Industry Committee on May 7th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Bonjour à tous. Welcome to the 44th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. We are beginning our study on the state of disruptive technologies. We have some very distinguished guests in front of us here to give us some information in that regard.

From the National Research Council we have Danial Wayner, vice-president of emerging technologies, and Duncan Stewart, general manager of security and disruptive technologies. From the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada we have Kevin Fitzgibbons, associate vice-president of corporate planning and policy, and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, we have Ted Hewitt, president.

Why don't we follow the order that's before us? We'll begin with Mr. Wayner for his opening remarks. Of course, gentlemen, I think you know how it works, but once you do your opening remarks we'll go to a rotation of questions.

Colleagues, we're going to go in camera for the last 10 minutes. We have some quick business to do at the end, just to give you a heads up.

Please go ahead, Mr. Wayner.

[Dr. Danial Wayner, Vice-President, Emerging Technologies, National Research Council of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Dan Wayner. I am vice-president for emerging technologies at the National Research Council of Canada. I have with me Dr. Duncan Stewart who is our general manager of the NRC's security and disruptive technologies portfolio. I am pleased to be here on behalf of NRC to talk about disruptive technologies today.

NRC is Canada’s research and technology organization. RTOs, as we call them, are market-driven organizations whose primary job is to develop and deploy technology. In a way, we act as a link in the innovation system by stimulating business investment in R and D, adding value to research investments, reducing risks, and in many cases developing market-focused technologies in our research facilities across Canada.

The NRC has more than 2,000 employees working in research and development. They are experts in a multitude of scientific and technical fields and they are equipped to respond to the current and future needs of Canadian industry. The NRC is able to quickly put together multidisciplinary teams to help people in industry to overcome any difficulties they are facing. These may be in meeting urgent short-term needs or in establishing basic knowledge and technology that will allow them to tackle new markets.

NRC has a track record in advancing and delivering technology solutions in collaboration with Canadian industry. Some of the examples include flying the world’s first civil jet flight powered by 100% biofuel; pioneering the Internet in Canada; launching the world’s first national optical R and D network; inventing 3-D laser scanning technologies that are now used extensively by the film industry; medical breakthroughs, including an infant meningitis vaccine, the world’s first cardiac pacemaker, and the first medical isotopes for use in nuclear medicine; and inventing the fastest lasers in the world with light pulses now approaching a billionth of a billionth of a second.

As Vice-President of Emerging Technologies, I have as one of my duties to make sure that the NRC's long-term investments in science and technology are focused on the technological issues that may threaten or stimulate Canada's economy or improve the lives of Canadians in the next two decades.

In order to do that, we are implementing and supporting certain capabilities, by which I mean expertise and research and development platforms in various fields, such as high-volume data analytics, quantum technologies, optical technologies and nanotechnologies, to mention but a few.

The term disruptive technology typically refers to a technology that creates a profound, discontinuous change or quantum jump in capability or cost performance. It is important to understand the impacts are economic and social, affecting how we live, work, and communicate. We are really talking about disruptive innovations. I want to introduce that term. The technology in itself is not disruptive until it is deployed into the marketplace and used.

There are many examples from the past of how technologies or combinations of technologies have driven disruptions. The discovery of the double helix in the early 1950s was transformational for science, but not disruptive. However, combined with rapid DNA sequencing, proteomics, and big data, we find ourselves in the early days of personalized medicine, which we believe will be disruptive. The transistor led to the demise of the vacuum tube industry, which might be considered a disruption for that industry, but combined with the laser, fibre optic data transmission, data analytics, and business innovation, we have e-retail. E-retail is truly a disruption in economies today. In the more recent past we could look at smartphones, a Canadian invention, as an example of a technology that has had a huge economic impact and has driven societal changes.

The idea of a disruptive technology or innovation is not about the technology itself, but about the impact it has on our lives. Will the self-driven car be a disruptive innovation? Maybe, but we won't know until it's developed and deployed and we actually see the impact it will have on the way we work and live.

What will Canada need to continue its influence in the development and deployment of the so-called “disruptive”, that is to say revolutionary, innovations of the future? Identifying the innovations that will get to the finish line is difficult, but choosing the right race to enter is even more so.

