Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee members for allowing me to address the topic of disruptive technologies. This is a very familiar subject. My life is focused on disruptive technologies. Today I would like to introduce myself, discuss the current efforts o

Industry committee  Thank you for that question. We're maintaining our lead on the nuclear side by focusing on the non-nuclear, somewhat paradoxically. What provides us opportunity in the non-nuclear sector is you have a diverse array of customers, and in our particular area with deuterium oxide or

Industry committee  Fundamentally, the supply of heavy water is going to disappear, and there won't be new supply unless someone does something about it. We're using these new markets and new technology advancements, together with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, to create private sector production in

Industry committee  There are two areas there, in general terms, as I discussed today. This ecosystem for entrepreneurial businesses, particularly those focused on disruptive technologies, which take time to commercialize and must have eyes on a global market, cannot just look at domestic markets. B

Industry committee  In the last three years, I think we kind of.... About five years ago we started our collaboration with Atomic Energy of Canada. There was before the restructuring, and then there's now during the restructuring. The restructuring has supported us in the type of thing we're doing.

Industry committee  Would you like to go first?

Industry committee  To add to that I'd like to quickly reference a book by the Canadian Academy of Engineering called Canada: Becoming a Sustainable Energy Powerhouse. It discussed nine big ideas, projects that Canada should pursue with mission-oriented leadership. In the 1950s and 1960s Canada woul

Industry committee  Mr. Balsillie is extremely knowledgeable, and that's why referencing his article covers a great deal of scope within a very few moments. I think I would take everything he says quite seriously. I found the patent issues really interesting and how trade agreements are set up. The

Industry committee  Yes. It's a very good point and it's absolutely what I referred to earlier. To America we are off-balance-sheet R and D, and when it looks good then we become on their balance sheet and many of us move to the United States. I think this is a really important thing to address. I'm

Industry committee  I think we need foreign investment. In the number of ventures I have developed, there has always been some Canadian support and leverage with some of our government programs to advance a prototype. As we got close to something that visibly looked like a product and could be bro

Industry committee  I would add to that. Programs such as what NSERC has to help hire summer students—not just summer students, I should say, but also students who are finished their third year and enter what is called a professional experience year—particularly for emerging small companies are fant

Industry committee  I don't think you can rely on students to achieve everything, so—

Industry committee  I think one thing we do very well as a small business in a very high-knowledge field is act with consultants and knowledge-based experts, people who we could never afford to hire full-time, people who would never want to work for us full-time, but people who have very strong expe

Industry committee  I could comment on that. Since I was trying to reduce my opening remarks, I chose not to address that, but I'm very glad you raised the question. I think Canadian control and ownership has been lost in so many of our leading firms like the Incos and the Alcans, and then you go

Industry committee  I think you have to separate out EDC's activities a bit. They are there to support Canadian interests in export markets. I think what we're looking at is what we can do in Canadian markets. Sometimes it's harder for a Canadian company to win in Canada than it is for a Canadian co