Evidence of meeting #67 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.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Alex Nuttall Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Yes, certainly. I was able to visit a place, I believe, where the University of Waterloo had a partnership and see that.
I'll move over to Karin.
Sorry, I saw you were able to answer the question.
10:15 a.m.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
With natural resources, if we look at the model of Europe, they have natural resources, fewer than us, but they have a lot. What they've done is they've gone up the food chain. To the example of nanocellulose, it's used a lot in cosmetics, and we have some R and D on that, but we haven't moved up the food chain where we do very sophisticated products for very international, sophisticated consumers. Consumers now, since you can buy everything on the Internet, want very sophisticated post-processed products. We have not stepped up to that.
In the U.S. they have done that, but not as much as in Europe. It's really funded a lot by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy. We have NRCan. We have other research institutions that do that, but we haven't made the effort of bringing them in on large-scale projects as much as the U.S. has done, again, for sophisticated post-processed products.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We're going to now go to Mr. Arya.
You have five minutes.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Dixon, you mentioned about how good Israel is, etc., but there are also other issues. The difference is the Israeli defence and the Israeli military. The universities do a lot of research and development that lead to innovation, but they don't hold onto the IP rights. They allow their personnel to take the entire IP with them to the technology sector. That's where it allows them to prosper, but I'll come back to you on that if I have time.
Dr. Hinzer, what about this idea that a lot of research done by the universities is done with taxpayers' dollars? Also, sometimes some SMEs join hands, along with taxpayers' dollars, to fund innovation. Why should the IP rights be limited to universities? Why doesn't it have to go to the SMEs?
10:15 a.m.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
Well, the standard agreement from the tri-agency councils, which is a template that's used by universities, is that the SME that's the partner in a grant, that has put either cash, in-kind contributions, or a combination of both, has right of first refusal on that intellectual property.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Why don't they automatically get the entire rights to use that innovation?
10:15 a.m.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
Because usually for a research group, I get funds from at least 15 different sources for my group.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
10:15 a.m.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
They're from different countries and they're from different provinces.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
It doesn't matter. I'm talking about Canadian tax dollars investing in universities, and if the benefit doesn't flow back to Canadians, why should it be there?
10:15 a.m.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
It's a good question, and I can't answer that. I'm on—
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Thank you.
I'm going to ask Ms. Davidson. Can you answer that, please?
10:20 a.m.
Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation, George Brown College, and Polytechnics Canada
Yes. We do give the intellectual property to the partners we work with. We don't retain any of it ourselves.
10:20 a.m.
Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation, George Brown College, and Polytechnics Canada
It's very simple for us. We have a standard template. We sign the same template with every partner. We have no problems partnering with industries; they like to sign our template. It's very simple.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Now, your standard template, how does that match with those of other institutions, say, other universities? I know yours is polytechnic, but other universities, how does it match?
10:20 a.m.
Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation, George Brown College, and Polytechnics Canada
It doesn't match with the university templates. The universities all have different templates. It does match with other polytechnics across the country or with many colleges across the country.
The reason we're doing applied research is very different from why the universities do it. We're primarily doing it to benefit our regional economies, to get more jobs for our industry partners, so that our students can get great jobs, and also so that we can give our students experiential learning opportunities.
We're not driven by generating revenue from intellectual property. Patenting and publications are not our key metrics. Our key drivers are the number of students and the number of partners and the economic benefits we can have for our partners.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Thank you.
Anand, you mentioned in your speech about a Far East country where the patents are held by a numbered company and it allows the industry to access them.
10:20 a.m.
Technology Lead, EION Inc.
For example, the university itself does not do the research in a shell. They already partner with a numbered company, which may be a military organization or it could be any of the others. They work in tandem with the university to find where the intellectual properties can be harnessed, and that is useful for spinoffs into a company to produce jobs.
Instead of the universities going around doing this, because they're not the right resource to do it, these people have the resources in order to go and evangelize the particular value of the patent and then find like-minded ones and give this patent so that new start-ups can—
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
I have about 30 seconds left.
You mentioned the 80:20 ratio where 80% of the professors and researchers don't have the knowledge or the ability to commercialize the innovation they do.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
That has led to a lot of IP being held within the universities without ever seeing the light of day.