Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
Industry by Vanguard Staff I A first buyer of Canadian innovation Diane Finley began her term as Minister of Public Works and Government Services where Rona Ambrose left off. In one of her final addresses to the defence and aerospace sector before this summer's Cabinet shuffle, Ambrose used WestDef in July to highlight the expansion of the Canadian Innovation Commercialization pilot program into the permanent Build in Canada Innovation Program. In early October, Finley arrived at the Best Defence II conference, hosted by the London Economic Development Corporation and CADSI, with a similar message: "We want to make it easier than ever for Canadian innovation to germinate and grow. We want to make it easier for great ideas in the lab or on the shop floor here in Canada to become great products for the world to buy." She addressed the slow progress of defence acquisition and asserted some of the principles of "smart" procurement, including an effort to engage industry expertise at the "beginning of the procurement process." But her main focus was the value of the BICIP, which received a three-year investment of $95 million in Budget 2012 and a commitment of $40 million per year thereafter. Although the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises is still completing due diligence as it moves the program from pilot to permanent, and has yet to launch the military component, Finley spoke to the goal of making government a first user of innovative pre-commercialized products that fit department and agency needs. "We recognize that a contract with the government can give a company the legitimacy they need to break into a new market," she said, highlighting the recent success of Waterloo's Aeryon Labs, which has seen Canadian Armed Forces' use of its remotely operated Aeryon Scout attract interest from U.S. Special Forces and other militaries. She also emphasized leveraging defence procurement, suggesting that the use of value propositions in RFPs, guided by a set of key industrial capabilities, "would provide us with the opportunity to signal to potential bidders the specific economic outcomes that we want to achieve through a given procurement. This may include asking bidders to make commitments to improve, invest or contribute to Canadian industry through things like technology transfer, intellectual property, job creation, export development opportunities or access to supply chains." "In plain language, we're going to look more carefully at what we can do to encourage Canadian business growth and innovation by focusing on maintaining and encouraging a strong defence industry in Canada." If the minister's message was about building and buying in Canada, much of the remainder of the conference dealt with the means and lessons of taking products to foreign markets. From the Canadian Commercial Corporation, to Export Development Canada, the Global Business Opportunities unit at Foreign Affairs and the International and Industry Programs at DND, officials shared the resources available to help Canadian companies take that next step. As Ken Yamashita of General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada noted in introducing the first panel, "to grow, you have to export." There were some important lessons for SMEs. Dominic Burt of Armatec Survivability described the importance of understanding a country's procurement process and the opportunities (or not) for influencing the "solution space." As Chris Poole, who leads GDLS-C's business in Latin America, observed, it can be like "a knife fight in a phone booth – it's not always a fair fight." www.vanguardcanada.com DECEMBER 2013/JANUARY 2014 21