Transport Committee on May 15th, 2012

[Jonathan Burke]

It was on the Alberta stock exchange—for lack of venture capital, I apologize.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

How many employees did they start with?

[Jonathan Burke]

That's a good question. I think there were maybe eight or ten initially. They basically occupied a small lab space at UBC for the first couple of years.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

How many are there now?

[Jonathan Burke]

There are 871, as of April 30, 2012.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

What is their gross revenue?

[Jonathan Burke]

Their revenue was $264.7 million for calendar year 2011, up from $144.4 million in calendar year 2010. Over the last five years there has been a compound annual growth rate of approximately 32%.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

That's interesting.

So this is a great Canadian success story.

[Jonathan Burke]

Yes, and it was spun through the university's industry liaison office. So the patents for the technology were held by the University of British Columbia, and they were spun out as a company.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

So the university benefited financially. Do they still get a percentage of the...?

[Jonathan Burke]

We still work with the university. I'm not sure of the exact details of our relationship with UBC, but we work very closely with them and continue to fund research there.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

When did you come on board?

[Jonathan Burke]

I came on in early 2006.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Was this your background?

[Jonathan Burke]

No. I was in the technology industry, but I was in biotechnology prior to that for five years.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

You also have a number of patents, both ones you've secured and patents pending. Right now we have a bill before Parliament, the Copyright Modernization Act, which will bring our intellectual property regime up to current requirements.

Under the existing regime, have you encountered any difficulties, problems, or challenges? If you are familiar with Bill C-11, would any of it address your current challenges?

[Jonathan Burke]

I couldn't speak specifically to the challenges around intellectual property here in Canada. Our main emphasis in intellectual property management has been the global focus. We focus on jurisdictions in which we know our patents could be under attack. But we typically patent here in Canada as well.

It is selectively by jurisdiction, depending on where we think the technology might be deployed, because the cost of maintaining patent portfolios is quite high.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

It's expensive.

You mentioned that you have partnerships in other countries. It's a scattergun question. Which countries are they?

[Jonathan Burke]

We have offices in Australia, for example. We just recently acquired the assets of an Australian company.

We have two companies we've purchased in Italy. We have offices in Italy and a large contingent of employees in Italy.

We have offices in Lyon, France.

We have offices in Gothenburg, Sweden, in a manufacturing facility tagged to a Volvo car manufacturing plant in Gothenburg. We have partnerships with AB Volvo, which is their truck manufacturer.

We have development partnerships with Caterpillar. We have partnerships with Electro-Motive. Once again, it's a development agreement.

We have a joint venture with Cummins, which is U.S.-based. We have a joint venture with Weichai Power, which is China-based.

We've had partnerships in the past and continue to work with companies such as Tata, in India, and others.

We also have partnerships with Delphi, for manufacturing. They have manufacturing facilities, as do we, in Mexico and also in Argentina.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Following up on Mr. Richards' comments, free trade has been very helpful.

[Jonathan Burke]

Absolutely.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

If we had erected walls around our country, like some of us would have our government do, your company would not have been able to expand the way it has been able to.

[Jonathan Burke]

We could not have grown at the rate we have grown dependent only on the Canadian marketplace, to put it succinctly. Fifty percent of our revenues are obtained in North America, specifically from the United States, and 50% of our revenues come from the rest of the world, and they're from a range of different countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I have to—

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

And a 15% corporate tax rate is great for you and for your company. You've been able to hire employees with that and generate large investments.