Industry Committee on March 25th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to see you again, virtually this time.

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to the twelfth meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, the committee is meeting to study quantum computing.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members may attend in person or by Zoom. Those who are attending in person in Ottawa know the public health rules in place, so I expect that they will behave accordingly.

We have two groups of witnesses with us today to begin our study of quantum computing.

In the first hour we will hear from Nipun Vats, Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Research Sector, at the Department of Industry, and Geneviève Tanguay, Vice-President, Emerging Technologies, at the National Research Council of Canada.

Before moving on to questions, I am going to let the witnesses make their presentations for a few minutes on the subject under consideration today.

Thank you for being here with us.

Mr. Vats, I give you the floor for six minutes.

[Dr. Nipun Vats, Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Research Sector, Department of Industry]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Nipun Vats. As was mentioned, I'm the assistant deputy minister of the science and research sector at ISED. In this role, I'm responsible for policy and programs related to federal funding of post-secondary research, and for fostering connections between research and its downstream economic and societal benefits.

It's in this context that my group is responsible for coordinating the national quantum strategy that was announced by the government in the 2021 federal budget.

I’d like to start off by providing a brief overview of quantum in Canada, before moving to discuss quantum computing.

Canada is a leader in quantum science. This has been made possible by patient, long-term investment in basic and applied research. This has helped Canadian talent lead the development of new innovations in quantum science and technology.

In this sense, Canada’s success in quantum S and T is akin to the Canadian experience with artificial intelligence—although, in general, quantum science is a broader field and at an earlier stage of development in a number of key areas of application.

Over time, we have sought to amplify these strengths with strategic, larger scale investments in research.

In total, over the past 10 years, the federal government has invested just over $1 billion in our quantum ecosystem. This includes both funding for investigator-led projects as well as initiatives such as the Canada first research excellence fund, which has provided large-scale funding to Canadian institutions to achieve world-class status in quantum and in other domains.

Today, Canada has a growing ecosystem with centres of quantum expertise in universities across the country, companies that have pioneered world firsts, and healthy Canadian private sector investment, including foreign-sourced venture capital.

While Canada’s quantum ecosystem extends from coast to coast, there are four major centres of quantum expertise across the country, mostly clustered around universities.

The Toronto-Waterloo region has strengths in quantum information, communications and sensors, with a range of commercialization accelerators and incubators, and also boasts companies such as Xanadu and Ranovus. There's also the Institute for Quantum Computing, housed at the University of Waterloo. It is the largest institution of its kind in the world.

The greater Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City corridor is anchored by work in quantum hardware and devices. Companies engaged in this ecosystem include IBM, Anyon Systems and SBQuantum.

The Calgary-Edmonton corridor has expertise in nanotechnology and enabling technologies, and Alberta is building a provincial quantum network, Quantum Alberta, to encourage and accelerate the commercialization of quantum technologies.

In the greater Vancouver region, the focus includes quantum materials, algorithms and hardware development. Quantum BC plays a key role in convening provincial stakeholders. One local B.C. company, D-Wave, was an early leader globally in quantum computing and has made significant strides recently in terms of investment and commercialization of its technologies.

There is a lot of complementarity in the strengths of these hubs and a range of collaborations between academic researchers, start-ups and larger, more established companies, and government labs. This positions Canada’s quantum ecosystem well for future success.

Canada has strengths in many different areas, and we are particularly known for our work in quantum computing, quantum communications and post-quantum cryptography. From the previous examples, you can see computers figure prominently in Canada’s quantum landscape.

One important element that I haven’t mentioned yet is that Canadian quantum talent is recognized and sought all over the world. This is why focusing on the talent pipeline will help us leverage quantum’s enormous potential for commercialization but also provide direct benefits to Canadians.

At this stage in the development of the quantum ecosystem, the next step is to build up our effort strategically to help Canadian researchers and companies seize opportunities as they arise.

