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Results: 121 - 135 of 192
View Jeremy Patzer Profile
CPC (SK)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
I want to thank everybody for sharing today. I'm going to start with Mr. Nighbor.
As somebody who grew up in an agricultural riding with a farm background, I see a lot of similarities between the two sectors and some shared issues. In terms of further developing your industry, especially with a clear focus on technological innovations, I'm curious to know how the lack of rural and remote access to broadband or cell services affects these efforts.
Derek Nighbor
View Derek Nighbor Profile
Derek Nighbor
2020-11-03 16:51
It's significant, and we do have a lot in common with our friends in agriculture. One of the big differences is the significant public land base upon which we are operating, which means different regulatory frameworks and whatnot, but when you think about where we are operating and the kind of stewardship work we're doing and how important that is to families and rural communities, we're in lockstep.
I don't know if Stéphane might want to talk a little bit about some of the Forestry 4.0 work that FPInnovations is doing, but broadband access is really critical to us not only for doing day-to-day work in some of these more rural and remote communities but also for advancing drone technology and accelerating some of the innovation in forestry.
Stéphane, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but is there anything there you want to share? That is a huge barrier and a huge opportunity for our sector.
Stéphane Renou
View Stéphane Renou Profile
Stéphane Renou
2020-11-03 16:52
If I may, Mr. Chair, I would like to add a little bit here.
It is a shared challenge. It is a shared opportunity as well. I agree that it is for mining and for everything up north where broadband is a bit more scarce.
It's also about developing communications solutions, so we're working on other communications solutions that could involve broadband or something different. We need to transfer data. We need to transfer enough data so that we can optimize operations and automate machinery. We can dream of someday having everything automated up north, a certain part of a mining field or a forestry field, but basic access to data so people can optimize operations is something we need today.
Increasing bandwidth and getting to broadband is something we need to strive toward, but getting collaboration in all of these sectors is probably the key to accessing that.
We live on roads every day. We construct roads with the mining sector. We construct roads with the military to optimize the north. Keeping that up is extremely important.
I don't know if that covers what you wanted me to cover.
View Jeremy Patzer Profile
CPC (SK)
I'm sure it does.
Both of you might want to take a turn answering this too. You mentioned mining, whether that's oil and gas or in other sectors. They are building out broadband and access to data at the same time they are building these operations. Is that happening in forestry as well? Is there a way to build that infrastructure out at the same time?
Stéphane Renou
View Stéphane Renou Profile
Stéphane Renou
2020-11-03 16:53
It's all a matter of planning. The difference is that in planning roads we have a history of doing it over the long term and we keep doing it. Technology has evolved rapidly and the need for technology in forestry in terms of broadband has surged, I would say, over the last few years. We can dream now about what we can do with broadband that we were not dreaming about 10 years ago. There are synergies. There's an accelerated need for it. It's also a way, which is extremely important, of getting jobs of higher quality around forestry as well.
Think about this. If someone can operate machinery with all of those screens around them, with all the intelligence and the robotics that enable them to be in the field and to control five machines at the same time, that's a much cooler job for our young kids up north than just roughing it alone with their diesel machine. That's where we're going.
It's the same thing the mining industry has done with transfers in some sections of the world. We need to get there because we don't have enough people and we need to attract the young.
View Maninder Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for providing valuable insights into the industry.
Mr. Renou, you spoke briefly about biodegradable masks. On that, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for the work that you're doing in researching and developing PPE, particularly around developing face masks made from wood fibre that are expected to be biodegradable through the mask pack project.
This is the type of innovation we need, and it showcases how all types of industries are coming together to protect Canadians during this pandemic.
Can you update us on the efforts in this area and share any lessons learned so far?
Stéphane Renou
View Stéphane Renou Profile
Stéphane Renou
2020-11-03 16:57
Yes, absolutely.
In terms of progress we have made to this point, we have found the recipe to make the filtration layer. We, like every Canadian research institution, are struggling with the actual tests and certification, as there is a lot of variation that creates a lot of discussion. But that's all good. That's scientists arguing with one another about this being better than that, but we have solutions out there for the filtration media. Now we're working on the other layers. We have five solutions in the works, and I'm expecting results within the next few weeks, by Christmas, so that I will be able to say that I can make a fully biodegradable mask with those three layers on a tissue or paper machine; that's the key.
