International Trade committee  We could. We have programs. If they're properly lined up.... The CFI had a meeting in Rome this year to discuss how to line up its funding with the European funding so that we could partner. This equipment is too expensive for all of us to have it. To have a German boat and a Canadian boat....

International Trade committee  I could start with the skills gap, and I'll just talk very particularly to the shipbuilding initiative. Dalhousie worked very hard with the Irving company to put forward what was called the value proposition for that contract, in which the company had to describe what having that amount of business, $25 million, and now arguably slightly more, would mean and how they could use that to the wider value in the community.

International Trade committee  I believe there are two, yes, who were hoping to be here yesterday afternoon and couldn't for reasons of conflict of time.

International Trade committee  Well, there you go.

International Trade committee  I don't know that for sure, but what I do know is that the Centre for European Studies, or the European Union centre, does have people who look at these aspects, and this agreement is, as I said, one of its themes for focus and concentration. I am going to suggest that there will be people there, and I can certainly put you in contact with the head of that centre, who can inform anybody.

International Trade committee  Well, it needs to cure it. I'm not sure that it's done it strongly enough. It's the feeling I got from the scientists, who feel that their inventions are so difficult to patent in Europe, although they would be very usefully patented in Europe. Without having the expertise to say whether it has addressed it as well as it could, I want to just raise it and flag it as an issue, particularly for our scientists, who are producing things through their science that are patentable.

International Trade committee  No, I don't have any information outside of that.

International Trade committee  I have kind of a lived experience that people reported to me.

International Trade committee  We haven't done that study, but actually coming here raised the issue to both me and the president that this was the kind of study we need to do. We need to understand more clearly exactly what any implications of that would be.

International Trade committee  I have a comment that I can make, based on my own past as a speech pathologist, which is that our own provinces in this country had a lot of trouble with this about 30 years ago, but they managed to sit down, discuss it, and sort it out. I believe that we've done similar things with the United States in the health professions that I know best.

International Trade committee  Dalhousie University is approaching its 200th anniversary. I thought you would want to know that. The universities are old on this side of Canada.

International Trade committee  Right, that's before Canada. It's situated in what I think is a very vibrant gateway community to the Atlantic rim. I'm leaving tonight for Berlin, and on the PowerPoint that I was preparing somebody had written “northwest Atlantic”. He was talking from the German perspective about our northeast Atlantic.

Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act  By consequence, OAS will rise from 15¢ on every dollar the federal government spends to 25¢ on every dollar the federal government spends. According to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, on the current trajectory of demographics and program spending, the government will have a shortfall of $67 billion annually in today's dollars by the year 2040.

Health committee  We're studying technological innovation. It's a very important study. We have with us from the Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Dr. Danyaal Raza, board member; and from the Public Health Association of BC, Dr. Marjorie MacDonald, president. Dr. MacDonald, I understand you have a PowerPoint. I'm going to begin with you today.

Health committee  I really appreciate the opportunity to present to this committee today. My name is Marjorie MacDonald and I'm representing the Public Health Association of British Columbia. I would like to acknowledge my colleague and vice-president, Dr. John Millar, who did much of the background work for this presentation.