[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, April 23, 1996
.1530 
[English]
The Chairman: We shall resume consideration of our order of reference dated Thursday, March 7, 1996, relating to the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1997.
Is there unanimous consent that I call votes 80, 85, and 90 under the National Research Council of Canada? Agreed.
From the National Research Council of Canada, I would like to welcome Dr. Arthur J. Carty, president.
Dr. Arthur J. Carty (President, National Research Council of Canada): I appreciate the opportunity to meet with your committee. I have some of my colleagues here who may be able to help me with questions if need be. With me are Pat Mortimer from our corporate services, Jean-Guy Séguin from FINS, and Michel Proulx from ASPM.
[Translation]
Good afternoon and thank you for allowing me a few introductory words. This is a very timely opportunity for the National Research Council to meet with this committee and to discuss its future plans.
.1535
It was only three weeks ago that we unveiled a new vision for NRC, and we are just beginning to implement it.
[English]
If you have had a chance to review the vision document, which I believe has been circulated, entitled ``NRC's Vision to 2001'' you'll have seen that it describes a strategy directly relevant to the concerns of this committee and to the priorities of the government. Consequently, we're very keen to participate and interested in discussing these plans with the committee.
NRC is determined to be an important force in addressing the scientific and technological challenges that will face Canada in the years ahead and in meeting the goals and needs of Canadians from coast to coast.
As you know, NRC is the country's most diverse and important national research organization. This year we are celebrating 80 years of achievement and history that has touched most of the country's major scientific and technical achievements of the twentieth century.
Did you know, for example, that the heart pacemaker was invented at the National Research Council; that the aircraft black box had its origins in NRC's crash position indicator; that the space vision system controlling the Canada Arm was developed at NRC; and that the world's finest anti-counterfeiting device for paper money, which you see every day as a ceramic strip on all Canadian dollar bills of $20 denomination or more, is an NRC invention? You can pull one of those out of your pocket.
The Chairman: If only....
Mr. Schmidt (Okanagan Centre): How many do you need?
The Chairman: I'm still dealing with loonies.
Dr. Carty: Many of these achievements have flowed from our strong research base here in Ottawa. However, today we have significant research presence right across the country, from St. John's to Victoria. We have a national scientific and technical information service called CISTI, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, which is second to none in the world. We also have industrial technology advisers in our industrial research assistance program in over 90 communities across Canada.
Indeed, NRC continues to be at the forefront of scientific research and important economic development initiatives from coast to coast in Canada. As you can see from this year's main estimates, our recent achievements have included such things as a unique software package that will make the fixed link to P.E.I. more durable and safer, marine biosciences discoveries that will underpin the Atlantic aquaculture industry, and research and development capabilities that are acting as magnets to attract major international firms such as Bio-Intérmediar to co-locate with us, in that particular instance, on the site of our biotechnology institute in Montreal.
Our institutes in Winnipeg and Saskatoon are cornerstones of their respective technology industries, and we are collaborating with industry and university leaders to ensure that our new institute in British Columbia makes a unique and valued contribution to the west coast economy.
Here in Ontario we are working to establish a new manufacturing technology presence in London, and we continue to serve thousands of firms through the industrial research assistance program.
[Translation]
We are also involved in Canada-wide projects such as the development of Canada's first national energy code, the Canadian technology network, and work on technologies to reduce the cost of replacing and maintaining the rapidly deteriorating municipal infrastructure throughout the country.
All of this is to emphasize the point that the National Research Council is a powerful national resource that can be an important force in addressing the major economic issues facing the country.
In fact, it would be difficult to conceive of a credible national economic strategy that did not include NRC, its networks, its programs, facilities, partners and people.
[English]
Like many government agencies, NRC has been challenged by budget reductions and changing industrial climates in recent years. Yet we are determined, as an organization, to manage these issues in a way that ensures that NRC continues to provide maximum service to Canadians.
.1540
That brings me to the ``NRC Vision to 2001''. As Canada's foremost R and D agency, NRC will be a leader in the development of an innovative, knowledge-based economy through science and technology. This is our vision. The vision describes our progress in how we intend to improve our performance in the context of these difficult times. Our strategies include a renewed commitment to excellence and relevance and the development of an entrepreneurial approach to increase the commercialization of our technology.
While there is a multitude of points to discuss and things to talk about, I'd like to conclude by stressing a greater recognition, in our vision, of the power and importance of regions and communities as platforms for international competition and national economic growth. In this light, NRC believes it can make a unique contribution to regions across Canada, not only as a source of technology, people and facilities in its own right, but also as a window on the international technology scene. We also believe we have a role to play in knitting these regional innovation systems into a coherent and integrated national system.
This is our vision and goal. We've already taken steps to make it a reality, as you will have noted perhaps from the initiatives we've taken here in the national capital region over the past few months.
[Translation]
We would like the support of this committee as we move forward, and we welcome any questions you might have. Thank you.
The Chairman: Do you have any questions, Mr. Leblanc?
Mr. Leblanc (Longueuil): Welcome to the committee, Dr. Carty.
On page 64, figure 22, regarding contributions to extramural performers, within the framework of the Biotechnology Research Program, the 1995-1996 budget was $2.819 million and the 1996-1997 budget will fall to $615,000. This is a major decrease which affects biotechnology and specifically Montreal. It greatly concerns me.
I would like to know why there was such a big decrease in the budget.
Dr. Carty: I did not catch the number of the page you are referring to.
Mr. Leblanc: It's on page 64 in English, figure 22.
Dr. Carty: I think contributions fell because of program review and because the Biotechnology Contributions Program was gradually reduced.
Mr. Leblanc: A $2.2 billion reduction out of a budget of $2.8 million is not a gradual decrease; it's an extraordinary cut.
Dr. Carty: I realize there were cuts, but I believe that, in some cases, it was not a cut in the NRC's budget, but a cut in a biotechnology support program.
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The NRC was involved, but we did not make that decision.
Mr. Leblanc: Perhaps you can look into the matter and give us a more specific answer. I don't quite understand.
On page 61, figure 20, there is an increase in the budget for the construction of new buildings despite the fact that many buildings stand empty today. How can you justify spending more money on the construction of buildings?
Dr. Carty: Is that on the first line?
Mr. Leblanc: Yes.
Dr. Carty: That means we did not spend...