When we know that we are in the right race, it will be easier to establish which technological platforms we really have to have in order to clear the track for those innovations.

I want to focus on a key ingredient. We're here in part to talk about what it is going to take for Canada to be competitive in the development of potentially disruptive technology, and the key ingredient for me is collaboration.

A well-organized innovation system can be like a professional hockey team. There are a number of players on the innovation landscape, universities, RTOs like NRC or CNL, for example, and others at the provincial level, all of whom have a role to play. The goalies don’t try to score goals, the right wingers don’t try to do the left wingers' jobs, but we do back each other up when it's needed. In the absence of collaboration, the innovation system feels like kids’ hockey, if I could use that analogy; that is, we all chase the puck and we end up competing with each other instead of organizing ourselves to win the game.

There are, in fact, examples of collaboration excellence in Canada focused on disruptive innovation. I'll refer to just one, and that is the quantum computing public-private partnership, which is really centred in Waterloo. It's a tremendous example of technology being driven by a vision of the future. In my view, collaboration between universities, RTOs such as NRC, and industry is the key success factor. In one direction, emerging science can lead to new technologies that have the potential to address market opportunities, but looking in the other direction, industry knows where the market opportunities actually are and has the opportunity to influence the direction of S and T.

RTOs like NRC have the capability to be the link, taking emerging science ideas and integrating them into new technology prototypes and processes. When it works well, it's a virtuous circle with industry motivating scientists to address key knowledge and technology gaps, and scientists working with industry to integrate emerging technologies into their products and processes, thus giving them the competitive edge in a global market.

As an RTO, how is NRC supporting Canadian industry to develop disruptive technologies? The NRC's printable electronics program is a good example of an initiative to foster a new industry ecosystem for Canada. Printable electronics is an emerging, advanced manufacturing technology, really part of an additive manufacturing family that's enabling lower cost digital fabrication of electronic devices. It has the potential to be a key component to enable potentially disruptive innovations such as the Internet of things.

The program is integrated into an industry-driven printable electronics consortium that was launched in 2012 and has company members from across the entire value chain. The consortium sets the R and D priorities, and NRC carries out R and D in collaboration with the industry partners on technology demonstrations that de-risk the advancement and deployment of the technologies. The goal is to catalyze a globally competitive pivotal electronic sector in Canada. To date, 11 technologies have been developed in collaboration with NRC that have been transferred to Canadian industry to commercialize PE products.

One of our licensees, Raymor Industries from Boisbriand, Quebec, won the award for the world’s best new material at the IDTechEx USA 2014 conference, which is the world’s largest printed electronics conference and trade show. The material, now marketed by Raymor, is the highest purity semiconducting nanotube ink to be commercially available today, a potentially disruptive innovation for the flexible electronics industry.

Another example comes from the National Institute for Nanotechnology, a collaboration between NRC and the University of Alberta. We have collaborated together for some years, working at the cutting edge of nanotechnology. One of these collaborations has led to the creation of a new company, QSi, to develop and commercialize a fundamentally new approach to atomic-scale, ultra-low-power computing circuits and devices that are faster than existing devices while consuming orders of magnitude less power. NRC’s role was to take a concept developed at the laboratory and demonstrate the possibility of being able to scale this up into a manufacturing process, a critical milestone to attract investors.

In closing, I'd like to reiterate that Canada is well positioned to be a major player in the development and deployment of potentially disruptive technologies. Collaboration across the innovation landscape is key, bringing together universities, RTOs such as NRC, and industry to ensure that we have a robust innovation pipeline focused on Canadian and global opportunities.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wayner.

Now on to Mr. Fitzgibbons.

[Kevin Fitzgibbons, Associate Vice-President, Corporate Planning and Policy, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your warm welcome. Thank you, members of the committee, for your invitation to speak here today.

I am very pleased to be here to present information in support of the committee’s recently launched study on the state of disruptive technologies in Canada. This is certainly an important subject worthy of serious study.