Due to the complexity of quantum technologies, they cannot be developed in any single country. As such, international collaboration is also very important. Canadian researchers and companies have been very active in these collaborations. To date, these collaborations have occurred mainly at the researcher level, but they could also benefit from greater coordination.

Given this context, in Budget 2021, the Government of Canada announced the development of a national quantum strategy – and a commitment of $360 million over seven years, starting in 2021-22, as a next step to build out Canada’s quantum ecosystem and ensure that Canadian scientists and entrepreneurs are prepared for the quantum era.

The overarching goals of the strategy are to amplify Canada's significant strength in quantum research, grow our quantum-ready technologies in companies and talent, and solidify Canada's global leadership in this domain.

The budget announcement and investment are about doubling down in those areas and those strengths in ways that are more strategic, and foster better connections between our centres of expertise across the country, all while recognizing Canada's expertise and potential economic benefits from these technologies.

In order to develop the national quantum strategy, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada held consultations in 2021, and recently published a "What We Heard" report, which highlights the importance of international collaboration, foreign talent and investment, and exporting to international markets to support the growth of our quantum market.

It also notes that for Canada to remain a leader in quantum, collaboration between academia, industry, and government, both domestically and internationally, is required.

Informed by these and other consultations, investments under the strategy have already started to move forward under each pillar. For example, NSERC, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, has recently launched and announced a number of programs related to training and research, and has a number of collaborations with the European Commission and the U.S. National Science Foundation. As my colleague will likely get into, the National Research Council has also launched calls in a number of areas.

In parallel, the government is developing a national quantum strategy document that will help further focus current and future investments to position Canada to lead in key areas of strength and opportunity in quantum technology over the coming years.

Mr. Chair, I was mindful of time. You suggested six minutes, and the next part of what I was going to say is on quantum computing. I know that in your second hour, you have some leading experts in quantum computing who probably could speak to that far better than I could, so if you want to move on to the next set of remarks, I would be happy to stop here and open it up for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vats. We will do that. Perhaps it will come up in the questioning later on.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Tanguay.

[Dr. Geneviève Tanguay, Vice-President, Emerging Technologies, National Research Council of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to speak with you today about the National Research Council of Canada as part of your study of quantum computing

I would like to begin by acknowledging that the National Research Council’s facilities are on the traditional unceded territories of many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis People. I would also like to add that I am currently located on customary territory of the Huron-Wendat nation. We recognize our privilege to be able to conduct research and drive innovation on these lands and pay respect to the peoples who were here before us.

My name is Dr. Geneviève Tanguay and I am the Vice-President of the Emerging Technologies division at the NRC. In this capacity, I am responsible for several research centres including Advanced Electronics and Photonics, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, Metrology, Nanotechnology, and Security and Disruptive Technologies.

With a doctorate in Parasitology, I have worked for various institutions such as Universities Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Centre Québécois de valorisation des biotechnologies. Much of my work has been dedicated to promoting technology and innovation transfer in the biotechnology sector. From 2007 to 2011, I held the position of Assistant Deputy Minister for research, innovation and science and society with the Government of Québec. I then served as Vice-Rector, Research, at the Université de Montréal, before joining the NRC in my current position.

As you may know, the NRC is Canada's federal research and development organization with a national footprint that includes laboratories in 22 locations spread across every province of the country.

In addition to doing their own cutting edge research, our scientists, engineers and business experts partner with universities, colleges and Canadian industry to help take research and technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

We serve a unique role connecting the diverse parts of Canada’s research ecosystem, responding to public policy priorities and creating opportunities that benefit Canadians.

Over the past five years, we have implemented a plan to revitalize and sustain the NRC’s role at the forefront of research and innovation. This has resulted in the creation of 9 Collaboration Centres with universities and other partners in areas such as quantum photonics, ocean technologies, green energy, AI and cybersecurity.

In addition, we are pursuing research excellence through support for exploratory work and leadership in select disruptive technologies, ensuring a more diverse workforce, revitalizing our NRC research environment, and aligning with industrial priorities in key innovation clusters.