From there, here's a lesson learned. A tissue machine could produce anywhere between one million and ten million masks per day. To do that we would need to displace what the tissue machine is doing. The incentive for the companies needs to be there. The collaboration between all the members of the supply chain needs to be there. It's getting the team together into a highly competitive market especially in the tissue world. If there's one place in pulp and paper where all of the companies are competing, it's the tissue market, on which a lot of them depend. We need to get them to respond to a procurement need. The solution will be there if we need it. Now it's a matter of getting all of our ducks in a row to make it happen, across procurement, Health Canada, technical solutions organizations, and pulp and paper companies. It's getting the Canadian solution all together and really focusing on the fact that we need this now.
View Maninder Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you for that, Mr. Renou. We look forward to seeing that product, especially when we're seeing all of our garbage cans filling up with all of these disposable masks.
Next, can you speak more to the importance of NRCan's transformative technologies program? What types of technological advancements does funding like this enable?
Stéphane Renou
View Stéphane Renou Profile
Stéphane Renou
2020-11-03 16:59
Absolutely. If you look at the different sources of funding that my organization or the industry bet on in terms of transforming the industry, the TT program, the transformative technologies program, is the bedrock of everything. That's where we explore each technology that can transform the industry and bring it from a low-technology level to a higher-technology level.
From there we can start to make those alliances, those demonstration projects, those next-step projects. That's why we can look at everything from forestry 4.0, which we just talked about, namely broadband, to the industrialization of construction to bioproducts ranging from bioplastic lignin in asphalt to carbon fibre from wood. Every possible stream of bioproduct is explored under the TT program. It's the bedrock. It's from that money, from that effort, that we start everything. From there we can do the rest.
Beth MacNeil
View Beth MacNeil Profile
Beth MacNeil
2020-10-30 14:08
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and yes, we have met before at this committee. It's a privilege to be here today. Thank you for inviting me back to provide you with an update on Canada's forest sector.
At my appearance last March, I described the challenges facing our forest sector, including the impacts of wildfires and pests on our timber supply, the softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. and declining demand for printing and writing paper as the world digitizes. I highlighted innovation and the transformation in the sector, and how it is primed to be a leader in the emerging circular bioeconomy and a pivotal provider of nature-based climate solutions to advance Canada's climate change objectives.
All of these things remain true today; however, the world has greatly changed since March. COVID-19 has had and continues to have a significant impact on the forest sector. Although it was deemed essential by governments as it provides consumer goods that are critical to Canadians, including toilet paper, hygiene products, building materials and personal protective equipment, it was still hit by unprecedented demand and price declines. These factors, combined with liquidity constraints and health and safety concerns, led to over 130 mill closures and curtailments across the country, affecting more than 19,000 employees.
In response, the Government of Canada launched a series of business and worker support measures benefiting the forest sector. In particular, many firms and associations reported being supported by the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the work-sharing measures. In addition, the government is providing up to $30 million to small and medium-sized enterprises, in partnership with the provinces, to defray the costs of implementing new health and safety measures resulting from COVID. This support will preserve jobs, keep workers and communities safe and maintain the tree-planting infrastructure critical to our sustainable forest-management regime and climate goals, including planting two billion trees.
Today the sector is recovering, but unevenly. Manufacturers of wood products, packaging and hygiene products are doing well, supported by resilient consumer demand and strong housing and home improvement markets. However, the pandemic has intensified digitization and the decline in demand for printing and writing papers. As a result, traditional paper mills continue to struggle, with some remaining closed while putting investments to diversify to other market areas on hold.
Despite the pandemic, the Canadian forest sector remains key to helping Canada achieve its climate change objectives and a green and inclusive economic recovery. In support of the competitiveness of the sector, we launched several forest sector programs between April and July of this year, targeting research and development, innovation deployment, market and product diversification and increased economic opportunities for indigenous peoples.
To update you on our progress, our investments in forest industry transformation program, known as IFIT, received 70 proposals from across Canada in response to the recent call for proposals, in total seeking $500 million in support from the program, with potential to leverage three times that amount. Similarly, our indigenous forestry initiative program received a record 112 proposals, seeking $74.5 million in support. Both programs are finalizing the proposal evaluations as we speak.
Furthermore, our partnership with Canada's premier forest research organization, FPInnovations, has allowed them to rapidly refocus their staff on the most immediate need of the industry—that is, research on the potential to produce appropriate filtration media from wood fibre, with the end goal of producing sustainably sourced, wood-based biodegradable face masks for general use. Through our partnership, FPInnovations is now accelerating their work to develop these biodegradable face masks.
