Industry Committee on May 7th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Warawa.

Now on to Ms. Nash for eight minutes.

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

Thank you. I'm pleased to have another crack at questions.

I'd like to just continue on, Dr. Hewitt, with your comments. It sounds as though, from your perspective, we're doing a great job at generating technology, generating new possibilities, but somehow there's a drivetrain that's missing to get that actually into a useful contribution for our society and for our economy, and you're saying that the kind of work that you do is in fact trying to make those connections. It would seem to me that, for a lot of businesses, they won't know that a lot of this technology exists. They may not even fully understand they have a problem for which there might be a technological solution. That lack of connection seems to be key.

I was noticing that in your remarks you said that you've done a two-year exercise to identify six future challenge areas that have been identified in the evolving global context for Canada, and how we leverage digital technologies is one of them. It seems to me the digitization of our overall economy is going to increasingly be a major initiative. Can you talk about what you've learned from this two-year exercise and how possibly part of it can serve as that drivetrain that uses this technology effectively for our society?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Absolutely. In part it's an exercise conceived to help impress upon Canadians from all walks of life the importance of the research that's done in social sciences and humanities for the future of our country.

In terms of the specific areas, the intention was to engage Canadians, researchers, and all of us in precisely the discussion we're having today. If you take digital technologies, for example, we've been having discussions around the importance of big data and how big data can be mined the same way as gold, or iron ore, or oil to the benefit of Canadians to create jobs.

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

Subject to the same ups and downs of commodity prices?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Subject to the same ups and downs, but the exercise was very focused on encouraging that discussion. Some things have come out of that. With NSERC, CIHR, Genome, and others, we're developing a framework policy for data management that will include an open data element at the end of the day. When these policies are implemented, researchers from all of our councils, who are funded with federal dollars, will be required to make their data freely available after a period of time on open sites.

We think that will encourage the exchange of information for collaboration and research. The reuse of data will have profound effects on the way data is used by companies, by researchers, and by anybody, which we think will help facilitate innovative uses of that data once it becomes available. That's one way we've acted to put that into place, based on a future challenges perspective.

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

Thank you.

Dr. Stewart, maybe I can ask you a question because it sounds like you were coming at this from the other end, which is from a corporate perspective, and trying to marshal a number of different disciplines in order to solve problems within a company. Is it your sense we need to foster more of that interdisciplinary collaboration within companies in order to problem solve, but also to move forward and be as innovative as possible?

[Duncan Stewart]

Yes, thank you for the question, Madam.

Let me tell a short personal story. When I left school in Silicon Valley, the question was, “Are you going to work for me, or am I going to work for you?” That's what everyone asked, and that question was possible because there were so many different pieces of the system in place there. There was a knowledge base. There was the spirit that you can do it, a kind of Texan six-gun “we can do it“ attitude. There was ready access to venture capital funding. You knew it was just up the road. There were repeated examples of success, so you knew where to find mentorship. There were buyers for when you built your company. There were sellers who would sell you the infrastructure you needed to build that company. What I'm looking for in Canada are locations where those things come together within a specific field and with a specific technology focus. It's that interdisciplinary approach, not only on the technology side, which I spoke to, but as my colleagues mentioned, on the social science side as well. It's the market and the business side. It's that ecosystem.

There's no single answer and that's why I'm here. That's the problem I want to help with and contribute to in Canada: that innovation gap. I want every person leaving school saying, “Hey, am I going to work for you, or are you going to work for me?”

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

We hear a lot of discussion about hubs, about sectoral hubs and technology hubs. Is that the kind of approach you think Canada needs to engage in more? You could more easily foster that kind of collaboration by having all of those elements that you described in the air—it's all available to people—around higher education and research facilities, but also the practical business application of that research so you have that drivetrain for people going into the private sectors. Is that the kind of thing that you think we need more of?

[Duncan Stewart]

Yes. Can I phrase it as a Jeopardy question?