Mr. Leblanc: You increased the main estimates for 1996-1997.
Mr. Michel G. Proulx (Director General, Administrative Services and Property, National Research Council of Canada): No money will be spent this year.
Mr. Leblanc: You are right, the increase is for renovations.
Regarding global operating expenditures, in the main chart, part III, I would like an explanation for the direction you seem to be taking. Expenditures will remain constant for the institution, whereas transfer payments or subsidies for research will decrease. It seems that you want to do more research in house and spend less on outside research.
Dr. Carthy: No. In fact, under program review, there was a cut of $76 million over three years. However, we tried to maintain grants and extramural contributions. Contributions will increase slightly, despite a budget cut of $76 million. We tried to protect our contributions to companies and small and medium-sized businesses.
Mr. Leblanc: Your transfer payments for subsidies will nevertheless fall from $128,700 to $112,800.
Dr. Carthy: On the other hand I think that the budget for grants and contributions will increase from $107 million to $112 million.
Mr. Leblanc: I don't think we're looking at the same figure.
.1550
An hon. member: Which figure?
Mr. Leblanc: Figure 18, Part III, under ``Supplementary Information'', Details of Financial Requirements by Object.
I don't want to waste time on several tens of thousands of dollars. Wouldn't it be better if future policies concentrated more on working with the private sector rather than spending a lot of money on in-house research?
Dr. Carty: Are you referring to a section in particular?
Mr. Leblanc: The council's total operating estimates are approximately $285 million compared to $112 million for research.
I think it might be a good idea to increase your budget for private sector research rather for in-house research. Your organization spends $285 million and only $112 million are earmarked for the private sector.
Since the global economy is evolving rapidly, I believe that the private sector is more flexible and can adapt faster to changes than the council. That's why I'm asking you whether, in the future, you will increase extramural expenditures for research and spend less in-house.
Dr. Carty: In general, we have focussed more on cutting operating budgets within our institutions rather than contributions to outside companies. There have been less cuts in our contributions to the private sector than to our own laboratories. That's the policy we tried to follow this year.
[English]
Perhaps I can just say in English that one of the reasons for this was that with a $76 million budget cut, we had to decide from which of our programs we would cut those moneys over three years. One of the decisions we made was to protect the industrial research assistance program, because we felt the network of people IRAP represented and the importance of that industrial research assistance program to Canada's economy, jobs, and wealth was so great that it deserved to be protected; and in fact we made an attempt to protect it. So the larger cuts were from administration and from laboratories.
The Chairman: Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt: Thank you for appearing, Dr. Carty. It's nice to see you again.
There are a couple of questions I'd like to address to you. They have to do with the establishment of these regional centres, the institutes, if you will. How many of these are there?
Dr. Carty: How many institutes?
Mr. Schmidt: Regions, yes.
Dr. Carty: We have eighteen institutes.
Mr. Schmidt: Where are they?
Dr. Carty: Eight are in Ottawa and the others are around the country. Actually, there are nine in Ottawa, if we count the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, which is CISTI.
Mr. Schmidt: Do you know how they are distributed geographically?
Dr. Carty: Yes. I'll go from St. John's west. There is an institute in St. John's, the Institute for Marine Dynamics; one in Halifax, the Institute for Marine Biosciences. There are two institutes in Montreal, the Industrial Materials Institute and the Biotechnology Research Institute. As you know, we are establishing a new institute in London, but that is actually a move from Ottawa. There is an institute in Winnipeg.
.1555
The Chairman: It's a great institute.
Mr. Schmidt: You wouldn't miss that one, I know.
The Chairman: It's in my constituency.
Dr. Carty: There is an institute in Saskatoon.
Mr. Bodnar (Saskatoon - Dundurn): That's a greater one.
Dr. Carty: There is an institute in Vancouver and an institute in Victoria.
Mr. Schmidt: I was just wondering something. From the description you gave each of these, it seems like there is a specialization in each of these institutes, so indeed there is something being done in Halifax that is different from what is being done in Vancouver or Victoria, both of which, however, are marine-type cities. Is that correct?
Dr. Carty: Yes. You're quite right; they have a completely different focus. The focus in Halifax is on marine biosciences, including marine toxins, aquaculture, and marine plants, whereas in Vancouver it is an institute for sensor and control technology, very much in the manufacturing area. So the focus in Halifax is biological sciences and biological chemistry, and it's very much engineering in Vancouver.
Mr. Schmidt: I think one of the comments you made was that the contribution these institutes would make would be to a large degree to help the region. At least, that was what was anticipated, if I heard you correctly. Is this related to the academic pursuits or the industrial pursuits? What do you see as the primary contribution that these institutes will make to the region?
Dr. Carty: NRC is a national institution and we deliver our programs nationally, but the focus we are putting on community innovation is to stress the fact that there is a recognition these days that a great deal of innovation and economic growth and prosperity is built around local centres of innovation where an R and D presence, a science and technology presence, is closely linked to the needs of the community. The elements of an innovation system would include not just research and development, but business firms, marketing, education, even legal aspects. In order to make it work effectively, to foster economic growth, all those elements have to function together.
So we are putting an emphasis on trying to determine what is needed in local communities to make innovation work most effectively for that area and for Canada.
Mr. Schmidt: That's good, because it ties into the question that I've found most....
By the way, I really appreciate the package you sent out before your appearance here, and I'd like to refer now to the February 1996 examples of NRC performance. I refer here to page 6. I found it rather intriguing that:
- In order to ensure that NRC recognizes and rewards both excellence and relevance in the work
of its research staff, promotion guidelines for NRC's Research Officers will be amended to
reflect the importance of professional development in each of the following areas:
- ability to contribute to advances in S&T;
- ability to contribute to clients;
- ability to contribute to outreach and influence; and
- ability to contribute to teamwork.
First of all, how are these abilities demonstrated?
Dr. Carty: Perhaps the easiest to measure traditionally would have been contributions to research and development, because that's the traditional role of the scientist and engineer. However, NRC these days is very much in the business of working in partnership with others, principally companies but also universities and other government organizations.
.1600
Scientists and engineers these days have to be involved in outreach to a much greater extent than they would have been in the 1960s or 1970s. They themselves have to be prepared to link up to their colleagues in other organizations, including the private sector. We can measure that by the number of collaborative agreements we have that individuals are working on, their success in transferring technology to the private sector and fostering economic growth, and the number of patents, for example, the number of successful examples where knowledge and technology have been transferred to others. So this is a different view perhaps than one would have seen twenty years ago.