This record level of oversubscription to our forest sector programming, as well as the ability of an organization like FPInnovations to meet urgent needs for PPE, demonstrates both the eagerness and the ability of the sector to be a key player in meeting the demands of domestic and global markets during the most critical of times.
In addition, I would like to highlight that for a country like Canada, there is no solution to climate change without forests. Healthy, resilient forests are a nature-based solution to a changing climate.
The government is committed to planting an incremental 2 billion trees over the next 10 years, an increase in forest cover twice the size of Prince Edward Island. We continue to engage with stakeholders to operationalize this commitment.
In the near term, the forest sector will continue to deal with the uncertainties and challenges caused by COVID. However, the pandemic has not changed the fundamental importance and potential of the sector to Canada's green, inclusive economic recovery. Rather, it has reinforced its essential role.
Thank you very much.
View Richard Cannings Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you. I think Werner Kurz is on our witness list, or at least on the NDP's witness list, to appear here.
You mentioned IFIT, the investments in forest industry transformation. One of the issues I've been hearing about a lot in my riding over the last few months is proposals for renewable natural gas plants that use forest waste right now. As you know, a lot of the forest waste—in British Columbia, anyway—is burned at the end of the year in slash piles that produce as much carbon in our atmosphere as all the cars in British Columbia put together. If we could eliminate or reduce those emissions, it would go a long way toward helping us.
I'm wondering if you are aware of whether IFIT is helping to fund innovations in that regard in new plants that will be using that material, creating renewable natural gas instead of just burning it into the atmosphere.
Beth MacNeil
View Beth MacNeil Profile
Beth MacNeil
2020-10-30 14:36
Getting more value from wood and wood residue for certain is funded by and eligible under the IFIT program. I don't know what the result is of the early call for proposals, but 70 expressions of interest came in by the end of August. Yes, that would be the type of project.
The other source is ISED's strategic innovation fund. As well, $100 million was set aside in the fall Speech from the Throne, I believe, in 2018. Of course, I think the proposed clean fuel standard that's under development will help create further demand for these types of transitions and bioproducts.
Lisa Campbell
View Lisa Campbell Profile
Lisa Campbell
2020-10-29 11:15
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you virtually. I hope that each of you and also your families are doing well.
I joined the Canadian Space Agency, or CSA, in September of this year. A lawyer by profession for almost the past three decades, I've worked in both public and private sectors. I have experience in the areas of competition enforcement, data regulation and procurement, among others.
I'm joined today by my colleagues, Luc Brûlé, vice-president, science and technology, and Mary Preville, acting vice-president, space program policy.
If you will bear with me, I'll just change the language for the interpreters.
The CSA has accomplished extraordinary things, and we believe that the space sector can contribute enormously to Canada's economic renewal during these unprecedented times.
The CSA's work focuses on three areas.
First, and perhaps most visible, are activities in space exploration. We lead Canada's participation on the International Space Station, the Canadian astronaut program, and scientific missions to explore our solar system.
Second is a growing area of investment and interest worldwide, which is the rich data from earth-observation satellites that help us understand our planet, how to manage our natural resources and more. Increasingly, we can maximize high-quality space data to serve and protect Canadians and spur innovation and economic development. The speed of commercial satellite deployment, implementation of faster communication technologies and onset of interplanetary missions are augmenting the role of data in space industries. Our RADARSAT constellation mission is part of this trend. Its three-satellite configuration provides data for climate research, security and commercial applications. Unlocking the power of this data is vital to Canada's competitiveness globally.
Third, we work to support science and technology in a multitude of areas, including optics, health, robotics, satellite communications and radar. We're growing this innovative sector in Canada and preparing for new missions.
In 2019, the government launched a new space strategy for Canada: exploration, imagination and innovation. With the brilliant CSA team, we're advancing the space program in Canada and, internationally, positioning our domestic space industry for success. The return on investment in space is massive, and it's a growth sector. In the next 20 years, the global space economy will nearly triple in size, reaching a trillion dollars. At the CSA, we're committed to positioning Canadian researchers, entrepreneurs and investors to seize their share of this new, emerging global market. We want to help them contribute to the global economic recovery, while continuing to secure socioeconomic benefits here at home.
In recent months, we've been doing extensive outreach with industry, academia and international counterparts. We've participated in international conferences of the G20 space community and the International Astronautical Congress. Like the rest of the world, we're gearing up for exciting missions to the moon and beyond.
