[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/mip_emerson.jpg” caption=”Pictured at the site of the new McMaster Innovation Park, from left, are government house leader Tony Valeri, Liberal candidate Bill Kelly, vice-president, research and international affairs Mamdouh Shoukri, industry minister David Emerson, McMaster Innovation Park senior advisor Nick Markettos, and Liberal candidate Javid Mirza. Photo credit: Glenn Lawson”]Federal industry minister David Emerson visited the McMaster Innovation Park Thursday — where Ottawa is relocating its special materials technology laboratory — to hear more about the Longwood Road South facility from McMaster University officials.

More than 100 of the best materials scientists in Canada are relocating from Ottawa to the park by 2008. They are set to be installed in a $40-million state-of-the-art building with $20 million worth of new equipment paid for by the federal government.

Some of the firms the lab has worked with over the years include Dofasco, Stelco, General Motors, Ford and Algoma Steel.

Emerson, a Vancouver MP, said the park is “going to be a fundamental, profound demonstration of what's going on in the economy. In a way, it's symbolic, here is a site where there was a manufacturing industry that wasn't a beneficiary of the evolution of the industry … you're going to get the technologies which will then be infused into some of our basic industries, like the steel industry, the auto industry, the parts industry and the manufacturing industries.”

Emerson toured the site with Hamilton East-Stoney Creek candidate Tony Valeri, Hamilton Centre candidate Javid Mirza, Hamilton Mountain candidate Bill Kelly and Russ Powers of Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale.

Minister Emerson described MIP as a “microcosm of the transforming economy” and a “value creating complex,” that will build the necessary bridge between university research and the private sector.

Click here to read coverage about Emerson's visit in today's Hamilton Spectator.

For access to The Hamilton Spectator online, McMaster users can click here from a main campus computer.