Mr. Schmidt: No doubt. It's very refreshing. I like it very much.
But I'd like to go one step further, if I might. It's one thing to measure the number of patents. We can count those. We can count the number of agreements. My concern is, so what's the result? How much business was generated, for example?
It's one thing to register a patent. It's another thing to get it through the prototype into the production stage. It's another thing to get a company that actually wants to innovate. How do these people actually help that company change or develop a product that is based on the basic research, if you like, or on a new application of an old idea?
Dr. Carty: Let me start off by saying a little bit about the technology transfer process, because I think it's important to understand how this works these days.
The idea used to be that an organization like NRC, a government lab, would develop a technology and then would try to push it out to find a receptor in the private sector when it was more or less developed. On the other hand, companies would try to reach in and find things that were useful to them. That was called the push-pull or linear model of technology transfer.
I think there's a recognition these days that that doesn't work very effectively. The best mechanism of transferring knowledge, ideas, innovations and discoveries is to work closely with companies from the beginning of a project so that they're intimately involved with you in the project. That way, each partner understands what the contributions are, the directions they're going in, and what you need to do in order to get to the final stage of commercialization. So this integration, if you like, this close intermarriage of partners in cooperative agreements and collaborations is crucial.
Of course you can measure how effectively an individual or a group works with the outside world by seeking reviews from clients, and this we use extensively to find out whether in fact these interactions are occurring.
Mr. Schmidt: How would you measure outreach and influence?
Dr. Carty: On outreach, I think one way would be to seek the opinions of companies that have been involved in collaborative research or in consortia with NRC research groups or institutes. You could measure outreach in terms of numbers of contacts, advice sought from companies.
Sorry, what was the other element?
Mr. Schmidt: Influence and outreach. I'm reading from your paper here.
Dr. Carty: We can seek evidence of influence in a number of ways. We've just, for example, contracted with Denzil Doyle, or Doyletech, which is a local entrepreneurial consulting company, to give us a family tree of NRC spin-off companies. They have done a preliminary analysis of this - this was simply within the Ottawa region. They have identified almost 50 companies that had their origins in NRC, and the value of their sales at the present time is $750 million. That's a measure of impact. We can see how people are interacting with companies directly. We can get advice from the sector.
.1605
Mr. Schmidt: Mr. Chairman, I want to commend Dr. Carty for this initiative. That was not an easy question to answer. I'm glad he answered it and I didn't have to. But it's very desirable.
Do I have another question?
The Chairman: We'll catch you on the second round.
Mr. Valeri.
Mr. Valeri (Lincoln): Mr. Chairman, I'll be relatively brief so that other colleagues can ask a question as well.
I want to focus on the NRC's vision to 2001. I have two questions for you. How do we get from the science and technology review that you participated in to a national system of innovation? And what types of things can the industry committee do to facilitate the national system of innovation?
You talk about regional centres and you talk about establishing a coherent national system. Certainly I buy into that philosophy. You demonstrated quite clearly that Mr. Doyle had a lot of success in this area. How do we duplicate what's going on up here throughout the country so that we can compete in a global manner?
Dr. Carty: The question of what makes a techno-entrepreneurial region work is one that a lot of countries are giving a great deal of thought to. An innovation system, as I mentioned previously, is a complex business. R and D and S and T on their own, taken in isolation, will not be as effective in accomplishing economic growth as one in which you maximize the opportunities, for example, for technology transfer to occur between research and development laboratories and industry; in which you have finance in place to finance new enterprises that are formed as a result of technological developments; in which entrepreneurs themselves are given, via appropriate means, advice on how to develop business plans, how to manage a business. All these things have to be brought together.
Government and this committee can play a key role in encouraging and setting the policy that will enable these things to happen. It can help to facilitate these things. It can help to encourage.
A lot of new initiatives are happening around the country. The Royal Bank, for example, in partnership with local organizations in several places including Winnipeg and Kitchener-Waterloo, has established programs called mentorship programs whereby local sources of expertise can be accessed relatively easily by a small to medium enterprise or a new entrepreneur to seek advice on how best to go about business. I think we're only at the beginning of learning how best to do this. But one of the key factors that can be stressed is partnership and collaboration. Without partnerships, innovation systems won't work.
The Chairman: Ian Murray.
Mr. Murray (Lanark - Carleton): Dr. Carty, I'd like to ask you a human resources question. First of all, do you know the average age of your scientific staff at NRC?
Dr. Carty: Can I turn to...?
Ms Pat Mortimer (Corporate Services, National Research Council of Canada): Less than it used to be.
The Chairman: That's a good answer.
Dr. Carty: It certainly is less than it used to be. You probably know that for universities, the maximum in the curve for retirement passes through in the year 2006. I think if you were to plot that in NRC it would be earlier, simply because NRC recruited a very large number of its scientists and engineers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mr. Murray: One of the constant concerns of industrial R and D performers is the need to find qualified engineers and scientists. That's critical in this region. I'm just wondering how you have managed to compete with the private sector, because you're going to need those types of individuals and you're facing budget cuts that profitable corporations aren't necessarily facing. How are you making out?
.1610
Dr. Carty: I think that's a very interesting question. In certain areas - I'll pick one, information technology and telecommunications - as a federal government organization, we are just not competitive with the private sector. In other words, our staff are constantly being asked to join private sector companies, either in Ottawa or in other parts of the world.
One of the few things we have - remember that we've also had salary freeze for three years - at NRC is an outstanding research environment in which we have facilities and people that enable really a state-of-the-art attack on a research problem. Internationally, we're competitive in terms of our environment and our facilities, but in terms of salaries we aren't.
It's a difficult proposition. We've also had discussions, as a result of a technology forecast round table and an innovation forum we've had in Ottawa recently, with local companies such as Mitel and Nortel about the problem of training and recruiting people in the software engineering, information technology, and microelectronics area, because they are also finding it very difficult to attract trained people in these areas. There's such a shortage because of the boom in that part of the economy that they are having to look outside as well for highly qualified persons.
Mr. Murray: I'd like to come back to this idea of regional platforms, which we've touched on a few times already. I'm not referring to local centres contributing to innovation in each locality where you're located. I'm thinking more in terms of what's required to have, say, a research triangle park type of environment.