We're proud to have secured Canada's participation in the next large-scale international space collaboration—the lunar gateway program—by contributing our Canadarm3. We're also among eight nations to sign the Artemis Accords a few weeks ago, which we believe will help create a transparent environment for space exploration, science and commercial space activities. We're continuing to support cutting-edge space-exploration technologies, such as artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, health and more, which will be demonstrated on future missions to the lunar surface.
These investments have allowed Canada to play critical roles on internationally led missions, such as OSIRIS-REx, which some of you may have seen in the news recently. We just collected a sample from the surface of an asteroid. Canada's crucial contribution was recognized worldwide, with our expertise ensuring the success of the mission.
In a country as vast as ours, observing earth from space helps us support Canadians, exercise sovereignty and manage our natural resources. Advances in machine learning, big-data analytics and data integration techniques are revolutionizing the field of earth observation at a time when there is more demand for detailed information about our planet.
We are daring to imagine a future where Canadians across the country, from any sector, have unlimited access to easy-to-use digital platforms; where data is turned into information to, for example, issue advance warning for air quality and disaster management; where cities can plan greener infrastructure projects more efficiently; where regulators or industry can detect infrastructure failures; and where farmers can visualize crop conditions and crop yields, predicting market pricing and perhaps leading to better management for anticipated transportation bottlenecks.
Today we have elements of this vision in place. Our experience with the RADARSAT program, which today is capturing 250,000 radar images of the earth, means we have a great base on which to grow. We'll equip Canada with the data and analytical tools needed for the future.
Like sectors across the planet, the space sector has been impacted by COVID-19 and the measures needed to contain the pandemic. We've reprioritized some of our activities and funding to ensure that industry and academia can continue to innovate and seize opportunities.
Since March, we've doubled short-term financial investments in our science and technology programs, representing an increase of $25 million over existing plans pre-pandemic and a total investment of $52 million over 2 years.
These efforts will benefit up to 90 projects in large, medium and small companies, as well as 12 universities from coast to coast. It will advance promising space technology, and support R and D and the development of innovative concepts, helping develop talent and positioning the sector for success.
Space exploration technologies are at the epicentre of scientific development. Among the many motivations for space exploration, advancing scientific knowledge and understanding is increasingly crucial for our society. Intrinsic value flows from it, and space science is a rich avenue because of the challenges it poses, forcing us to look up and out in completely novel ways. Increasing access to space innovation and research with the new environments and situations, the vast unknowns, that space offers stress tests our systems and beliefs.
Improvements in science inevitably lead to progress in other areas, and as we start employing them wherever science gets used, it generates public good and creates new industries.
I see the time signal. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Through space exploration, we better understand ourselves, our planet and our universe.
Thank you for your time.
Vicki Saunders
View Vicki Saunders Profile
Vicki Saunders
2020-07-07 15:12
Thank you very much.
I'm Vicki Saunders, founder of SheEO. Good afternoon. Bonjour.
I started SheEO. I'm just going to give a quick overview of SheEO, how we're dealing with what's happening with COVID and the opportunity going forward afterward.
For those of you who may not be familiar with our organization, we started in Canada five years ago, and we are a complete redo of venture capital. If you were starting all over again and it was designed by women, it would look 100% different from what it looks like currently in the world.
We designed and started this organization to solve the major challenge on the planet that 51% of the population gets 2.2% of the capital out there in the world. It is a global challenge, and it leaves us in a world that's designed mostly by men for men. There are just so many things missing from the existing world that we're living in. Structures and systems are so deeply biased, and that's not a future I want to live in, and so we're tackling this big challenge with SheEO.
We are women who come together in a pretty unique way. We have this model of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. Hundreds of women in each country come together and each contribute $1,100 as a gift. That money is pooled together and it's loaned out at 0% interest to women entrepreneurs who are working on the sustainable development goals with their businesses. Every business that we fund is majority woman-owned and woman-led, is working on the SDGs and has export potential in its business and revenue generating.
So far, we are in five countries with this model. We have exported it from Canada to the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and the U.K., and we have 70 countries around the world that have reached out to replicate this model. We provide 0%-interest loans to women entrepreneurs, who pay it back over five years, and then we loan that money out again. Instead of the economic model that we have in the world right now, under which people invest to get a 10X return, a huge return, and then hold onto that capital and accumulate it so that we have more and more inequality in the world, we have a model whereby women actually gift their capital forward and then they bring all of their other capital—their social capital, their buying power, their networks, their expertise and their influence—to help these businesses grow.