In the time I have been allotted I wish to talk more about how NSERC perceives and defines disruptive technologies. I would also like to discuss the role NSERC plays as Canada’s largest investor in discovery research and as an enabler of partnerships with industry that ultimately contribute to the development of enabling disruptive technologies.

When it comes to defining disruptive technologies I think the committee received an excellent primer earlier this week with the presentation by Industry Canada, and my colleague, Danial, of course, has also done a good job of that.

I had the opportunity to review this material prior to my appearance before you today and, as was pointed out, a single, standard definition of disruptive technology is lacking. Whether it’s McKinsey, the World Economic Forum, MIT or others, there was no consensus on those technologies that would be the most disruptive.

But, looking at the list, I did see several common areas that, because of the breadth of research that NSERC invests in, we are very familiar with.

For example, we support the technologies that relate to how we access, manipulate, and represent information, such as secure computing; technologies that relate to how we power the world, such as new battery technologies, and new renewable sources of energy, for example solar cells that are capable of capturing the full spectrum and energy of sunlight; and technologies that relate to how we build the world, such as advanced materials, including nanomaterials which, again, you've heard about earlier today, additive manufacturing, and 3-D printing.

At NSERC we view disruptive technologies more as the application of the discoveries that have a transformative impact, and less on making guesses about which technology will trade or how the business is done.

NSERC has a major role to play in this process. To begin with, disruptive technologies start from a foundation of discovery research. By discovery research I’m referring to research generally taking place in a non-industry setting and focused on a question or problem that has interest from a purely scientific perspective. It is discovery because the knowledge created is literally a world first

What makes the findings from this work disruptive is when someone else looks at this information in the context of a problem they are trying to solve with a possible application in mind. Context is everything and suddenly there is a new and potentially better way of doing something.

If we think about 3-D printing, this came out of fundamental work on photocurable liquid polymers. In other words, being able to use light to harden plastics. The innovation was to develop a better way to apply computer control to draw 3-D parts, layer by layer. One of the key reasons we see so much attention to 3-D printing at the present time is that the basic patents have expired, meaning that we are seeing lots of lower-cost competitors entering the market.

To get back to NSERC, our vision is to help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians.

NSERC funding fuels 11,300 professors working across numerous fields. This is an incredibly productive, inventive and world-class workforce that consistently delivers discoveries. Our president, Dr. Mario Pinto, calls this Canada’s brain trust.

If we look back to some of the areas labelled as disruptive, such as new manufacturing technologies, discovery investments by NSERC are clearly in the picture.

For example, if we examine data from our discovery funding program for the past 10 years, the program that supports purely curiosity-driven research, we invested in approximately $425 million in manufacturing-related nanotechnology research programs by Canadian researchers.

We invest in programs to drive innovation. We are helping industry to use these world firsts in knowledge to drive R and D and to create new firsts in the marketplace. By doing this, NSERC plays a key role in adding value to knowledge and reducing the overall risks of innovation. It’s a very client-driven approach that has led to over 3,000 partnerships between industry and the research sector annually. With these partnerships, we are creating the time and space to establish the context that I mentioned earlier.

If the catchphrase for discovery is “eureka” then perhaps a corresponding name for invention is “I hadn’t thought of that before.”

As I conclude my remarks, let me say thank you again to the committee for the opportunity to present this information. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fitzgibbons.

Now to Mr. Hewitt.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you.

On behalf of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, I want to thank you and the committee members for the opportunity to appear before you today with respect to additive manufacturing and other disruptive technologies.

At SSHRC, we recognize the enormous potential that these fields possess in terms of stimulating the Canadian economy.

lt goes without saying that they create jobs and exports. When I think in terms of using 3-D printers to create custom-fit hip replacements, it's clear they can also improve Canadians' quality of life. At the same time, the rapid development of technologies like 3-D printing and robotics is generating the need for a better understanding of the economic, social, environmental, and legal implications of their adoption and use. More importantly, it can be argued that their very adoption depends on these implications. We know very well that early adopters generally have the competitive edge, but the flip side is that early adopters also face great uncertainty and risk, and their apparent advantages can be short-lived.