It's my belief that, essentially, in the Ottawa-Carleton region we already have what's needed. My question is really, I guess, a political one: as a publicly funded operation, if you were to identify, say, a very small number of regions that could benefit from NRC's presence, and this could not be spread across the country evenly, would you see any hope of NRC playing an active role?
We can look to the first question you faced today, for example. When there are cuts in various regions, people notice that and jump on it quite quickly. But if it's true that Canada can only have so many of those regional centres, then what role can NRC play, say outside of the Ottawa-Carleton region, where they already have a very large presence?
Dr. Carty: I think it's true that a physical presence, in other words a building, does help with local community innovation. There's no question about that. There are some good examples of our where our institutes have really helped: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, St. John's.
I don't think, though, that this is essential. These days, with outstanding communications abilities and with a program such as the industrial research assistance program, you can open a gateway in many communities in Canada to the whole of NRC. In other words, you don't have to have the physical building doing research in that community to be able to access the R and D resources or the services that the National Research Council can provide.
Mr. Murray: So it could be based on the presence of a university or a private enterprise that's doing -
Dr. Carty: We have IRAP in 90 communities across Canada. IRAP is a part of NRC, so an IRAP presence can actually deliver the expertise and the resources that we have in our institutes to any part of the country where we have an office.
Mr. Murray: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: The second round.
[Translation]
Mr. Leblanc, you have five minutes.
Mr. Leblanc: I have a question for Dr. Carty. It seems that the federal government has decided to cut its $7.5 million contribution to the Tokamak project, which it funded in partnership with Hydro Quebec.
.1615
But we're dealing with a very important source of energy. In the past, over $70 million were invested in the infrastructure to support this kind of research. It's hard to understand why the federal government eliminated its $7.5 million grant for this new fusion energy project. I don't know if you can give me the reasons for this, but I'd like to know what you think.
Dr. Carty: If you are referring to the federal government's infrastructure program, the National Research Council doesn't have a say in those decisions. We don't have a lot of influence in that program. Decisions are taken elsewhere. It's true that, in some cases, there were contributions under the federal infrastructure program for cooperative research programs involving the NRC and a company or perhaps a town, but if you are referring to the infrastructure program per se, we did not have a say in the matter.
Mr. Leblanc: I'm not referring to the infrastructure program, but to the Varennes Fusion Research Centre.
Dr. Carty: I understand, but the council does not have any fusion research program. Such programs were funded by Hydro Quebec, Hydro Ontario and CANMET, I believe. It's unfortunate that the program was cut. I think it was simply a question of priorities. But the NRC was not involved in that decision.
Mr. Leblanc: Are you responsible for the IRNS, the Institut national de recherche scientifique?
Dr. Carty: No.
Mr. Leblanc: You are not in charge of it?
Dr. Carty: No.
Mr. Leblanc: Thank you.
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt: I'd like to let my colleague ask questions. I'll follow up.
The Chairman: Fine.
Mr. Mayfield (Cariboo - Chilcotin): I add my expression of appreciation to you, Dr. Carty, and to your colleagues for being here for this most interesting conversation this afternoon.
As we talk about the direction in which the NRC is going, I'd like to ask you what the reality for cost recovery for the NRC is.
Dr. Carty: As you've obviously noted, we generate substantial revenue from services, contracts, and cooperative agreements.
It has been our policy that, wherever possible, we will charge the full cost of our services to the private sector. Until this year we haven't been able to do that in our relationships with other government departments, but when we provide a service it is our policy to try to recover the full cost of the service.
Mr. Mayfield: Is it your intention to move that into the area of recovering it from other government departments, as well?
Dr. Carty: We have what we call contribution agreements with other government departments, whereby a proportion of the total cost of the real costs has been reimbursed. This has been a general agreement between other government agencies, other government organizations, and NRC - and between other government agencies and departments themselves.
As a result of the program review exercise, we clearly could not support everything we had been doing previously. We lost $76 million over three years in substantial budget cuts. First of all, this meant we had to take a strategic view of what we did best. We then had to try to make decisions about what was important for Canada and where we could best make our contribution.
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In the strategic planning exercise that we undertook - this exercise took place over a period of several months - we decided to focus on five technology areas: manufacturing technologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and telecommunications, construction technologies, and another group called infra-technologies, which would include ocean engineering, aerospace and national measurement standards.
In that exercise, some research programs at NRC, which were themselves excellent, did not fit into the program. We therefore had to devise a strategy that would either provide them with an opportunity to continue under a different structure, or discontinue them. Where there was evidence that there was a strong interest outside of NRC - in other words, in the industrial sector - or where there was a demonstrated public need for the research, what we have decided to do is create technology centres and provide funding on a declining basis over a period of five years in order to give them the opportunity to see whether or not they can become self-financing. So this is an exercise in which we've said we could eliminate this completely or, alternatively, we can provide an opportunity for an excellent program with the clientele to demonstrate that the clientele will support it.
For these technology centres, we have given them five years of phase-out funding on a declining basis. There is evidence that some of these centres are doing very well; they've met their targets and are being very entrepreneurial about it. So it's an experiment that is going quite well so far.
Mr. Mayfield: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Did you want to quit? You certainly have more time that you can give to Mr. Schmidt, if you wish.
Mr. Schmidt, go ahead.
Mr. Schmidt: Because I think we're just about out of time here now, I'd like to refer to a narrow area. It has to do with CISTI.
I spent just a brief period of time at Winnipeg and last year at your establishment here in Ottawa. I noticed the whole concept of converting from the paper, black-and-white type thing and committing to this digital, electronic communication back and forth between centres. What struck me at the Winnipeg centre was the rather large section that accommodates the CISTI part, when in fact there are very few books there.
When we move into the electronic accessing mechanism, of getting info-technology to a central network or a central data bank, what is the plan? Is it to change the accommodation? How can you actually get this information out to each individual researcher's computer rather than having it in one place? You don't do that any more. There seems to be, on the one hand, a thrust to go to the electronic route, yet over here we have this facility that looks like an old-time library.