Now I will focus in on the NRC's effort in quantum research. Through our collaborative science, technology and innovation program we aim to bring together the best minds from academia, industry and government to deliver game-changing scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs across the innovation continuum. These cross-sector, collaborative challenge programs address current and emerging government priorities to be achieved over a seven-year time frame. Of our many challenge programs, two of the most recent ones to emerge focus on quantum. They are the Internet of things quantum sensors challenge program and the applied quantum computing challenge program.

Launched in 2021, the goal of the Internet of things quantum sensors program is to enable the development of revolutionary sensors that harness the extreme sensitivity of quantum systems to provide enhanced precision, sensitivity, rates and range of measurable phenomena. The ambition is that this new generation of sensor systems performing beyond the limits of classical physics may be engineered and commercialized for applications that benefit Canadians. To date, we have 47 agreements under development with many industry partners. The main areas of focus for this challenge are quantum photonics, chip-based quantum systems and quantum metrology.

NRC's most recent challenge program, which will be launching in 2022-23, will be concentrating on applied quantum computing. The goal of the challenge will be to support commercial and government innovations in quantum algorithms and applied quantum computing. The program is being developed in alignment with the development of the Government of Canada's national quantum strategy that Nipun just spoke about. It will support quantum initiatives across the Government of Canada by working with federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations to explore applications of quantum computing for public service operations and program delivery. The anticipated areas of focus are quantum algorithms, quantum simulations, and models and architecture.

We are also addressing quantum communication in a third Challenge program, which deals with high-speed secure networks. The objective is to develop and deploy quantum communication, including quantum key distribution and quantum satellite communication.

By hosting these challenges, we hope to support Canada’s ambition to grow quantum-ready technologies, companies and talent; and solidify Canada’s global leadership in this area.

Thank you for your time. I will be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Ms. Tanguay.

We will begin our first round of questions.

Ms. Gray, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I'll start my questions with Dr. Vats. I understand THAT in budget 2021 the government intended to develop the national quantum strategy. What is the date that strategy will be launched?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

Thank you for the question.

I guess there are two parts to that answer. One, when it comes to the investments relating to the strategy, those are already being announced. The kind of programmatic elements that will drive the objectives of the strategy have already been announced, to some extent.

For example, I believe last week the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council announced an investment of about $138 million out of the national quantum strategy for a range of programming under the alliance program, which is focused on larger-scale research and collaboration amongst centres of research and industry, as well as funding for specific training programs under NSERC's CREATE program.

The actual strategy document that will inform the rounds of investment around those programs, but that could also provide a bit of a longer-term direction with respect to quantum in Canada, is currently under development. There's no definitive date for an announcement of the strategy document as of yet.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Great. Thank you.

Do you know if the funding that was announced, as you mentioned, was allocated through budget 2021? Was that new spending, or did the money come from somewhere else?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

The amount that I mentioned from NSERC was from the budget 2021 investment, yes, as is some of the funding that's going towards the NRC challenge programs that Dr. Tanguay mentioned.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Okay.

Since we're still at the beginning stages of developing the strategies, as you mentioned, how was this funding determined to fit into the strategy, since the strategy isn't developed yet, and where did this funding suggestion come from?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

Well, there's a fairly long history, to this point, with respect to the development of the strategy. Prior to budget 2021, there was an extended consultation amongst the research and industrial community in the quantum ecosystem to develop some recommendations on the types of investments that would be required to take the quantum sector in Canada forward. The programmatic elements that were identified under budget 2021 were really informed by that input that was provided by the Canadian quantum community.

Now, the programs themselves have a certain degree of flexibility in terms of how the funding could be focused. The idea is that investments are starting under those buckets, informed by that long consultation process, but we would be able to refine that as we move forward, as informed by the strategy document.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

Would that have been from those round tables that were held last year? Is that sort of where that flowed out of?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

The government's consultations were the round tables last year. There was actually a community-driven consultation process that was conducted even prior to the budget investment. There was a lot of stakeholder input even before the budget. Then, to better focus our thinking with respect to the programs and the longer-term plan, the government conducted a series of round tables over last summer.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Great. Thank you.