Societies adapt to rapid technological change best by understanding its impacts, capabilities and complexities. Social scientists and humanities scholars are uniquely positioned to address these issues with made-in-Canada solutions.

By that, I mean they bring critical and creative thinking to complex issues such as disruptive technologies. At SSHRC we understand that government, industry, and academia must work together to advance disruptive technology but also to embrace its enormous potential. With the launch of its renewed partnerships funding opportunities, SSHRC has reinforced its commitment to the power of all types of collaborations—multi-sector, multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional—to bring intellectual, cultural, social and economic benefits to Canada and to the world.

In our 2013-2016 strategic plan, SSHRC has identified multi-sector partnerships as an area where potential exists for improved and enhanced participation, development and sharing of best practices, and communication of results and impacts among a variety of stakeholders.

Multi-sector partnerships engage the users of research in the design and implementation of research projects at the start, thereby increasing the potential for that research to contribute directly to innovation in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors.

For example, take Aaron Sprecher, assistant professor at the school of architecture at McGill University and recipient of a SSHRC partnership development grant. Dr. Sprecher's laboratory for integrated prototyping and hybrid environments is helping to change the ways architects design, collaborate, and build. Working with an interdisciplinary team, as well as with external partners and companies, his work is advancing innovation in design, optimization process, the performance of materials, and fabrication. lt is a game-changing initiative with the end user in mind. Moreover, SSHRC-funded graduate students, whose research includes 3-D printing and additive manufacturing, are aligned with interdisciplinary practices in architecture, fine arts, and historical studies.

For example, François Leblanc is a doctoral candidate funded by SSHRC. He is exploring how 3D printing facilitates the design and production of complex and optimized structures that were inconceivable not too long ago. He is also looking at how this technology effectively optimizes the amount of material used in construction with a precise distribution of materials.

SSHRC's partnership with Mitacs will also continue to support the development of talent through support for internships for social science and humanities graduate students with both industry and community organizations. Further opportunities to provide training opportunities for students with industry involved with additive manufacturing can be explored to help Canadian businesses become more innovative, competitive, and productive.

At SSHRC, we recognize that dynamic new technologies are enabling, accelerating and influencing deep conceptual changes in the research environment, the economy and society.

As such, in collaboration with NSERC, CIHR, as well as with CFI, Genome Canada, and NRC, SSHRC has also been leading the creation of a new policy framework to address digital infrastructure challenges. The policy, which is being developed with the extensive engagement of multi-sector stakeholders, will enable best practices to manage and to grow the digital ecosystem required to meet 21st-century research needs, and thus contribute to Canada's social and economic prosperity.

In the absence of a standard definition, disruptive technology may perhaps be best described as lying at the intersection of various fields of research. In this regard, SSHRC will continue to explore opportunities to continue its efforts, and to coordinate its efforts, with federal agency partners as well as with the research community, industry, and organizations to create an enabling environment that advances research and the development of talent in this area.

I might add that these efforts are particularly well aligned with SSHRC's Imagining Canada's Future initiative, through which we are seeking to advance the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to future societal challenges and opportunities.

Following a comprehensive two-year exercise, six future challenge areas have been identified for Canada in an evolving global context that is likely to emerge in the next five, 10, 15, or 20 years.

The issue of leveraging digital technologies for the benefit of Canadians is one of those important challenges for SSHRC. This includes the need to understand the opportunities and risks associated with the adoption of emerging and disruptive technologies, as well as the need for effective training and tools that would maximize their utilization and enable equitable access to them.

In fact, emerging technology and how best to take advantage of it is the subject of a knowledge synthesis grant opportunity that SSHRC will be launching this fall. This funding opportunity will help our state of knowledge about emerging technology, as well as identify gaps in our knowledge and the most promising policies and practices related to it. More than ever Canada needs social scientists and humanists to focus on these matters.

In closing, a key point I want to emphasize is that in and of itself technology—disruptive or otherwise—is largely neutral. At the end of the day, innovation is a human endeavour. Technology is critical, but what makes it sing are the value-added elements that largely come from the research we fund at SSHRC—design, business planning, marketing, content, and training. To this end, SSHRC is focusing its efforts to encourage and promote research, talent development, and the mobilization of knowledge in this area, and we will be closely monitoring and assessing research capacity and the range of insights that are being developed across all our funding opportunities.

