aspect of it so some pieces are made here, and some pieces are made there. It's pretty much part and parcel of what the industry is today. Bombardier, being a major player in that, has to play by those rules. It's pretty much the situation. But there's a great deal of assembly of components more than actually manufacturing of components at the factory. That is true, and that is not going to stop. It's going to get more and more.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Okay.
But the point is that there is no national policy in any of these countries that says “thou must”. Well there might be in France. But thou must assemble—final assembly must be here because we are supporting it....
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
I'm not familiar with things like that, but there might be certain countries where you have policies like that. As far as Canada is concerned, we might be more laissez-faire because Bombardier has been doing rather well so they might be sort of left to do their own things.
Pratt & Whitney Canada might be in a similar situation. They have a lot of work to produce here, but engines might be a tad different because the components are a lot smaller and they tend to do everything in-house. Pratt & Whitney Canada is a subsidiary of a U.S. company so they don't do all the work. They do a certain part of the work, like the smaller engines.
So division of labour in the aerospace industry does exist.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Ms. Rempel asked about pull and push. Push is the builder—the developer of the technology—and pull is the buyers.
Our analyst produced a magnificent table of all the modes of transportation that have been invented and popularized in the last 200 years. With very few exceptions, they have been developed by the private sector. That is to say that the push has come from private industry or private individuals. In many cases the pull came from government procurement; that is to say, massive government purchases of that mode of transportation and almost always for military use. The only exception I can find here is for space and for some public transportation, the subway being another example.
The Silver Dart was the first Canadian-developed aircraft. Is that correct?
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
It was tested here. It was developed in part by Canadians but I do believe it might have been made in the United States. The group is certainly Canadian-American. Yes, it certainly has strong Canadian—
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
You have a replica at your museum. It looks sort of like an oversized kite.
Five years later Canada was manufacturing large quantities of warplanes. Do you believe in that instance it was the world war that drove Canadian industrial innovation and productivity in such a short period of time?
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
If I may be allowed to give a little background here, before the First World War, you had small aircraft industries, especially in Europe and the United States, because you had the military market. You had sportsmen pilots who bought airplanes, but they bought one or two. There might have been many of them but the main buyers were the military. That's pretty much a fact of life. It's been pretty much like that as far as military aircraft are concerned. They certainly had a lot of investment.
As far as Canada is concerned, it was the First World War that changed everything. There were some people who manufactured one-off airplanes. The factory was about the size of this room here with two people, a hammer, and a saw. That was pretty much the extent of the industry in Canada because there was no market here.
The First World War changed all that. The government at the time was very busy because the army was the main contributor in defence. The British set up the factory in order to produce aircraft for schools. The aircraft were of American design. Canadian involvement, except for the workers and some engineers to sort of tweak the airplane a bit, was rather minimal at the time. But it certainly gave experience to some engineers for after the war, but in limited numbers.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Basically government's only role at that point in the development of aircraft and aviation technology was in buying it in very large quantities.
Director General, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
If I could speak to that, when I spoke earlier, I talked about a holistic environment. It's really important to understand that these things don't sort of—well, they do sprout out of the ground. Most of them are made out of wood, but that's another part.
The industry, itself, doesn't spring from nothing; there certainly is a market demand. But without investment in education, without bringing engineers—
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
If I may, that's what the American government did with Samuel Pierpont Langley in giving him the largest-ever war department grant for R and D. He produced an aircraft that shot up in the air, shot down into the Potomac River, and lodged in mud, at which point he gave up and said his life was a failure.
The Wright brothers, by contrast, funded all of their R and D from the proceeds of their bicycle repair shop, had zero government help, and produced, for one-seventieth of the cost, the first heavier-than-air powered, piloted aircraft ever. That would seem to contradict what you're saying.
By the way, they didn't even have a college education, whereas Pierpont Langley was the third secretary, I think, of the Smithsonian.
So sometimes these things do sprout from the ground, don't they?
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
If I may, there were a lot of people who worked on airplanes before the First World War. You had a number of them. There were probably hundreds of them. The Wrights happened to be the ones who got it—and it's wonderful, although one has to.... Being very innovative, they got it right. But they did not invent the airplane; they invented a control system.
There was certainly a great deal of work being done. Most of the people who developed airplanes before the First World War made little hops, a bit like what Mr. Langley did. They made little hops or none at all, and they sort of got disappointed and pulled out of it. So most aircraft designs are never produced; they remain on paper. So there is certainly an aspect of private enterprise.
As far as the United States is concerned, definitely.... With some government assistance in some cases, through contracts, or through access to research facilities, the equivalent of our National Research Council for wind tunnel research.... But as far as other countries are concerned, there is much more government involvement.
Conservative
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Quick and Mr. Fortier. Thank you for sharing your incredibly valuable insight with us.
My first question has more to do with the historical aspect. We are going to take advantage of your expertise. If the past is any indication, as they say, we will draw our own conclusions. I won't ask you to predict the future.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you seemed to say, at the beginning of your presentation, that public sector contributions had been critical to technological advancement. Could you give us an approximate idea of what those contributions have been like over the past century, especially in the field of aviation? How much funding has come from the public sector versus the private sector? Is the split 50-50, 70-30?
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
I could not say. There are investments in research. For instance, the National Research Council of Canada provides government equipment. There are also investments as far as tools go, meaning assistance is provided so an industry can develop its potential. Investment in the area of contracts is also made. So there are various forms of assistance.
In Quebec, the industry can access electricity at very low rates. The government can get involved in different respects. But it can also choose not to get involved, or to do harm, taking detrimental measures. It is incredibly vague. Putting a percentage or dollar figure on the investments is extremely tough.
My sense is that it is massive, just in terms of aircraft purchasing contracts alone. If you look at government investment and the money spent by airplane manufacturers or Canadian engines, I would say the industry has invested less in research, probably just as a result of the size of the contracts. For instance, if you are buying 1,000 planes—
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
At the end of the day, the industry is making a genuine investment that tends to increase over time. In the beginning, it was zero. Then, the industry recognizes the size of a project and the time it takes to build an aircraft, and the industry becomes more involved, even though it receives government assistance in a wide variety of forms.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
I want to stay on the topic of research, if you don't mind. Is it accurate to say that a private company will agree to invest heavily in applied research to develop greener airplanes, for example, even though the word “green” does not necessarily mean that they will actually be better for the environment?
I also want to know about biofuels. The responsibility of doing the basic research falls more on the public sector's shoulders. Does the private sector conduct any basic research?
Curator, Canadian Aviation and Space Museum
It all depends on the industry. Take aerospace, for example, where you have engines, electronics and planes. That is a sector that can do basic research. Look at Bombardier. In terms of its planes, the basic research can involve materials. In the case of certain alloys or metals such as aluminum or lithium, the research usually comes from companies like Alcan or Rio Tinto, aluminum manufacturers that sell to a variety of customers, including Bombardier and Boeing.
If you look at fuel-related materials, the industry does not carry out that research either.
Research in the field of aerodynamics, which has to do with the shape and body of the aircraft, can come from the industry, but it can also come from external sources. Very often, information from external sources, such as NASA, is used.
To my knowledge, the industry does not have any wind tunnels, but it can request access to them. Nowadays, however, research around the shape and body of an aircraft is increasingly done by computer, eliminating the need to go to the National Research Council of Canada or use the big wind tunnels in Ottawa. You can push a button on your computer and it will give you the result.
