Evidence of meeting #37 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 trucks.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Jonathan Burke  Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

9:25 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Would your partner provide the front-line employees who carry out the manufacturing, whereas you would provide the know-how?

9:25 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

In some cases. For example, with our heavy-duty business, the engines that Transport Robert in Quebec and Vedder Transport in British Columbia are operating, the final assembly of those engines is done by our employees at a facility on Annacis Island in Delta. So it's a mix. It all depends on what is most appropriate to the partnership.

For example, in Italy we have several large manufacturing facilities where we manufacture and supply components to the automotive sector in Europe. So we supply to Fiat, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroën, and others, and we actually employ blue-collar workers putting the pieces together. We do the same in Kentucky at a plant where we take Ford pickup trucks and complete them as natural gas vehicles on the back of a Ford manufacturing facility.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

How many employees do you have worldwide?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

We have 871, as of April 30, 2012. But to give you some sense of our scale, we were approximately 200 a little over a year ago.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Are you publicly traded?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

We are publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Could you provide the committee with a history of your company—how it came to be, where it established its investments, where its intellectual property was developed, partnerships with universities? I want to have a sense of how a success story like yours comes to be, and how we can institute public policy that replicates it.

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

Certainly. I mentioned Dr. Phil Hill, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia. He came up with the original idea around this injection technology. We were talking about the diesel-natural gas mix.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Could you put that in writing? I have limited time, but is there a way that you could provide the committee with a brief summary? It would only need to be a couple of pages.

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

Absolutely. We have a summary that was read as part of the Manning Innovation Award that Dr. Hill received. It's a two-pager, nice and succinct.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

That would be very helpful.

Does your business focus on original manufacturing of natural gas vehicles, or conversions, or both?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

We focus almost entirely on original manufacturing of new vehicles.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Do you believe that to be the superior approach?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

At Westport it is our belief that is the superior approach, if only because in the past, natural gas vehicles have had a bit of a tarnished reputation because of the fact that a number of vehicles were deployed throughout North America—and elsewhere in the world, for that matter—that were done as after-market conversions. There are a number of reputable after-market conversion companies that do a very good job and support their products and have been around for years. But the benefit of manufacturing at the plant level with a Ford or a General Motors or a Kenworth truck company, or a Peterbilt truck company, is that the vehicles are delivered exactly the same way as a diesel or gasoline vehicle. So from the consumer's point of view, all of that support infrastructure, that dealer support, parts supply—all of that is backed by multi-billion-dollar corporations that have been here for a long time and are expected to be here for a long time more.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

It sounds to me, from your testimony, that your focus is on fleet vehicles mostly. To what extent are you working on personal vehicles?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

In Europe and in Latin America our light-duty division does focus on personal vehicles, but our emphasis in North America has for some time been large fleet vehicles.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

That's what the market is right now here.

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

That is where the market is because that is where the single largest opportunity for a market exists. Commercial vehicles are operated as a business asset, and the opportunity for a commercial vehicle operator to realize gain from the use of an asset running on natural gas is quite significant, whereas consumer vehicles require a wide range of consumer choice in terms of types of vehicles. They require a very disparate fueling infrastructure network. The fueling infrastructure required to support a fleet of natural gas trucks, for example, is much less expensive.

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

What do you think about home refueling as a technology? Is it something that you're involved in as a company?

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

It's not something we're involved in. We do involve ourselves in things other than the engine, but mostly on vehicle equipment. As far as home refueling is concerned, it's had a bit of a mixed past, just because of technological challenges. Certainly for the market—

9:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

The reason I ask is that absent the network of filling stations, this would seem to be a very exciting and highly practical option to the retail motorist if it could be done properly.

9:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

Therein lies the challenge. From an execution point of view, it's not been done so far very well.

There remains the challenge with light-duty vehicles that when you add up the number of options for a gasoline vehicle consumer in Canada, you start to run out of fingers and toes very quickly. The challenge for light-duty vehicles is that consumers are fickle. They have a whole range of needs, whether it's a pickup truck, a station wagon, or a sports car, and it becomes very challenging to think of the investment that's required to get to that number of choices.

I think home refuelling, though, is a very good option if executed technically well.

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Okay, so how far off are we before we could conceivably...?

I'm replacing my vehicle now, and I did some calling around to see if it was reasonably possible to install one of these things at my house. Basically, even from the biggest proponents of natural gas-powered vehicles, they told me, “Don't do it. It's not ready.”

9:35 a.m.

Vice-President, Global Market Development, Westport Innovations Inc.

Jonathan Burke

It is not ready today. If you had MacGyver-like skills—

9:35 a.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!