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss what SSHRC and its research community can bring to this important issue.

I'd be happy to answer questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hewitt.

Colleagues, if you will allow me to be relatively disciplined on the time, I think we can get eight minutes each and still get the business in at the end of the meeting.

Please go ahead, Madam Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman

First of all, I'd like Dr. Wayner to explain the role the National Research Council played in developing medical isotopes, which he mentioned in his opening remarks.

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

In fact, NRC was the site of generating the first sustained nuclear reaction, and the work we did led to the initial creation of AECL.

We also pioneered work many years ago to demonstrate the creation of isotopes, which led to the creation of another company, Eldorado Nuclear, which eventually has led to the industry that we now see. It's largely done through Nordion, and with the support of AECL, now CNL. This was many years ago, but it was work that was started at NRC, and then organizations were in fact eventually spun out of NRC and took on lives of their own.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Did NRC play a role in the initial pile reactor, the NRX, the NRU?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

To be honest with you, that goes a little bit beyond my specific knowledge.

What I do know is that, as I said, the first sustained nuclear reaction was demonstrated by NRC, which actually led to the innovations that eventually became nuclear-powered reactors.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

You described this as a disruptive technology. Was there a lag time in commercializing the medical isotope aspect, which you referred to, from the point where it was discovered that it could have medical use to the point that it was actually commercialized? Did we have the people with the skills in place to further that along?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

That's actually a really interesting question. I'm going to take the risk of generalizing my answer because to me it's really fundamental to understanding that inventions lag the innovations sometimes by decades. The double helix was actually discovered in 1953. It was 75 years before we actually pulled together the knowledge that we gained from that information into industries that I think will revolutionize health care in the coming decades.

As I said, I'm not deeply knowledgeable about what happened in the fifties around the nuclear industry, but we see the same issue with the transistor, which was first discovered in the forties. The solid-state revolution, as we called it, was actually in the sixties, 20 years later. The creation of the first computers, the first XT computer landed on my desk in the early eighties.

So there is a lag, and the lag really depends on the types of technology, but there's also the issue that in fact it isn't one invention, it's actually the bringing together of many inventions that lead to new innovations. As I mentioned before in terms of the disruption of e-retail, it comes from the transistor, from the laser, from optical telecom, from analytics. There are a number of advances in our knowledge that have come together.

I wanted to address what you were asking about in terms of skilling, because it is true that in many cases disruptions lead to significant economic changes, which require a re-skilling of our workforce. I was having a conversation with one of my provincial colleagues recently where I asked the question, “What are we doing right now about the likelihood that in 20 or 30 years factories may not employ very many people, or if they do they won't clearly have the same skills that people have today who are working?” I think we need to get ahead of that. I think we need to not just think about invention and technologies leading to innovations, but in fact we should be thinking holistically about what we are doing about re-skilling our workforces. What are the types of skills they'll need?

I won't go on too much longer, but only to say there's always a lag between invention and innovation. If the innovations are truly disruptive, it often means that in fact we need a re-skilled workforce in order to really take advantage of it.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Does your department communicate with departments involved in human resources to let them know what sorts of skills may be looked at and needed on the horizon?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

One example is, in fact, the digital economy strategy, which really has an innovation component, a content component, and a skills component, where it's recognized from the beginning that if we really want to capitalize on the advent of new big data and analytics applications we need to have all of those working together. Of course, when I talked about collaboration, what's critical is to recognize that in the team that I talked about we don't want to be a kids' hockey team, that we work with universities who are, as Kevin Fitzgibbons was saying, a source of creativity, new ideas, and invention.

NRC's role is to be able to take ideas that are really demonstrated in the laboratory and incorporate them, integrate them, into technology demonstrations and applications, and then to work with industry to ensure that we actually understand where the market opportunities are. All three components of the innovation system ideally need to be working together if we want to really optimize our ability to capitalize on technology disruptions.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

In your opening remarks, you didn't say “isotope”; you said “isotopes”, plural. What other medical isotopes are you aware of that were discovered, and still used today, in terms of NRU in the background?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

What I can say is what I know about medical isotopes isn't very deep.

