Industry committee  Right now, what you see are start-ups in the U.S. that are building those robotic applications for agriculture. They're not publicly traded companies yet, and it will be expensive for a while so that very few people will actually be able to afford one of those robots. It's a bi

Industry committee  I can make one suggestion. One thing I've noticed is that large multinational corporations that have venture capital arms tend not to be present in Canada. That's something we should maybe target. Think of the Xeroxes, the GMs, the GEs—they have huge venture capital arms with o

Industry committee  I would even extend in agriculture what we've seen a lot recently from the United States and from Japan, what we call the agri-robot. They're not necessarily drones, but agri-robots. I've seen all kinds of applications right now. From Japan there are robots picking fruit. Any act

Industry committee  I do not think it is a question of having more or less. It is about achieving a balance. As Mr. McKay said, it is important for a company that invented something to protect its market for a certain number of years. That is true in the pharmaceutical sector. If companies do not m

Industry committee  It is a business decision. You can do a cost-benefit analysis. However, taking out a patent costs money and takes more than just a couple of days. It generally takes longer in Canada than in other countries, and it is typically very expensive. We do not necessarily need more pate

Industry committee  When you think of the mass production system of economics, it's totally irrelevant for 3-D printing right now. There are three things that 3-D printing is based on: complexity, low volume of production, and mobility of production, as I said.

Industry committee  When is it going to happen? That's the question I cannot answer.

Industry committee  To give you a bit of background, a makerspace is actually a derivative of what we used to call the “hackerspace”, which was a bunch of people, and if you've seen the Facebook movie, they get into the basement, they drink beer, and they try to get into a government website. The on

Industry committee  I do not believe that any of these technologies will kill jobs. What's killing jobs in this country, I'll be quite honest with you—

Industry committee  It will create jobs. It will create opportunities for new things that don't exist right now. What's killing jobs in this country is low productivity. I was telling Wendy that here we fabricate 45 dollars' worth of goods in one hour of work. In the U.S., it's $60. That is killing

Industry committee  No. I'll leave it up to your questions.

Industry committee  I think one of the best examples, if you get into the area of robotics, is probably civil applications of drones. I think this one is going to disrupt a lot of sectors. It's also disrupting regulations, because now Transport Canada has to look at how it will regulate this. It's

Industry committee  A makerspace is pretty much a business incubator that is led and used by people, by anybody. You see a lot of them starting to be implemented in universities, for example. People put together a pool of money to buy 3-D printers and advanced manufacturing equipment that they coul

Industry committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee. My name is Martin Lavoie, and I represent Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. We are Canada's largest trade and industry association, representing nearly 10,000 companies across the coun