It's a pretty fun model to be part of. If you're an activator in our network, which is what we call you when you contribute capital, you vote for the ventures that you care about, so we have a 100% democratic selection process. We don't have some expert panel with all of the biases that come with it, some investment committee deciding on what's the hottest and latest; we have the intuition of hundreds of women deciding which ventures are creating incredible innovations to solve major challenges we're facing. Then we get behind them with everything we've got to help them grow.
This ecosystem-based approach has created unbelievable resilience in our network during COVID. We have not had a single business go down. We have funded 68 ventures; we have $5 million loaned out, and we have a 97% payback rate. As soon as COVID hit, one of the first things we did was to gather all of our ventures together globally, to get them all on a call and do a quick triage of red, yellow and green—how they were doing—and we put our resources into the ones that were in the red bucket right away, to help them.
These are things like the venture in Calgary that hires homeless people to do laundry for restaurants all across the city and pays them a living wage, an amazing model called Common Good. With the pandemic, 95% of their revenue was lost in the first day because all of the restaurants closed. She got onto the call—a bucket of tears, I have to say, and it was a really emotional moment—and said, “What am I going to do? I can't actually lay off homeless people during this moment. It's terrible,” and ventures in our network came together and said, “What do you need? How much is your payroll for this month?” and they loaned her money, so that she could get through and figure out how to pivot her business.
We have story after story like that across our network, of women coming together because—we call this whole thing radical generosity—we are here to support each other, and that day it was to figure out how we could make sure no one lost jobs and no businesses went down. It's a community commitment we made to do this, so I'm probably a bit of a good-news story of what's going on here. Part of the challenge, however, is that….
I've been thinking, I did a presentation to the Standing Committee on Finance a few weeks ago. I just found myself trying to find what was the simplest, easiest.... I know you have a million things on your plate. I'm so grateful that you're all in these rooms and not sleeping like the rest of the government officials that I know. I think you've done an unbelievable job during COVID.
If you just look at all the different possible things you can do, I would love to encourage all of you there today to please do whatever you can to solve this child care nightmare that we continue to live with every single year. This is one of the easiest things on the planet to solve. If women and men were at the table when we designed our structures, we would have solved this right up front because it's not a hard thing to solve.
Women who have children and are at home are in a world of pain. Women entrepreneurs are in a world of pain with this. What is happening during COVID is going to adversely affect women in so many different ways because people are having to decide whether they are going to keep their business or take care of their kids.
How do you deal with these issues?
The demand for these services is massive. We've noticed that our ventures are really struggling with this. With the number of relief mechanisms that the government has put forth.... For example, we have an amazing agricultural innovator out on the east coast. She's able to get a wage subsidy to hire somebody or to keep someone on her staff, but what she really needs is to be able to use that money for child care. She's not allowed to do that.
She can hire someone to do the job that she wants to do, but she can't actually hire someone to do child care. There are a lot of these biases built into these relief structures because we don't value unpaid care. We've monetized all of these different elements of our markets. I think this is the one thing that I would love to really focus on.
I also, on a go-forward basis, would love to see more focus, from a government perspective, on innovation being outside the tech space. This process innovation that we've created with SheEO of not just using financial capital to create jobs and economic prosperity, but also actually bringing all the other resources that we have in play—our influences, our networks and our expertise—leads to unbelievable outcomes.
I just want to share something very quickly. In the last year we have received women's entrepreneurship funding from Minister Ng's department to help us get this model scaled. In the last year, we created 276.4 jobs in Canada across our 27 ventures and through SheEO. We got $750,000 from the federal government. That is the equivalent of $2,164 per job that's being created. I'd love to see anyone try to match that in what we're doing.
Women are amazingly capital efficient. It's unbelievable. What we can do with a small amount of money is insane. When you are looking at other models and process innovations as you are out there looking at new economic models, I hope you will pay attention to SheEO going forward.
I have a little deck that I'm going to forward after it's translated into French.
Thank you very much.
Sherry Cooper
View Sherry Cooper Profile
Sherry Cooper
2020-06-18 16:59
I just want to touch on something we haven't mentioned yet, which is the sectors that government can definitely help to grease the skids of economic development. Sectors that will be very important in the growth of the next wave of technology innovation are telemedicine, which we're all engaged in right now; big data; artificial intelligence; cloud services; cybersecurity, a big government issue; and 5G. Compound that with enhanced broadband and computers for everybody and inexpensive tablets for kids. All of that is very important.
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