Doctor, are you able to table with the committee the target metrics and the dates to meet those targets from the announcement of the strategy on March 15, just recently, to the date when the strategy will be launched? Are you able to table those metrics and what the dates are as you're developing your strategy?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

Well, I'm not sure exactly what pieces. I mean, with respect to the programs, there are definitive timelines in terms of what's been launched, when applications will be due and when decisions will be taken. The strategy as a policy document is something that I don't have a definitive time for, but with respect to the program pieces that have been announced, I think there would be no problem in providing that to the committee.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Great. Thank you very much.

Has the minister directed you or your department to work with your provincial counterparts in ensuring that the quantum strategy also considers post-secondary training in this field?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

I would say that generally we have been working very closely with provincial governments on the quantum strategy writ large. As I mentioned in my initial remarks, there is a lot going on in a lot of different parts of the country. When it comes to the governments, particularly in those provinces with a large concentration of effort in quantum, that being B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, we have been working very closely with those governments to make sure that what we're doing is complementing what they're doing.

On the training side, that's been one component that's been discussed amongst many. It has been part of those discussions.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Great, thank you very much.

I have one other quick question. Has the minister directed you or your department to ensure that security and privacy are a pillar of the future national quantum strategy?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

Yes, that has come up. In the consultations we had last summer, there was a framing document that talked about the importance of security. In fact, one of the round tables was focused on security issues.

With respect to the programs that are rolling out, there are security provisions embedded within those programs, specifically the alliance program at NSERC that I mentioned. The NRC also has security due diligence built into its program suite. Both in terms of policy and programmatic measures, security is clearly an important issue in this space, so it is integrated into the approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, MP Gray, and Mr. Vats.

I'll now turn to MP Dong for six minutes.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

First of all, I want to thank Dr. Vats and Dr. Tanguay for their time in coming to the committee. Also, I don't think I ever had a chance to thank my colleagues on the committee for supporting this very interesting study.

I'm pleased to hear that Canada has a national quantum strategy coupled with $360 million over seven years. However, comparing that with other large competitors in this technology, I see that China is investing $15.3 billion in this research over five years, the United States $1.27 billion, and I think Russia $691 million over five years.

Through consultation and feedback from the industry, is the support from the government, and also its strategy, adequate in the research field of quantum technology?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

Maybe I can give my comments, and then, Mr. Chair, if my colleague Geneviève has anything to add, maybe she could do so as well.

The quantum strategy is built on top of a number of investments that were ongoing. I mentioned the billion dollars over the last 10 years. A number of those investments continue through things like these large-scale institutional research investments through the Canada first research excellence fund. Another round of that program has been launched, and we could expect further investment in quantum.

The quantum strategy funding is really focused on some of the key pieces that are needed to accelerate the development beyond the foundational funding, which is already quite significant with respect to quantum—things like making sure that we have very strong training programs in the country to create the pipeline of talent we need, or enabling institutions and companies to scale up their R and D, because with some of these quantum technologies, proof of principle on a small scale is nowhere near the same thing as trying to build something on a commercial scale. Those are the types of investments that this additional funding is focused on.

If you were to ask the research community if the funding is sufficient, I expect that the answer you would get is that it is probably not enough, but we're trying to be very focused in trying to address the gaps that we think really need to be addressed at this point in time to make sure that we can continue to be competitive internationally with respect to quantum.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I'm not suggesting that we need to compete with those giant countries. We're a middle-power country, but, thinking about nuclear technology, Canada has a very unique advantage, whether in heavy water or the uranium that we use.

Going forward, do you think that the Canadian quantum computing industry will gain that unique competitive advantage over the research happening in other countries?

[Dr. Nipun Vats]

That's our hope, and our intent is certainly to make sure that we're capturing those benefits for Canada. You need a very strong foundation to make sure that you continue to attract economic investment in emerging technology fields. We've been very good at investing—

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I have a very important question that I want to get in.