Evidence of meeting #66 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was universities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a number of questions for the group based on the presentations.
I certainly want to thank you all for being here with us today.
I'd like to start with Richard, if that's okay.
Richard, something caught my ear in your presentation I believe you talked about a Montreal organization that was partially funded by the government. Was it the Montreal Economic Institute, or what was the name of the institute?
James McGill Professor, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medecine, McGill University, As an Individual
The Montreal Neurological Institute, in fact.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
The Neurological Institute, okay. Can you describe how the government funding made a significant difference in that field and region?
James McGill Professor, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medecine, McGill University, As an Individual
This is all relatively new. One of the government funds set up by the former government, continued by the present government, is the Canada first research excellence fund. Some of the funding came from it. The chief aim, obviously, is research on neurodegenerative diseases.
In this field there's really been almost no advance made in 30 years. We've been doing the same thing over and over again, so it was felt we needed a kick to the research community. That money was matched by provincial money and, as I said, it's attracted interest from all kinds of firms. I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you which ones yet, as I don't know if they're public, but large pharma firms, biotech firms, and IT firms are interested. They're all coming.
The research is just starting. Interestingly enough, we're developing very detailed metrics of innovation and the success of this. The theory is that we're going to get a lot more firms involved. We're already seeing that, but this is all ad hoc. As an empiricist, I'm not confident yet, but we're seeing good signs that these firms are coming together and calling up the MNI to do research. We'll know in about five years whether we've succeeded. It's way too early.
We're seeing a lot of enthusiasm. We've had coverage in The Guardian. The European Commission and the OECD are interested. I'm being funded by the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust. There's a ton of interest, but I can't come to you with solid figures on how many jobs this has generated. We don't know that yet.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
As a follow-up question, there was a fund created by the previous government related to research on degenerative brain disease, which I think was around $400 million over five years. Were they able to reach into that fund as well? It was matching private citizen donations to research. Is it just strictly out of innovation funds?
James McGill Professor, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medecine, McGill University, As an Individual
Probably some of the researchers and projects are funded through that fund. It was more project oriented. The difference with the CFREF—which also crossed both governments—is that it's institution-wide. A lot of the money's going into making open science data available—there's really expensive but good-quality data out there—and to have it used. It's the infrastructure that allows this to happen, which is financed through the CFREF. Those other funds you're talking about would be more project specific. I don't have details on those.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Okay. Perfect.
I'll move over to Mr. Dusome. One thing you spoke about is the philosophy of dealing with the small and medium-sized businesses, and you said that that the larger businesses take care of themselves. They know where they're at. They are constantly doing 360° reviews to determine where their gaps are, and they have in-house legal counsel, etc., to manage these processes.
My riding's in Barrie, Ontario. We're an interesting place because we're an hour outside of Toronto, but we do have our own economy. It's not a bedroom community. We have more people commuting in than out.
You spoke about the superclusters. Just off the bat, is your organization in favour of the $950 million being spent in this year's budget on the supercluster strategy?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
Well, it's a little bit of a loaded question.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
We will be submitting—
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
—a proposal to the supercluster, because, in fact, I want to connect all the superclusters together. Only then will you actually see collaboration across the country. I'm from north of Barrie, so we're in the same area.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
I'm from Penetanguishene, a small community up there.
As to the innovation centres, the centres of excellence, the superclusters, I don't see any difference between them. They're all working towards the same purpose, which is to better our economy. We need to interconnect them so that people can collaborate. I agree with the point that the market in Canada is way too small. We need to think globally. Everything we do, we should look at in terms of the Canadian market as well as how we can take this outside.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Because your organization is what it is, I'm going to pick on you a little bit.
The issue that I've seen right away, and something that we identified very early in this funding, is that it seems that it's going to be overwhelmingly used in major urban centres. Barrie's not one of those, and Penetanguishene's not one of those. In fact, there are probably only five or six meaningful bases.
How would you propose that we move forward on places with mid-sized economies and institute the strategy that's been talked about pretty much by everybody today? Right now, my area's left in the dark, quite frankly.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
Yes, I agree. We have recently been awarded funding by the Ontario government to link all the innovation centres in Ontario. For whatever reason, there's not one in Barrie and I don't understand why that is, because it's certainly a growing economy. It's very close to Toronto.
The way that we plan to connect to all-inclusive is over the Internet, over the mobility infrastructure. In theory, most people should be able to get into a mobile range, and if they need access to our cloud at very high speeds, they would need to come to Toronto or the bigger centres. I agree with the point that ideas are not just in the big cities.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
Yes.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our witnesses for being here virtually and at the table.
I'm going to ask a general question. The testimony was excellent today, and I'm looking forward to further submissions and further follow-up. In talking about the issue of superclusters and the whole strategy behind it, I recall that it was originally $800 million. The minister says it will be divided between three to five centres. They added an additional $150 million, so apparently now there are super-duper clusters.
Now we have people and companies that are going to be in and out of these clusters. I wonder about those situations. It's a little bit of a concern to me, in the sense that if you look at that money, it's not a whole lot when you look at the issues we have and start dividing it among five centres. You're looking at $200 million. That can get swallowed up by universities, research, and so forth.
I'm wondering whether or not the strategy with the best bang for our buck should look at medium-sized cities or smaller centres where we'd actually get a higher degree of value, almost like a greenfield project. I represent an area of the auto sector where greenfield sites are their own clusters. We don't need another acronym to describe them. You build a manufacturing plant and you have a competitive advantage to build around it and grow your business, because later on you can add components.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Gold and Mr. Ring. I'd like some general thoughts about how we protect those who don't get enclosed in the superclusters from getting washed out.
James McGill Professor, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medecine, McGill University, As an Individual
Do you want me to begin?
