Evidence of meeting #45 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Graham Carr  Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, Concordia University
Hossein Rahnama  Director, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University
Xavier-Henri Hervé  Director, District 3 Innovation Centre, Concordia University
Vincent Martin  Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University
Sylvie Bourassa  Executive Director, Government Relations, Concordia University

11:35 a.m.

Director, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University

Dr. Hossein Rahnama

Yes. I mean, Concordia and Ryerson are great examples. We have visits. We have students coming to us from U of T and Waterloo, and we have other areas, such as Communitech, participating. Hopefully we can scale that further.

We would like to scale that, but it's happening already through unique programs that each institution offers in partnership with others.

11:40 a.m.

Director, District 3 Innovation Centre, Concordia University

Xavier-Henri Hervé

I can add something to that.

I went to DMZ for the first time two years ago. The simple fact of walking in there was part of what I told you was my aha moment about what can be done. I think for a lot of us who have visited those places, we just feel the vibe—there's no other way to explain it—in those spaces, to see how rich they are.

I also think that Communitech is a phenomenal regional example. I don't know how familiar you are with Kitchener and that whole ecosystem of start-ups. You might remember the old cellphone champions. We've had many other champions throughout the generations come out of that area. When you go for breakfast with one guy in the start-up community, at Communitech, by the time you show up at lunch, the guy at lunch knows who you met at breakfast.

The regional communities are really important. I agree with the networking because it's helped me, but for me, most important is the focus on each region. I wouldn't necessarily verticalize it; that I'm not an adopter of, because I believe innovation is an organic thing. At Concordia we have research in nanos. We have research in power transmission. We have research in a lot of these exponential technologies, including artificial intelligence. We have to let those ecosystems come of their own. If you try to regulate it too much, or organize it too much, I think you're going to defeat the purpose, personally.

In terms of verticalization, I wouldn't be on the same bandwagon, but certainly I'm on the bandwagon that says we need regional communities that are very, very strong. Communitech is the best example I've seen on the frigging planet, and I've visited across the planet. It's a very rich model to follow. Iain Klugman is a phenomenal man for having created that, and he did it mostly out of cause and belief.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Okay.

For Concordia, you mentioned cellulose and plants and using biofuels. Are you referring to a company called CelluForce, situated in Windsor, Quebec? Do you have an affiliation with that company?

11:40 a.m.

Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University

Vincent Martin

No, but I know what you're talking about. This is an innovation that came out of the pulp and paper industry on nanocrystalline cellulose. It's Domtar in Windsor that's doing this. It's an example of the forestry industry trying to come out of the slump they're in right now and developing their next markets and their next products. They're very much turning to these kinds of technologies, these kinds of ideas, because they realize that they can't compete with the Brazilians head-to-head on prices of pulp or fibre or something like this. They're looking at their next generation of products. That requires truly out-of-the-box thinking and innovation. It's definitely a place where this kind of thinking and environment could really help the industry.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Has there been any interaction between either of your universities and CelluForce? It's obviously not in production yet, so there must be some obstacles they're overcoming. Has there been any interaction?

11:40 a.m.

Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University

Vincent Martin

Concordia itself, no; I know that other universities in Canada have.

I think the problem with CelluForce—again, I'm not an expert in nanocrystalline cellulose, but it's a great product, a great technology—is that now they're looking for markets. They're actually producing some of these things in Windsor. I think they have them stockpiled. Just this year, I believe, they're finding uses and they're getting it out the door.

It takes a while to create a new market and a new demand for a new product, but they're getting it off the ground, as far as I know.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Volume-wise, do you have any idea of where they are?

11:40 a.m.

Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University

Vincent Martin

I couldn't tell you exactly what those numbers are.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Okay.

The funding, you're saying, is going to these spheres and these innovators and Communitech—particularly I'm looking at universities right now—but we're not getting the return on investment. Should there be more interaction with the private sector somehow, or is that already going on? How do you connect with the private sector? How do they find you? Is there some entity within the university that goes to the private sector to show them what you have?