Dr. Carty: I think it would only be fair to say that the move to what we are calling the virtual library is a relatively recent one. We visited the institute in Winnipeg, which I believe was a traditional library until some time ago. It is being converted to the virtual library, and you are indeed quite right - in the future, with information delivery to the desktop, in principle you should not need the space to store books. It will ultimately require a few work stations, perhaps in a room that would be considered a small resource centre, or indeed it would even pass directly to the desktops of individual researchers.
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The concept of the virtual library, in which there are no books, is certainly appropriate for the 21st century. I point out, though, that does mean you have a central source of documentation that is comprehensive.
Mr. Schmidt: Absolutely. I'm not denying that.
Dr. Carty: Otherwise it isn't going to work.
Mr. Schmidt: Precisely.
It's this exactly, Mr. Chairman, that I'd like to commend the NRC for doing - getting into that virtual library - but I'd like also now to ask the extended question, which goes into the universities.
We have so many universities, each one of which prides itself on its library, and there has to be an awful lot of duplication. Would they tie into this virtual library and this data bank you have established with senior research information? A lot of these universities have senior researchers, I'm sure, who are on contract with you. Could they also be integrated into this? Would that not help both NRC and its cost structure as well as the universities and their cost structure, and still make available information that is probably at a higher level and more readily accessible than is the case with the traditional book library?
Dr. Carty: Well, that is beginning to happen. We have at this very moment, for example, an agreement with the recteur des Universités du Québec and CISTI. We're about to sign an agreement that will in fact provide some CISTI services to all the universities in Quebec.
Mr. Schmidt: That's super.
The Chairman: Mr. Lastewka.
Mr. Lastewka (St. Catharines): I do want to thank you for appearing in front of the committee to make us all more knowledgeable.
My first question is along the line Mr. Leblanc was heading. When I first went through figure 18 and chart 20, it showed me that we're buying, constructing and building something like $15 million worth of buildings and stuff. Is that correct or is that incorrect?
Dr. Carty: I just have to find the pages.
Mr. Lastewka: In the English book it's figure 18 on page 59. Construction and acquisition of land, buildings and works went from $15 million to $22.7 million. On page 61, figure 20, renovations or extensions went from $14 million to $22 million.
Dr. Carty: We have a regular program at NRC to maintain and renovate buildings. That is part of our major capital plan. We do it consistently and we have a budget for it. Also, in the past year we completed the building of a facility in British Columbia, a new institute: the Institute for Sensor and Control Research.
There are no doubt a number of other projects of this sort, which Mr. Proulx can tell you about.
Mr. Proulx: Yes. For instance, in the last few years we have been spending a fair amount of money on upgrading our facilities from the safety and health point of view, particularly in the Sussex Drive building. It's a 75-year-old, or probably now 80-year-old, facility that needed a lot of infrastructure work.
We also have some facilities such as the Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal. We have been spending more money down there on renovating some of the space to accommodate more companies that want to collaborate with the Biotechnology Research Institute.
We have also spent moneys at IMI in Boucherville, again, to be able to accommodate industry. There's more training and collaboration going on with different companies, and more facilities are being required to accommodate those organizations.
There's also, as I believe Dr. Carty mentioned, the building renewal program. This year alone we are going to spend somewhere close to $5 million on retrofitting two of our buildings, one in particular, the measurements standards building, being such that because of the sensitivity of the equipment and the temperature controls it requires that we redo the entire skin of the building so they can have a better control of humidity and temperature, which have an impact on their equipment and experiments.
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There's another facility we are retrofitting as a result of contracts that were secured with industry. I believe it's in the aeronautical industry. In order to proceed with some of those contracts we have to renovate some of our facilities to make them competitive.
Also, some of our renovations are dedicated to reducing our operating costs for energy by retrofitting some of our labs.
Mr. Lastewka: I want to go back to the discussion we had on the IRAP. You mentioned there are ITAs in ninety communities and so forth. Are we having more SMEs involved? I noticed on one of the charts that 81% of the SMEs under fifty employees...that's where your main thrust has been.
I'm trying to get an indication of whether we're helping more SMEs. Are SMEs that are coming on board knowledgeable about your organization? How do they get that knowledge?
Dr. Carty: I believe there's a general recognition that much of the economic growth and job creation in Canada occurs through small and medium enterprises, and much of that with companies that have less than fifty employees.
As far as IRAP is concerned, I can give you some numbers. In one recent year we funded 3,500 projects with small and medium enterprises. We answered something on the order of 12,000 inquiries from companies and provided advice on technology to those companies.
I believe the ITAs do an extremely thorough job of contacting in their regions and areas all the companies that have the potential for accessing advice from the NRC, through IRAP, or that perhaps have a need for some support of one type or another.
Mr. Lastewka: How would we find out in a certain region the contacts you're having with SMEs or vice versa? The ITA who works in my region: how would I know him or her? How do companies get to know them?
Dr. Carty: Certainly the IRAP network is pretty well known. You must understand that although this an NRC program, most of the ITAs, the industrial technology advisers, do not work for NRC. They work for other organizations under contribution agreements. So our ITA and IRAP officers will be in universities, provincial research organizations, industrial associations. You could ring up any organization that was associated with research in one way or another and they would tell you how to contact the local IRAP representative.
On the other question, we do keep those statistics. If you are interested we could provide them.
Mr. Lastewka: Do you do exchange programs between NRC and industry, back and forth?
Dr. Carty: Yes, indeed we do. It's not mentioned in this vision statement per se, but we have a new program for secondments to industry. We're encouraging that interchange of people.
The Chairman: Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt: My question has to do with another piece of information about this document here, the example of NRC performance. It's on the fourth page.
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I was very interested in the graph in the right-hand column, entitled ``Distribution of IRAP Clients by Industrial Sector''. If I am reading correctly, the horizontal axis is the number of clients and the vertical axis is the particular business sector. It strikes me that the number of clients would be the number of, if you like, individual applications for IRAP and things of that sort. Would that be a correct interpretation?
Dr. Carty: Yes. I don't think this simply represents clients that have received funding; it would be clients who also received technology advice, because of significant -
Mr. Schmidt: Sure. I understand. My interpretation is that it would be ITAs, IRAP, and a variety of other things, being in that industrial advice function.
My question is not so much on the number of clients as on the total amounts invested here. It's one thing to compare agriculture, which is primarily a small business sector...and going all the way down to the bottom, which has to do with paper, if I read it correctly. It's kind of small. There aren't very many small paper manufacturers. These would be one or two big ones.