If I'm a young aggressive entrepreneur in biotech and—forgive me, my Toronto friends—I'm living in Toronto, the smartest thing I might be able to do is move to Boston. Okay? I want to know, to what question is the answer: “move to Toronto”, “move to Vancouver”, or “move to Montreal”?

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

You're not asking me to do an Alex Trebek hosting, or even make a joke of that.

That is our big challenge, yet we excel in all of those cities at so many things. Saying to the world, “This is where you need to come for this”, I think is part of our challenge, which again gets to Dr. Hewitt's—

Yes.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

If I might, one thing I want to point out is that these types of subjects are precisely the subject matter of much of the research in social science today. I would refer you to Professor David Wolfe, from the University of Toronto, who has done extensive work on clusters and hubs.

This research is generally available and the international examples are clear, so the questions are these: can we access it; how do we need to access it; and what can we learn from that? It is available.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Dr. Hewitt.

Thank you, Madam Nash.

Now we go on to our last questioner, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you very much. It's great to have you all here.

I wrote down a whole bunch of notes and I have a whole bunch of different thoughts, and then Peggy, in her question, kind of threw me for a little bit of a loop.

I had the opportunity to meet with Jacob Barnett, a 16-year-old Ph.D. student who is on the autism spectrum, working at the Perimeter Institute. He has chosen to come up to Canada from Indiana and wants to continue working here.

I'm going to actually continue on Peggy's line of questioning before I get to some of my own.

Ted, we talked before about the Canada first research excellence fund and the idea of taking things that Canada is really good at and going from being one of the top in the world in an area, to being the best in the world. Maybe you could speak to the idea behind the fund, perhaps in the context of Peggy's question.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Thanks, Mike. I think that's a great question.

This program is absolutely unique, in my understanding of the types of programs that have been established worldwide. But what's interesting here—and I will relate it back to the conversation we've been having—is that it begins with the starting point of Canadian excellence. It purports to fund those institutions and research at those institutions that is already very close to being world-leading, and to provide those elements through research funding that will allow these institutions to push across the barrier and take the lead globally.

It's a very broad program. It will fund people, some infrastructure, students for training, and knowledge transfer and commercialization. It's really a one-stop, one-shop shot for institutions that are close in terms of technology development, new practices, and different contributions that would put Canada at the lead, whether in the service sector or otherwise.

The first round was held this spring. We expect the results to be released sometime about mid-summer, and we have another major round planned for the fall. But it will be a game-changer for a number of Canadian institutions that are able to demonstrate not only their existing capacity but their capacity to now shoot for the moon, so it's a tremendous program.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'm going to stick with you, if I can.

It's interesting that, when we talk about disruptive technology and we use that expression, there seem to be different ideas of what the definition would be, and they're really hard to define, in a sense. I think of it as when you say, “Life is completely different because of...” and name some technology. Historically when you think of big things you think of the car, electricity, air travel, the telephone—the original telephone, not the BlackBerry, but then the BlackBerry modifying that, in a sense.

Then you have things like Google Maps, which is not necessarily in the same category but takes a paper map and.... I know we're going to have the opportunity to talk to witnesses from Google and maybe we can ask them about this, because it's fascinating when they talk about how they determine the traffic patterns so that you know which route to take, based on where traffic has slowed down and sped up. It kind of revolutionizes the way we travel in our vehicles and those kinds of things.

This is why I'm going to come to you, Ted. I'm going to ask a question based on my personal experience. If we're going to talk about things that change lives completely, we're talking mostly here about things as opposed to ways of dealing with things, like autism. I have a 19-year-old son with autism and I think about in the seventies, when Dr. Lovaas in the United States developed an intensive behavioural intervention for people with autism, which changed the way we thought about people with autism and the possibilities for them.