NRC participated, for example, in some of the projects to find new non-nuclear sources of technetium-99. We just happened to have some in-house expertise that allowed us to collaborate with Canadian Light Source, in this case. There are a number of organizations from across the country looking at the same thing. That was very much more opportunistic, from our perspective, because we had in-house expertise in nuclear science and technology.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

In addition to the medical isotopes, you very well know that there are non-medical isotopes, ones that are used to make computer chips more robust and smaller, as well as tritium, for the back lighting on some of our non-Apple watches.

Are you aware of any disruptive technologies that will take the place of the NRU, the National Research Universal reactor? As you know, it has far exceeded it's expected life, going on 70 years, but we'll still need to be able to move neutrons out of atoms.

I'm wondering whether or not there's anything you're aware of on the horizon.

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

It's really hard for me to comment on that. I certainly don't have the expertise. I would really prefer to refer you to my colleagues at NRCan, who are really the ones who are thinking about this on a day-to-day basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Wayner.

Thank you, Madam Gallant.

Now, on to Ms. Nash, for eight minutes, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here. I have many questions to ask.

Let me start off with something Dr. Fitzgibbons said. He said we have a world-class workforce and we have Canada's brain trust. I wanted to ask you about basic research. What is the climate like for basic research today in Canada? Because to me, that's the starting point, I guess. We don't know what we're going to discover until we actually find it.

Having this world-class brain trust, as you put it, to me seems incredibly important. Are we investing at a competitive level in basic research? Are we offering enough post-doctoral fellowships? How do we stack up with the rest of the world in terms of this important starting point, which is basic research?

[Kevin Fitzgibbons]

Well, thank you very much. It's a very fascinating question and one that I think had policy-makers in Canada and around the world asking similar questions.

In specific response to the level of research that is being funded in universities, I think within universities it's somewhat difficult to make a clean distinction of what is basic and what is applied. I believe earlier in the week when you heard from Industry Canada, it did make mention of the fact that although our business expenditures in research and development are not at the top of the list, if you like, our investments in higher education research and development are among the top, certainly in the G-7, as we call it now.

I think a very good example of the results of that and of where Canada stands in the world was a study released two years ago by the Council of Canadian Academies, called “The State of Science & Technology in Canada”. In that, they outlined fields where Canada is respected internationally, for example, in the publication of journals and their citations, the groundbreaking work. They came up and pretty much reinforced the message that Canada certainly does have some of the top research minds.

The concept that our president likes to point to is that it's not the individual researcher working at the University of Toronto, or UBC, but rather it's looking at it from the context of those 11,000 who have been doing this work over decades, and not just in Canada but collaborating internationally. I think that is a really key ingredient for moving forward.

In much of the research that NRC has referred to, it's quite often the researchers at NRC who have either been funded by NSERC in their academic careers or have collaborated with universities. It's a combination of things.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Okay. Do any of the other witnesses want to comment on that aspect of basic research and our initial brain trust in this area?

[Dr. Danial Wayner]

From my perspective, Canada actually produces, I think, a disproportionate amount of the world's knowledge. We have some of the best universities in the world. I think if you look at the report from the Council of Canadian Academies that talks about where Canada excels, we should be really proud of what we have as the brain trust.

I think where we struggled as a country is on the innovation side. That is, how do we actually capture the value of the knowledge that we're creating and also the knowledge created elsewhere in the world and turn that into social and economic advantages for Canadians?

Getting back to disruptive technologies, that's really the key outcome of being able to really understand where the disruption is, focus, and put something into the marketplace.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Let me just pursue that. Sorry, Dr. Hewitt, you might have wanted to get in on that.

Where are we falling down on that? I heard that maybe business isn't seizing opportunities as effectively as it might, and there are lots of reasons for that. What is the gap between this wonderful world-class pool of scientists and researchers and the transformation into successful innovation and effective businesses? What is breaking down there?