How would this graph look if you compared it in terms of dollars?
Dr. Carty: There's another one in here. It's on page 51 of the blue book. But it is quite different.
In terms of paper, of course one of the reasons for that - you're quite right - is that in the pulp and paper area most of the companies are large, so they don't qualify for IRAP support.
Mr. Schmidt: Exactly.
I like the reference to page 51. A person just doesn't have time to get through all this, but I really like that comparison. I wonder if in the future it might be useful to put those two graphs side by side. I think it would give you a very interesting comparison.
In parallel to Mr. Lastewka's question, it really has to do with the SMEs and the lending, making available to these businesses certain capital through loans. It would be very interesting to compare these numbers with those.
In that particular comparison, for the last quarter of 1995 the agricultural sector becomes the single big sector there, as well. So the sums spent here in agriculture do not compare directly with those in that group, yet in terms of numbers of clients served it's far ahead of all the others.
So there's a very interesting relationship here that it might be useful to explore.
Ms Brown (Oakville - Milton): We're really happy to have you here.
I suppose every city in Canada would like to have you there. That's the root of my question, as you are funded by taxpayers across the country. Of course, in an earlier time, when buildings and spacial things were more important than they are today in the world of technology we live in, it's only natural that you would have grown up around the national capital region. Of course we're leaving that era, as you point out in some of your documents.
I wanted to tie what you're doing in to the idea of supercities being the big players in the global economy and the idea of supercities trying to identify and cluster types of technologies in order to have a sort of launching-pad into the world for competitive products.
What portion of the budget do you spend in the national capital region? What percentage of the collaborative arrangements that you have with companies is for companies in the national capital region? What percentage of licensed technologies is licensed to firms in the national capital region?
My bottom line is, how much are you spending in the Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara area, which is known as the Golden Horseshoe, which, with the downgrading of manufacturing in our economy, is a place that is suffering, but which has highly skilled human resources and the need for an injection of something, which you people might be able to provide?
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Dr. Carty: In answer to your first question, if you consider the totality of NRC expenditures, of the research programs plus IRAP, CISTI, and the Canadian Technology Network, 50% of our expenditures are in the national capital region.
Ms Brown: That's not bad.
Dr. Carty: You have to understand that our administrative centre is in Ottawa, and in fact if you divorce IRAP from that picture and just consider the remaining expenditures, 70% of the expenditures are in the national capital region.
That is to a large extent historic because the NRC began here and while some institutes have been decentralized to other areas and some new ones have been built, in many cases it actually makes a great deal of sense to have infrastructure in a central place where its value can be maximized. There are a number of issues in this.
In response to the last question about the golden triangle, I am afraid I don't have the numbers here. Incidentally, the investment in the rest of Ontario compared to the national capital region is relatively modest. I think somewhere between $25 million and $29 million is spent in the rest of Ontario outside the national capital region. That includes IRAP.
Ms Brown: To go back to this concept of the supercities as global players, I'm thinking in terms of just one example that was raised today, the renovation of the wind tunnels or something for the aerospace industry. If you have wind tunnels that aren't good enough any more, why would you renovate them here when the aerospace industry is centered.... Well, it's not centered anywhere, but it's present in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. Wouldn't that be a perfect chance to do some decentralization and get some...?
To me, it isn't the buildings as much as it is the personnel. I know that when I'm trying to encourage my small-business people to develop more towards exporting, their problem is that they don't know the people to phone to get help from. It would seem to me that the same thing is true in science.
One of the reasons Ottawa-Carleton has done so well in the modern, knowledge-based technologies and has developed this community of businesses is that you people are here. They can just pick up the phone and ask what to do next or ask you to come out to see them to talk things over. I don't know if you'd go out to see them, but I assume there's a certain amount of to and fro.
That's why I'd like to have some of your people who are experts in a certain field moved to the places where the human resources are skilled in that area, rather than having everything happen here. I want to move the people, not the buildings. You could use aerospace as an example. Or you could use biotechnology as an example. That's another thing we do a lot of in Toronto. I'd like to have some of that moved. For example, we're very worried about Montreal's economy. We're not worried about Ottawa's.
Dr. Carty: As you know, most of biotechnology activity is outside of the national capital region. It's in Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg and Saskatoon.
Ms Brown: It's coming. I realize that. But are you open to every opportunity that comes along to spin some of the taxpayers' money out of the capital and back to where it comes from?
Dr. Carty: That's a difficult question.
Mr. Lastewka: You might want to ask the minister.
Dr. Carty: It would be popular in some corners, but not very popular in others.
In the particular case of aerospace, in actual fact I don't think that is.... The fact that we have wind tunnels in Ottawa and the aerospace industry is in Toronto or Montreal hasn't affected our interaction with Pratt & Whitney or de Havilland or Orenda or Bombardier. In fact, they're all excellent clients of ours and they use our facilities extensively. Pratt & Whitney has a facility on our campus.
Ms Brown: Their headquarters are in Montreal. They have come here to be close to you. I don't know if that's quite suitable. You didn't mention my aerospace company either -
Dr. Carty: I'm sorry.
Ms Brown: - in Oakville, Ontario. I'm asking why they should have to come to you. Why shouldn't you be building - or if you're renovating something - right where they are?
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Dr. Carty: Well, I suppose the answer is that if we were starting from scratch with an institute for aerospace research, the decision of where it would be located might be quite different these days than it was when it was built many years ago. Wind tunnels are not inexpensive facilities. It's a much better investment for the federal government and for research and development to keep those wind tunnels in close to state-of-the-art condition here in Ottawa than it is to consider setting up a completely new facility in another area.
Ms Brown: I just picked that as an example, but you get my thesis, Mr. Chairman. It's the idea that the tax dollars pour in to support this.
I notice that B.C. is not doing too badly with $19 million in its TRIUMF program. I have been searching these documents looking for the taxpayers of the Golden Horseshoe to see what they are getting out of it. I'm sure some of them are tapping in through the Internet and they probably have a -
Dr. Carty: The Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute was specifically to be re-established in southwestern Ontario because that is where the industry is. It was a conscious move to move it out of Ottawa.
Ms Brown: Which industry?
Dr. Carty: Advanced manufacturing.
Ms Brown: I know the institute and I can't imagine locating it in London, which is not an industrial centre that could compete in any way with Hamilton-Toronto. It's a small city not known for manufacturing. It's known for insurance companies and a university.
