Industry committee  I guess it would be hard to have a voluntary agreement that would say you can't opt out. The very nature of the voluntary agreement would make it so that if Tesla, with its very different business model, chose not to participate, then.... What we see in the future is that most of the new entrants in the EV space specifically are going to be non-traditional automakers who are not bound by the voluntary agreement.

Industry committee  I think, as we pointed out earlier, that we're a little behind. If you think about it from the perspective of the Americans, they already have right to repair legislation, which was extended to the connected car through the state of Massachusetts. They currently also have, at the federal level, the repair act, which specifically looks at right to repair for the automotive sector.

Industry committee  Absolutely. Look at the state of Massachusetts, where there was a ballot measure adopted as part of the last federal election in the U.S. It got broad support from the population—again, 75%. All the counties throughout Massachusetts voted to extend the right to repair legislation in that state to the connected car.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will deliver my remarks in English; however, I am happy to respond in French as well. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jean-Francois Champagne, I'm the president of the Automotive Industries Association of Canada or, as we're also very well known, AIA Canada.

Industry committee  I guess the short answer is—

Industry committee  I guess, in short, there are clusters, obviously, around the original manufacturer. When we see original manufacturers building factories, that creates an ecosystem, and the aftermarket, as an extension, also benefits from that. So the first answer is, yes, we do that. From an innovation perspective, though, also to echo, it happens pretty much anywhere our members are based out of.

Industry committee  I'm not sure I can express an opinion. We have to look at that from the perspective of our manufacturers based in Canada who export. Of our a membership base of about 150 people, about 20 of them are core manufacturers in Canada and we will need to see how that impacts them and we may want to follow up with them on that.

Industry committee  It's early, it's evolving, it's clearly something we would need to research more, but it's clearly going to influence the supply chain. I'd like to tie it back to product standards and ensuring that as the method by which we produce parts changes or evolves, all the way down to printing your own part at home, obviously we have some framework that ensures the quality of the parts that we put in vehicles.

Industry committee  For sure, if an organization like ours were finding it challenging to be able to properly engage a wide variety of trade schools and polytechnics that offer various types of programs that feed into the automotive sector overall and into the aftermarket in particular, then with regard to your question, I think there is an opportunity to create a better synergy between industry and the education sector and to ensure that the training that is provided to people in those trade schools and polytechnics is better aligned with industry.

Industry committee  I'll make this quick. We try to silo the aftermarket from original manufacturer supply, when in fact many of those manufacturers that do supply the aftermarket are also directly supplying the original automaker. To answer your question, some of them, the larger manufacturers such as Bosch, are already doing something like that—not specifically for the aftermarket, but corporately those organizations are already doing things like that.

Industry committee  On the labour market information front, we're definitely working with various stakeholders. A good example is the creation of some good partnerships with the Automotive Business School of Canada in Barrie. It's a great collaborative effort between the institution and industries in making sure that we're educating and bringing people into the sector.

Industry committee  It is important to our sector. R and D is important, obviously. The pace at which cars evolve today is accelerating, so the rate of development in the capacity to build good aftermarket parts is also increasing. In short, yes, it is.

Industry committee  Sure. Thank you. Essentially, when we did our research around TPP, the 20 or more of our members who manufacture in Canada today highlighted the fact that most or some of their manufacturing is already done through partnership in Asia, non-inclusive of the countries involved with TPP but in China, and that the export portion of their product to countries outside of the U.S. or Mexico is relatively small, so the impact of the TPP is limited.

Industry committee  In fact, there are no product standards for aftermarket parts in Canada. If we build a car in Canada, Transport Canada has a set of requirements as to how this car would be produced, but once they're actually sold and on the road, there aren't specific product standards that would apply to the manufacturing or the importing of aftermarket parts.

Industry committee  That's right.