Evidence of meeting #14 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was computing.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Executive Officer, Nord Quantique
As far as energy is concerned, I don't think it will be a critical point for quantum computing. Some people would object if I said it was.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you, Mr. Lemire and Dr. St‑Jean.
Mr. Masse, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to return to the question of the private sector. With regard to young students in Canada who finish their education, are you getting many of those people coming forth?
In my office alone, I've had immigration staff. In 2002, I brought somebody in one day a week. They're up to four days a week right now, because of the processing. The government has a real problem, because it only allows five cases a day and I have 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 cases.
I wonder whether or not you're getting young people who are foreign students and having issues in keeping them.
Maybe Mr. Janik can go first, and then we'll go from there.
Head of Product, Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc.
We've been incredibly lucky in being able to track young talent, ranging all the way down to high school, actually. We had an intern who started with us a few years ago and is now pursuing their undergraduate degree. They have continued to work with us throughout the summers. I'd say access to high-quality talent at all levels has been great for us.
It depends on their roles. One thing we're really lucky with is the fact that we also have this big software layer that we're working on. It has a big community focus as well, so we're able to engage people earlier in developing content for universities and high schools in roles that are much more applicable. Some of the roles on our hardware side, unfortunately, require 10 years of experience in labs like Waterloo to make sure they're able to move the needle forward for us.
I'd say we're not hiring nearly as many young people and catching them as early as we would like, but most of that issue is based on the skill sets they're coming with.
Head of Product, Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc.
Maybe one other thing is that we leverage a few different programs. The overhead of programs like Mitacs is often more than the value they drive to us. We've been working hard with those organizations to reduce that, but very often we prefer to hire directly, as opposed to partaking in certain programs.
Chief Executive Officer, Nord Quantique
Perhaps I'll offer a similar comment on our side. We have interns working at Nord Quantique at the undergraduate level, for instance, and this is a fantastic way to get them to also start acquiring knowledge as they grow.
We also have collaboration with master's and Ph.D. students in joint projects, and we even have part-time employees who are finishing their Ph.D.s as well, so this is also a great way to do that.
Chief Executive Director, Anyon Systems Inc.
This is an excellent question and very close to my heart. I am a first-generation immigrant; I came here to Canada to do my graduate work, and I stayed, so I relate to a lot of those young folks you talk about.
My comment is that in recent years, it's becoming a bit hard for people to stay in Canada, simply because, once they graduate, they still don't have any real status, any permanent status, in Canada. They have to apply for postgraduate work permits for only two years, and quite often the immigration process takes way more than two years. That's very stressful for many of these young talents, and they prefer to go to places that are either less stressful in terms of immigration or, if it's as stressful, at least the pay scale matches that stress.
I highly recommend that the government reconsider its immigration programs, at least on STEM—the science, technology, engineering and math fields—and make sure that before the student graduates as a Ph.D. or with a master's degree, they have their permanent residency in their pocket. That's the best way to guarantee that the talent we spend NSERC money on stays in Canada.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
That's the exact testimony I wanted. Hopefully the government will listen.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
That's a very good point, Mr. Masse. I feel like saying “amen”.
I will turn to Mr. Kram for five minutes.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Professor Laflamme, in addition to your very impressive resumé, I understand you're also a bit of a YouTube star. I watched your YouTube video from late last year, entitled “What are the options for building a large scale quantum computer?”
At the Q and A at the end of this video, you were asked what problem you would like to solve if you were given a quantum computer tomorrow. Your answer was that you would like to focus on the nitrogen fixation problem for making fertilizer. I was wondering if you could explain to the committee what the nitrogen fixation problem is, and how quantum computers can be used to help make fertilizer.
Professor of Physics, Canada Research Chair in Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
That's a very good question and one of the ones that the quantum computer might help us to answer.
What's the nitrogen fixation problem? It's turning what we get out of the ground into fertilizers that are useful, and it turns out that takes about 3% or 4% of the energy budget of the world. If we can improve this by 50%, we can reduce the energy budget of the world by a few per cent, which would make a dramatic impact on things like global warming.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Have you shared this idea with Fertilizer Canada or any other stakeholders like that?
Professor of Physics, Canada Research Chair in Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, As an Individual
It is shared with only the quantum community across the world, so definitely a group of people are looking at this as a possibility.
Just in tongue in cheek, I'm waiting for my colleagues Yazdi, St-Jean and Janik to give me a quantum computer so I can go and make this happen.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Okay, very good. I would like to just maybe shift gears to Dr. St-Jean.
Dr. St-Jean, in your opening statement, you talked about how the government should act as a first user of quantum computers. I was wondering if you could give some examples of practical applications of quantum computing that the government could use in its operations.
Chief Executive Officer, Nord Quantique
There are certainly questions relating to optimization that could be relevant. There's research done in material science as well, and we have had discussions with NRC on the subject.
What else? Pharma is also a field where we expect that we can explore solutions. For now, that will be essentially a toy problem, as we call it, because those systems are not quite scaled yet, as we've mentioned.
Those are the kinds of issues we can start to explore with either NRC or DRDC.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Dr. St-Jean, would you include cryptology for national defence purposes in that list as well?
Chief Executive Officer, Nord Quantique
Sure. As my colleague mentioned earlier, this is probably a little further down the road. Those kinds of problems would require really full-scale, utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers and at a large scale. We see this as a little further down the road.
In terms of what can be done, however, there are also companies interested especially in those algorithms, so they are doing quantum software or quantum algorithms. Those collaborations make sense. This is not something we focus on, because we are really building out the hardware behind it, but for those partners, that would make sense.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Finally, would any of the witnesses care to comment on the applications of quantum computing to blockchain and cryptocurrency?
Chief Executive Director, Anyon Systems Inc.
I will pass, if you don't mind.
Head of Product, Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc.
I can make a comment. It's a question we get surprisingly often.
It's the same algorithm that underlies some portions of the blockchain technology. For Bitcoin, for example, the public key RSA encryption is used within that stack, but just like we know approaches to remedy the encryption problem and it's a matter of implementation, the same thing is present with the impact on blockchain technologies.
We know the solution. It might be a little painful to implement, but it's a matter of actually doing it now as opposed to making new technological breakthroughs to be able to secure those technologies.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
I will use my prerogative as chair to ask a few questions.
Dr. Laflamme, you mentioned, as did other witnesses, that algorithms can be resistant to quantum computers.
For the benefit of the public, can you explain what a quantum computer‑resistant algorithm is?