Given that you're representing the social sciences and humanities, could you maybe speak to that in the sense of the notion of disruptive innovation, perhaps, in those types of areas?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Totally, and it's another great point because it's not always about technology. When we think of disruptive innovation, I tend to think of the market, things that are disruptive in the market and turn things on their head. Not all those things go anywhere. I don't know how many of you still have Beta tape machines at home. That was very disruptive, but it really didn't go anywhere. But the things you're talking about, Mike, if you think about it, you're right. Attitudes towards people with mental health problems have been disruptive in the sense that we now tend to view that differently than we viewed it in the past.

If you look at the effects of social programs over the years, support for the elderly, support for people with disabilities, these are in effect disruptive practices in the sense that they're changing attitudes and they're changing the ways that Canadians are participating in society significantly. So I think this is an important aspect to keep in mind, that these disruptions are occurring right across the entire fabric of Canadian society. Not all of them will make money in the sense that these are commercial ventures, but they could save money in terms of disruptive technologies that could reduce hospital wait times, for example.

I have a colleague who is working on a project that we just funded for bar-coding medical devices and pharmaceuticals. You may not know, but most are not currently bar-coded. They're not bar-coded. If you look at a dose of X, there's no bar code. Everything we buy in the store typically is bar-coded. Imagine how disruptive that would be to have everything bar-coded and therefore every dose and every medical device being able to be recorded and all the information there. It's hugely disruptive. I wonder on the commercial side whether that's going to make a huge difference but certainly in the lives of Canadians in terms of tracing dosages and tracing faulty medical devices and so forth it will be hugely transforming.

Thanks, Mike.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'm going to follow up on another line of conversation, talking about, in a sense, how when we're trying to organize ourselves we have—as I often say to students when talking to them—960 minutes every day that we individually have to invest and how we organize those 960 minutes is going to be vital to how we get the most out of our time.

In our world, we get a lot of balls in the air sometimes and it's easy to go in a whole bunch of different directions and then not really accomplish anything. Sometimes I think that's analogous to research in a sense. I go across the country and get the chance to meet researchers or innovative start-ups, and organizations that have unbelievable ideas. Then a few years later I'm looking back and nothing really came of them. It seems like there are thousands and thousands of them out there and just a whole bunch of balls in the air.

What do we do as a society, not just as a government but as a society, to organize ourselves to catch those balls, to keep track of them all, to try to harness that energy that's out there? I think this seems to be a big part of the challenge. It's not that incredible research isn't being done, but we're missing it. There's almost sometimes a cacophony of it and we can't make sense of it all.

[Kevin Fitzgibbons]

I'll take a crack at that. It's certainly a tough question to answer.

I think there's a cultural aspect to all of this. When you look at some of the countries that have been some of the most innovative in the world, maybe a very good example of that would have been Israel about which there's a book called Start-Up Nation. The truth is that they have no choice. If they want to survive in a very hostile geopolitical and even temporal environment, they have to innovate or they won't exist. We don't have that problem in Canada, I would say. I think that's part of the thing.

Are we too comfortable? I don't know. I don't think that's a fair assessment. But that drive in just doing that, being sure that spirit of entrepreneurship actually leads to something.... Quite often what happens with these companies when they go is that they do not have access to venture capital that's sufficient. They do not have access to markets that would be able to scale up and do what they do. I think that's very much a core element of what we do. I don't know if you can legislate that. You ask if it's a social issue. I do think that there is a cultural aspect.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Fitzgibbons. We've come full circle. Mr. Warawa was saying that it's a lot about dreaming and not necessity being the mother of invention, but to a degree that is still there and still is a big motivator.

I want to say to the witnesses that in my opinion the testimony here has been nothing short of profound. We may want to call you back. I hope you'll welcome that. I know that at least one member has approached me and has additional questions. After we see some other witnesses from industry, maybe we would bring you back and have you comment, not only on some of the questions we have right now but also on what we've heard again too. You know this file quite well and we're very impressed.

Thank you very much for your time

Colleagues, we're going to pause for a minute and go in camera and deal with some business. It will only be a few minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]