Industry committee  Right now at Maritime Steel, when we bring a welder aboard we'll bring in an individual who usually has a base set of skills and who can do what we term a 2G weld—a flatter weld and a horizontal weld. Over time, we train them in-house to become a 4G welder who can do overhead and other things like stainless steel if necessary.

Industry committee  In the U.S. they're far more cooperative in their approach, and far more effective in delivering technology from academia to industry, and vice versa, and the interchange creates products and jobs.

Industry committee  The only thing that really came to mind immediately, Mr. Shipley, was a liaison officer who would work between industry and academia to pull the resources together and move things along. There are a lot of creative things going on at the universities as well, which we don't have access to.

Industry committee  To comment on that, in a previous life I worked as the director of HR at IMP Aerospace, in Amherst, Nova Scotia. We developed a program with the local community college that saw an advertisement go out for people who wanted to work in our aerospace divisions. One of the requirements was that you were on unemployment insurance or on welfare and were willing to go through an eleven-week program, during which your benefits would be maintained.

Industry committee  I'm not aware of the program that the foundry in your constituency is using, but--

Industry committee  I would very much like to get more information on that program and how it works. My view is that with the changing economy there's research and development of new product in the marketplace. We do have industry associations where Quebec foundries and Ontario foundries do meet. There's a Canadian Foundry Association, and one in the United States, a broader one, that's North American-wide, that we belong to.

Industry committee  You'd be amazed at how much research and development or product development goes on at the industrial level that you never hear about. We do it every day. We're looking at new chemistries in steel. We're looking at providing the same physical properties in a casting without using alloying material, which has become very expensive, and thus reducing the cost of our product and becoming more competitive in the marketplace.

Industry committee  I'm glad you asked that question. I wanted to respond to Mr. Van Kesteren's question earlier. Maritime Steel's division in Prince Edward Island, where we do stainless steel work, has developed a continuous cooker for the seafood industry, for example, which continuously processes shellfish and dramatically improves the productivity of a fish plant operation.

Industry committee  Our response to that Chinese issue was to partner with them rather than try to compete directly with them. A surcharge levied against our import of Chinese castings that we resell into the North American market would mean that we would in fact not be able to do that any more. That would take us out of the game.

Industry committee  At Maritime Steel we recognize that there are certain products that, because of our infrastructure and our capital equipment, are more difficult for us to make than third world countries or other world countries. We have, in the microcosm of the foundry industry and of Maritime Steel, decided that some of the smaller product we would actually source from China.

Industry committee  I'd like to thank the committee, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to speak. Being from New Glasgow, I must be one of those old country boys who the previous two speakers were referring to as being from rural Nova Scotia, so bear with me. To give you a little background about Maritime Steel, Maritime Steel is a manufacturing company based in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.