Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that very important question. I will answer by giving two or three examples. I had the opportunity to visit the Nano One labs in British Columbia. This business provides faster, more affordable manufacturing processes for alloys that are used in the creation of batteries. I encouraged those people to contact manufacturers in Boucherville and their collaboration led to the creation of a new battery pack that will be inserted in the next Mercedes electric buses.
We do not say enough about the New Flyer buses in Winnipeg. If I recall correctly, I have not looked at the numbers in a while, the New Flyer represents just 5% of their revenues, but their electric buses make up 85% of the market in the United States. These are people from Manitoba.
In closing, I would cite the economic support or at least the need to look beyond the Lion buses. These are school buses sold essentially to the United States and they are trying to make the project viable with the Innovative Vehicle Institute in Saint-Jérôme.
It cost a lot of money to insert new technology in a vehicle with very specific standards. There is a precise number of rivets for the rigidity of the body, and international standards. They did not get anywhere until someone asked whether the bus, which ran on diesel, was subsidized by the school boards. Indeed, school boards subsidize diesel. If we add the whole subsidy for diesel to the potential life the vehicle, it ends up costing the same as the electric vehicle, but without emissions, and it is made back home.