11:40 a.m.

Director, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University

Dr. Hossein Rahnama

I can talk about Digital Media Zone. Every week we have 10 to 30 tours coming to Digital Media Zone, from very large enterprises to start-ups.

We have about 80 start-ups now that are moving towards graduation and they would love to meet with enterprises and partner with them.

What we have heard a number of times from larger organizations is, “I love your technology but I cannot procure it. As soon as I move you to my procurement process, you will lose because you are competing with the IBMs of the world and so on.”

Procuring that innovative start-up technology is becoming a challenge for these large enterprises. They are willing to give a grant here and there to the university, but a lot of them have challenges adopting that technology and partnering with a risky, small start-up, because the committee who is deciding on the procurement will have difficulty justifying it.

If there were new models so that those technologies could be adopted quickly, validated quickly, and brought to market, I think it would show how effectively we can translate disruptive research to commercialization.

It has happened to us a number of times that the CEO of a very large organization has come and said, “I love your technology but I cannot procure it in this timeframe.”

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Sweet

Thank you, Mr. Rahnama. That's all the time that we have.

We will now move to Madam Sgro.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON

This continues to be a fascinating subject.

I want to start with your changing “disruptive” to “exponential”. “Disruptive,” I think, caught most of our attention when the parliamentary secretary introduced it and said that we should spend a bit of time on that, but I do think “exponential” would be a better term for it because it's much more optimistic, futuristic, and all the things that we want to see, which you have talked about.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that the risk issue is huge. We're not famous for taking risks as Canadians or as governments. How do we overcome that? I've visited Communitech and a variety of other places. I see the excitement among so many people, but I also see the frustration of many of those young, bright minds at not being able to get the kind of support they need to take extra steps. They have great ideas, and many of them end up crossing the border into the U.S. How do we make Canada a silicon valley?

I'll leave it up to you to use my time telling us how we need to get there and what the government needs to do to help you.

11:45 a.m.

Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University

Vincent Martin

Maybe I could address this.

I sat on a panel for Genome Canada. They actually call it “disruptive technologies”. We spent the first three months of the panel discussing what is “disruptive”. How do you justify taking taxpayers' money and risking it all the time? They're not going to like that very much.

They realized that with risk there are the rewards that come with it, so you do have to take the risk. How do you manage that risk?

You can't predict where innovation is going to come from. This has been demonstrated over and over again. The idea is to carpet bomb the environment. Give everybody a little bit of money and let them play for a little while, but make sure you have someone on top of it who's looking at these things so you can capture that innovation and that risk when it happens.

From the 250 people you give money to, 20 are going to come out as potential winners. Then you move them through the system. Eventually you de-risk the proposition by using a process that way. You may or may not be able to identify the winners. Take lots of small risks. This is what venture capitalists do. They take lots of small risks over and over again. One in ten is going to pay off, but that tenth guy is going to make up for all the losses you took before. You have to create a system that allows you to do that.

11:45 a.m.

Director, District 3 Innovation Centre, Concordia University

Xavier-Henri Hervé

I would complement that and say make a difference between the start-up zones and the innovation zones versus the research zones. The research zones are the ones that are having a hard time creating value. If you look at the numbers of the start-up zones. they are creating value. I submit they create two values, one of which is creating straight economic value for sales and returns.

Out of the 50 companies that I had the chance to coach for the last year and a half, the top 10 raised about $2 million and created many jobs. I don't have the exact numbers; I can send them to you. The most important part is they created a huge labour pool. They created 500 engaged students who are walking out with their diploma with a track record. When Google comes in and says they're looking for people, not only do they want 4.0 GPAs, and social skills, and multiple languages, but they also want them to have gained experience in what they call the open source market. You have to realize you're also creating a huge labour pool by doing this with the knowledge that those corporations need, and they don't even know they need it yet, but I do because I can see they need it.

