Industry committee  Yes, Madam Chair, I'd be happy to do that. This was just additional guidance. It's not actually changes to the legislation, but guidance on how we will apply the legislation. That came out a number of weeks ago. The specific concern is just to make sure that market participants, the investment bar, the people who advise firms, are put on notice that we'll be watching for concerns about what I would maybe call “predatory behaviour”.

Industry committee  Thank you for your question. First, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research doesn't fall under the Minister of Industry's jurisdiction, but under the Minister of Health's jurisdiction. Any specific questions regarding the Institutes of Health Research should be referred to my colleague, the deputy minister of health, or to the minister.

Industry committee  There are actually two distinct elements to the funds that were announced that the honourable member is talking about. One was for community future development corporations, and the other was for regional development agencies. I don't think a priori there's any sense that one is for bigger communities and one is for smaller communities.

Industry committee  I have a feeling that you're going to tell me I should be, but at the moment my powers of recall are limited.

Industry committee  Certainly in the course of our work, as you might appreciate, we are well aware of what they've done. They've certainly reached out to us and there have been conversations. I'm certainly not looking for any sympathy, but I want to underline that we've had many firms reach out to us offering solutions.

Industry committee  I think the honourable member has hinted at some of the concerns that are out there. For anything to work, there has to be a certain critical mass of users. I'm not personally an expert in these matters. Obviously, if something is not adopted, then it has less utility. So it's not just a matter of the technical functionality of the solution; it's a matter of whether citizens trust it and feel they can use it.

Industry committee  Yes, that's certainly our hope. That's part of the mandate. Obviously we want the health response to be first, but if there are real opportunities for export and IP and those sorts of things, that's certainly a consideration.

Industry committee  I'll be happy to pull that together on behalf of the department. Obviously we work closely with the minister's office on that, so we can send one report.

Industry committee  Well, obviously, I think we want to move as quickly as we can. There is a substantial amount of money that has been devoted to broadband, and the onus is on us to try to move as quickly as possible. I will say that in some cases these are what amount to large capital investment projects, so there is a bit of due diligence in having an application period and then adjudicating to make sure that the best projects are selected first, the ones that yield the biggest bang for the buck in reaching citizens in rural areas.

Industry committee  Madam Chair, I think that's probably more of a political question in terms of the goals the government sets. It's the civil service that obviously tries to execute against those goals. The minister indicated that it's likely that some of this will be revisited and perhaps accelerated, and I'd be happy to speak to that once the government decides, but we certainly want to roll out the existing programming as quickly as we can.

Industry committee  Madam Chair, with the money that we've set aside—it's a billion dollars at the moment that my ministry is responsible for delivering, and that would be under the authority of Minister Monsef—there was a consultation that took place. I believe it was late last year, but we sort of just came off a consultation, and the plan in the next short while will be to go forward with the launch so that we can start taking applications and making those decisions.

Industry committee  I can come back to it, but there's been a lot of work to advance that file. I'd be happy to give details later.

Industry committee  Certainly we work and the minister works very closely with the Canadian Automotive Partnership Council, which, as the member will know, brings together the major assemblers, the parts companies, the labour unions and so on. We are certainly talking to the council about these issues regularly.

Industry committee  You mentioned the automotive sector in particular. Just to assure the members of the committee, we work very closely with our colleagues at the provincial level and very closely with our colleagues at the federal level, so we have good conversations with the Ontario officials who work with you.

Industry committee  I could talk briefly about the work we're doing on testing specifically. ISED's primary role is to work to try to build the Canadian industrial capacity for personal protective equipment and testing. Members will have seen that global supply chains have proven themselves to be very challenging in this environment.