Harper Government Kick-Starts Canadian Entrepreneurs in Alberta

Government of Canada/Public Works — July 26, 2012

CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - July 26, 2012) - The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism (Calgary Southeast), on behalf of the Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, is pleased to announce that the Government of Canada will partner with Canadian entrepreneurs from the Alberta region to buy and test two new innovations through the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program (CICP).

"Our Government's top priority is the economy and we understand that helping Canadian businesses expand and succeed directly benefits Canadian workers and families by creating jobs and prosperity," said Minister Ambrose. "By supporting new Canadian innovations, we are helping these businesses take one step closer to success in domestic and international markets."

Successful businesses will see their new innovative products and services put to use within government departments, and will benefit from valuable, real-world feedback from users.

"We are proud to help kick-start Canadian businesses to get their innovative products and services from the lab to the marketplace," said Minister Kenney.

As part of the third round of CICP, two regional innovations have pre-qualified: NovAtel Inc., GAJT-700ML; Userful Corporation, SideSeat.

Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) will work to match new innovations with the right departments to test them. This will facilitate moving Canadian innovations into domestic and international markets, while at the same time helping the Government of Canada serve Canadians in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Launched in 2010, the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program has already shown encouraging results, connecting Canadian companies with federal departments and agencies that have a need for new products and services. By selling to the federal government, businesses can demonstrate the value of their products and services, and potentially generate future sales to non-federal customers.

To build on the early success of this program, Economic Action Plan 2012 allocated an additional $95 million over three years, starting in 2013-14, and $40 million per year thereafter to make the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program permanent. The program will include an added military procurement component.

For the complete list of the successful innovations, please refer to the backgrounder.

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PWGSC news releases are also available on our Internet site at http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/medias-media/index-eng.html.

BACKGROUNDER

Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program

As a part of the Economic Action Plan, the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program (CICP) was created to bolster innovation in Canada's business sector, and was designed to help companies bridge the pre-commercialization gap for their innovative products and services by:

awarding contracts to entrepreneurs with pre-commercial innovations through an open, transparent, competitive and fair procurement process;
testing products or services and providing feedback to entrepreneurs on their performance;
providing innovators with the opportunity to enter the marketplace with a successful application of their new products and services; and
providing information on how to do business with the Government of Canada.

CICP targets innovations in four priority areas:

environment;
safety and security;
health; and
enabling technologies.

CICP has two complementary components. The first identifies Canadian innovations to test within federal operations in order to support businesses as they move their innovations to commercialization. The second builds on current efforts by the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises (OSME) to improve small and medium enterprises' (SME) access to federal procurement activities, and enables companies to showcase innovative products and services to potential government users.

Public Works and Governments Services Canada (PWGSC) continues to work with all stakeholders to ensure that SMEs receive the vital government support needed to thrive in today's evolving economy.

OSME, through its network of headquarters operations and six regional offices, assists SMEs as they navigate through the government procurement system. It is strengthening access to government business for SMEs by collaborating with industry associations and individual businesses on training, providing information, developing support tools, and recommending procurement policy changes. OSME is also working with SMEs to identify and pursue opportunities that encourage the introduction of innovative products and services to the marketplace.

Here is a list of the pre-qualified innovations the Government of Canada may buy and test through the Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program

Business Name	Innovation Name	City	Province
Adventure Lights Inc.	BATTERY HARVESTER	Beaconsfield	Quebec
Allen-Vanguard Corporation Inc.	M-SDF- Universal Surface Decontaminant	Ottawa	Ontario
Clearpath Robotics Inc.	Kingfisher M200 USV	Kitchener	Ontario
COM DEV International Ltd.	4th Generation Coax T-Switch used in Satellite RF Communications	Cambridge	Ontario
Corvus Energy Ltd.	CorePower Cargo Loader	Richmond	British Columbia
Denovo-Nutrition Inc.	Ultrasol	Saint-Agapit	Quebec
D-TA Systems Inc.	Ultra-Wideband RF Scanner and Recorder	Ottawa	Ontario
ECO Bug Doctor Inc.	Good Knight Self-Sterilizing Beds	Dorval	Quebec
Institut National d'Optique	SR-BioSpectra: Standoff biological threat detection	Quebec City	Quebec
KDM Analytics Inc.	Threat Risk Analysis (TRA) workbench and method for evidence-driven security assessments	Ottawa	Ontario
Magor Communications Corporation	5.0.0	Ottawa	Ontario
MDA Systems Ltd.	SeaView	Richmond	British Columbia
MDA Systems Ltd.	Canadian All-Source Intelligence Exploitation System (CASES)	Richmond	British Columbia
Met-Scan Canada Ltd.	TagStream	Toronto	Ontario
Notus Electronics Ltd.	Notus Net Sounder System (NNSS)	St. John's	Newfoundland and Labrador
NovAtel Inc.	GAJT-700ML	Calgary	Alberta
Ondine Biomedical Inc.	MRSAid	Vancouver	British Columbia
Photon etc.	Imageur Raman Hyperspectral	Montréal	Quebec
SideStix Ventures Inc.	SideStix High Performance Forearm Crutches	Sechelt	British Columbia
Userful Corporation	SideSeat	Calgary	Alberta