Dr. Carty: They do have some large companies there. GM Diesel is there. Siemens is there. Those are not trivial.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I'll go to Mr. Ianno.
Mr. Ianno (Trinity - Spadina): Leading off on what NRC is doing, I know that you tie research institutions in with industry. What are you doing to work on the basis of giving moneys and grants to the various universities and ensuring from a business perspective that if commercialization hits, NSERC gets a return or a royalty or something of that nature?
Dr. Carty: Are you specifically referring to NRC or NSERC? NRC is not responsible primarily for grants to universities. NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, was spun off from NRC in 1978. They have the responsibility for funding university research, not NRC. We do collaborate with NSERC; in fact we announced a new program with them, a joint industry-university-NRC-NSERC program, only a few weeks ago. But that's not our principal mandate.
Mr. Ianno: With NRC what are you doing on the commercialization end?
Dr. Carty: We license our technology and we require royalty payments in the event that it's fully commercialized and -
Mr. Ianno: Is there a standardized approach?
Dr. Carty: Yes.
Mr. Ianno: So every contract -
Dr. Carty: We don't give anything away.
Mr. Ianno: Okay, and right now you're at $35 million on the return?
Dr. Carty: The $35 million is in revenues. This year in terms of royalties alone, I believe we have about $1.5 million in revenues from licences.
Mr. Ianno: What percentage is that - 0.005% or 0.02? What is that?
Dr. Carty: As a percentage?
Mr. Ianno: Yes, of the moneys you give out.
Dr. Carty: We don't give out money in the same way that NSERC does, so it's difficult to make that comparison. Our research is mostly -
Mr. Ianno: Is it in partnership with industry at all?
Dr. Carty: It's in partnership intramurally; it's done in-house.
Mr. Ianno: What I'm asking is when you do the partnership with the private sector.... Right now you have $1.5 million in royalties.
Dr. Carty: It is simply in licences.
Mr. Ianno: Are you doing anything to maximize that so that we're starting to see the potential of real dollars so that you're self-sustaining in the end?
Dr. Carty: Yes. This is part of our entrepreneurship program. We have recognized that government laboratories in general in the past have not been particularly entrepreneurial. There have been discoveries, inventions and developments that have never seen the light of day.
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There are a number of things we can do to help that. First of all -
Mr. Ianno: Could do, or are doing?
Dr. Carty: We are doing.
Mr. Ianno: Okay.
Dr. Carty: One is to encourage both individual and institutional entrepreneurship - that is, to encourage individuals to take every opportunity to transfer their knowledge and technology.
Mr. Ianno: Does your association then get the money back in some form, or is it the individual that works there?
Dr. Carty: We're doing a number of things. First of all, we try to encourage individuals to think about technology transfer and entrepreneurial technology transfer.
Secondly, we are establishing relationships with venture capital organizations, and particularly the Business Development Bank of Canada, in order to have a mechanism whereby NRC can, at arm's length, in a purely above-board, legal way, hold equity in companies that are spun off as a result of things that are developed in the government.
Mr. Ianno: Is that a standardized format?
Dr. Carty: No, that's completely new. We've just started in the last -
Mr. Ianno: Did you hire a business person to look at and deal with that, or is it still being done by the scientists?
Dr. Carty: No, we have had discussions with the Business Development Bank about equity. We do have a substantial number of business people in the NRC. In every one of our institutes there are two or three business liaison people.
Mr. Ianno: Because of the funds being tight in government and because we believe in science and research and basic research, what I'm curious about and what I would like to see is what is being done in such a way that it will succeed so that in effect you are achieving more returns from some of the technological developments that are taking place. Is there a sort of mindset, almost a section in your department, where it's a constant thought process so that in effect we are getting the best bang for our dollar on the return and more dollars that you can use again?
What I'm finding is that I've been sitting on this committee for two and a half years now and talking whenever you've come forward, and I continue to ask the questions but not much appears to be changing, although the terminology seems to be changing. I wonder if there is anything else that could be done to achieve that end result that possibly you're not doing.
Dr. Carty: Well, I can assure you that NRC is taking every opportunity to recoup on its investments. In fact, it's very important to do this because we recognize that our success is going to measured by people in terms of the impact we have on the growth of companies, the technologies that become useful to Canada.
We want a return on our investment. Licences are one solution; we've been doing that. We have an intellectual property office that does work for not just NRC but other government agencies. We have initiated this new initiative on entrepreneurial spin-offs. The idea of holding equity is something that is relatively new for a government agency.
We have not had an insubstantial impact. We are generating substantial revenue and our licence and royalty income is increasing. I would like to tell you that within a year it will have doubled.
Mr. Ianno: From $1.5 million to $3 million.
Dr. Carty: Yes, but over the short term that might be difficult. I think over the next few years you will see NRC having a significant impact on technology transfer -
Mr. Ianno: I guess I like the thought process of seeing it as important. What I'm hoping for is that you may see the need, possibly, to somehow add to your staff someone who is more entrepreneurial, who will not see $1.5 million to $3 million as substantial but will see it maybe eventually to $30 million, to $60 million, to $100 million. That is what I consider substantial. I know it's hard to achieve. We know it's basic research, we understand all of that. But we also know the good work you do and the potential that could be achieved if structured properly. That's what I'm suggesting, from my perspective as a member of Parliament.
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Dr. Carty: I think you're underestimating how businesslike NRC is these days, and how many marketing and business people we have in our organization. Every one of our institutes has marketing and business people. Centrally, we have business people. The idea of marketing what we do is no longer foreign to the organization.
Mr. Ianno: Thank you very much.
Dr. Carty: They're part of our everyday operation.
The Chairman: Why don't you take us through until five o'clock, Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt: I had two questions. I wanted to check what proportion of your work is basic research.
Dr. Carty: That's a difficult question. I'd like to answer it by pointing out that there is a spectrum of activities in the R and D frame, and it varies from a very basic search for knowledge activity, which is mainly the regime of the universities, and development, which is very much the domain of firms and companies.
NRC is involved across that spectrum, but most of our activity we would describe as medium to long-term strategic research, where we work in partnership with others to fill this gap in between industry and the university community. So we're building a bridge, if you like. We're actually carrying out highly relevant research, which would have a component of basic understanding, because you can't operate, you can't really have an impact, if you don't understand the fundamentals of the research field you're working in.