I think when you're giving a mission for that sphere zone to develop—it has to do a mission—you have to give a mission of creating labour for the bigger guys because they're going to need it faster than they know it yet. The day they need it, the competition is fierce. The biggest competition they have in Silicon Valley is keeping their employees within their startups. As soon as I create anyone remotely smart in the District 3 phase, a lot of them get hired. Now we've started by training them on how to do their LinkedIn profile, because I know they're going to get hired anyway. We've decided to be two steps ahead of the ball because it's going to happen to us anyway and we might as well manage the process. It's a very complex thing. These sphere zones need to be thought of as labour zones and knowledge zones, knowledge transformation zones.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON

How can government assist more? Is it just an issue of putting some dollars out there or being more specific—

11:50 a.m.

Director, District 3 Innovation Centre, Concordia University

Xavier-Henri Hervé

Sorry to interrupt your question.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON

Go ahead.

11:50 a.m.

Director, District 3 Innovation Centre, Concordia University

Xavier-Henri Hervé

I get excited too quickly on these subjects, as you can tell.

I think Vince said something really important, and so did DMZ. DMZ almost invented this concept in Canada. It's the fact that today most hardware prototypes require less than $5,000 to build. I told you about that guy who built the weapon system, which was a heads-up display helmet with a camera on the head of an airplane. The one-metre wing span airplane was flying like the stuff I see at the Heathrow or Le Bourget air shows. It cost him $850.

You have to bring things back into perspective. Ninety-nine per cent of prototypes will cost less than $20,000. We're not talking about the seed money spectrum. What we're talking about is a whole quantity, with the proper management system over it, and our metrics have to be for both labour and value.

11:50 a.m.

Professor , Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering, Biology, Concordia University

Vincent Martin

Maybe we haven't talked much about this, but I'll sneak it in because that's what I do.

What you just heard on the electronics side, the technology side, the biology side is lagging behind a little bit. You hear about pharma taking $1 billion to develop a drug. Well, of course, there's the clinical trial, but the R and D is very, very expensive and mostly because there's a lot of trial and error and guessing and playing around, and that's an expensive process. Synthetic biologists are trying to do the same thing that they can do now in electronics, to build your prototype quickly, and to build all sorts of weird things in test, and then put them through the pipeline in a much faster way. Again, they're trying to accelerate exponentially the development of whatever they're trying to do.

11:50 a.m.

Director, Research and Innovation, Ryerson University

Dr. Hossein Rahnama

Regarding the way we look at funding, I think if you value the commercialization of research, out of which we get disruptive technology, compared to classical discovery-based research, the funding should also become more outcome oriented because the way our granting model works now is that it's very input driven. Submit your grants. I look at your profile. If you have secured these grants over the past years, it's good enough justification that I give you this grant. If we have a young researcher who is just focusing on the outcome—look at the industry attention that I have; look at my prototype—it's extremely difficult for that researcher to get government funding, because the model is very much input driven. If we make our funding model also equally a bit outcome oriented—show me your industry attention; show me the projects that you have launched—and we use that as a criteria to fund your development, I think that works a lot.

Another great example is in the U.K., in the Shoreditch area east of London, where about six years ago the U.K. government was convincing people to move there and now they call it Silicon Roundabout. It's a fantastic place in London, full of entrepreneurs, full of researchers. At the same time, after the government did that, universities such as UCL, University College London, and Imperial College started to put their campuses there to connect to that ecosystem. If the government rallied behind an initiative like that, you can get ecosystems like Tech City in London.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Sweet

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have on that one.

11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON

Mr. Chair, there was reference to an article in The Hill Times. Could we get a copy of that?

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Sweet

Yes, they brought copies.

Are they in both official languages?

11:50 a.m.

Sylvie Bourassa Executive Director, Government Relations, Concordia University

No.

11:50 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Sweet

Okay, then, we'll get them to the clerk and then we'll have them translated.

Now we go to Mr. Carmichael, please.