Mr. Schmidt: Absolutely.
Dr. Carty: In an area like micro-electronics or opto-electronics we would have to participate in generating the fundamental knowledge.
To give you a ballpark figure, we generally think of about 35% of our activity being in the knowledge base, 55% being in the strategic research area, which is so crucial to Canada because it's missing in many large countries, and about 15% to 20% in what could be called pure development. That's the division.
Mr. Schmidt: It really leads up to the question I had in reading through the publication part of your enterprise where you actually generate publications. I was surprised that it was in here at all, because I didn't realize that as large a proportion of your research is actually basic research. I was under the impression that this had been the mandate of NRC, but that it was shifting very much in the area of strategic and developmental, that more was happening in those two areas than 35%. Virtually one-third or better than one-third is in basic research. So it really asks.... Go ahead.
Dr. Carty: I would like to point out that the work we do is very focused. We are not in the business of a scatter-gun approach to research where everybody makes an effort to do what they want to do. That's not the way we function. We have focused our efforts in certain key technology areas where we can make most of an impact.
Mr. Schmidt: No, I understand that from your list of five before. But that still requires basic research, absolutely.
Dr. Carty: It still requires you to understand the areas to improve.
Mr. Schmidt: Clearly. So it's your estimate, as director of this agency, if you like, of government, that as much as one-third or better is required to understand the basic science in each of those areas.
Dr. Carty: It would very much depend on whether it was science or engineering. The component of basic understanding would be considerably less in an engineering institute than it would be in a biotechnology institute.
Let me give you an example. In Montreal we have a biotechnology research institute that is looking at working very closely with the pharmaceutical sector to develop new drugs, new biopharmaceuticals. In order to do that and to be a player in that area, which is long-term work, you have to understand the fundamental nature at the molecular level of what the disease is doing, how it works. That means you have to be prepared to invest in fundamental knowledge generation to play in that game at all.
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Mr. Schmidt: I quite agree.
Dr. Carty: The companies understand this.
Mr. Schmidt: Of course they do; some of them do. And the university seems ideally suited for that.
I guess the real question is are you duplicating at the basic research level the work the universities might be doing, or more importantly, that the universities could do better or more efficiently for dollars spent?
Dr. Carty: I would say there would be very few areas in which we would be duplicating university research. There would be areas in which we do complementary work and numerous instances in which the university and NRC would work together jointly on a problem.
Mr. Schmidt: If that comes to publication, who publishes, you or the university?
Dr. Carty: Well, hopefully we both publish it.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, Dr. Carty, I thank you and your colleagues, Mr. Séguin, Mr. Proulx, and Ms Mortimer, for coming in. It has been very helpful. You can tell by the interest of the committee your work is of ongoing interest to members of the industry committee. There were lots of good questions. We hope to follow your work and we hope you will be very successful in your research and keep funding that Winnipeg institute to the highest level possible. That's for the official record.
Dr. Carty: I offer an invitation. We'd like to offer you the opportunity to visit the National Research Council in Ottawa or in your own constituency, if you'd like to.
The Chairman: I've been there in Winnipeg, for sure. Thank you for the offer.
To members of the committee, as the witnesses leave, I have some organizational details, if you don't mind. Because of some changes in what we thought we could accomplish in early May, I'm going to read a motion very quickly and then ask for discussion.
The motion is that it is agreed that the following scheduled meetings be adopted.... The first is that Statistics Canada be asked to reappear during the week of May 6. I wasn't here, but apparently in my absence there were many questions for Statistics Canada and a desire to see them again.
Then in the same week the Competition Bureau should be asked to appear. The Competition Bureau deals with issues such as the gasoline issue, as someone mentioned to me, or the Hollinger Inc. newspaper issue in Saskatchewan. So we'll schedule them that week and we'll schedule Statistics Canada to come back.
Mr. Ianno: That doesn't affect the banks.
The Chairman: No.
Then the motion is that during the week of May 13 to 17 the Canadian Bankers Association complete their work with the subcommittee dealing with access to capital. That's the one that's being chaired informally by Alex Shepard.
I've called the banks. They're not convinced they're ready but I'm convinced they should be ready, so we've told them we'd like to meet with them and to get ready for the subcommittee, and they'll be asked to appear before the full committee on May 28 and 29.
Mr. Ianno: How do we get on the subcommittee?
The Chairman: Check with Alex. It's an informal subcommittee.
Any other member of the committee who wishes to do it, once they accept the date, please check with Alex Shepherd. The clerk should also know, or, obviously, my office.
Next is that the Secretary of State for Western Economic Diversification be asked to appear on May 30. He was asked to appear earlier and that wasn't possible, so he will appear on May 30. That changes that date.
The one other group, Mr. Leblanc, concerns the aerospace industry. I have asked Bonnie Brown, but have not followed up on it, to meet with members of the opposition parties to see about any ideas they have on how to look at the aerospace industry and defence conversion industry. That was an issue that was originally mentioned in our steering committee meeting on April 19.
I'll ask Bonnie to phone you, Mr. Schmidt, and Nic will be a colleague of yours who's interested.
Ms Brown: It was Mr. Ménard who suggested it.
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The Chairman: Bonnie, why don't you call those two people, and through the clerk we'll set up translation.
Mr. Leblanc: Okay.
The Chairman: Tony, you'll be a representative too. You'll be the fourth person there, please.
So the four of you will meet and discuss interests and bring ideas back to the general committee. We'll proceed from there.
The Clerk of the Committee: It would be an informal group.
The Chairman: It would be an informal group, but through the clerk so there will be proper translation.
Mr. Mayfield: Will we be meeting with the CTC this spring?
Mr. Schmidt: The Canadian Tourist Commission.
The Chairman: They're on the -
Mr. Schmidt: They were supposed to report.
The Chairman: They're supposed to report. That again was an idea that was accepted by the committee. If no date has been scheduled, then we'll do it in early June. I want to meet.
Mr. Schmidt: Yes, we should meet.
The Chairman: Yes. Absolutely. I'm sorry if the Canadian Tourist Commission is not on the schedule. If I remember correctly from our discussions, this is their first public report.
I'm in favour of that, and I'm sorry if it hasn't been done already. It'll be done in early June.
This meeting stands adjourned.