Evidence of meeting #15 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 talent.
A recording is available from Parliament.
2:20 p.m.
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Yes. Those are the policies I was referring to for what we could be doing. Those areas you mentioned are exactly the ones we have been discussing.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you, Mr. McCauley and Mr. Masse.
Go ahead, Mr. Deltell. You have five minutes.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank the witnesses for being here this afternoon. Their insight is quite impressive.
Dr. Simmons, you said earlier, and I will quote you from memory, “instead of speaking about how great my company is...”. I don't know how good your company is, but I know how great your testimony was today. It was very impressive.
I want to continue the questioning by Mr. Kram.
Sometimes it's great, but sometimes it's also a little bit alarming.
Ms. Simmons, I won't go as far as to say that your comments today scared me, but quantum computing certainly does give rise to security questions.
A few days ago, a witness told the committee that either Canada or the U.S. would be the first to achieve viable technology. If that's true, we aren't doing too badly.
Do you know whether other foreign powers are currently in the running? Could they get ahead of us?
2:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
Yes. Thank you very much.
Once the dominant design emerges, it's only a matter of time. I would say it's the kind of situation where if we get there first, that's great. We're not going to be the ones to use it adversarially, but the information will be out there.
It is of essential importance, from a national security perspective, for so many countries, especially in a difficult world, to have that technology on hand. I think that it's only a matter of time, and one of the things that drew me to the nuclear bomb analogy is that once the information is out there, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.
I don't think it's just a question of Canada versus the U.S. I think corporate espionage is a major issue and we are kind of on a clock. There's a lot of work to be done, because it's so asymmetric, right? The workload is going to be a very asymmetric one, so we should get started immediately.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Let me go with a clear, direct and very incisive question. Where are the Russians and where are the Chinese?
2:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
The Chinese, I think, if they're not the winners, they will follow along within two years. I think the Russians have their own effort. They would be further behind, but I think they would work with organizations to get up to speed. As I said, they have some critical infrastructure that the rest of the world relies upon, so it's going to be a logistics supply chain thing.
That brings me back to one of my other recommendations. We have to be thinking about sovereignty here, because there will be a lot of geopolitical tensions once the dominant design emerges, and I don't think it's very far away.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
It's not very far away. Do you have a time frame for us?
2:20 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
Not one that I'm willing to disclose in this format.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
As a human being, I would say I'm not sure that I feel comfortable with this answer.
I will address another issue, to talk about the Canadian team, that the government should take the lead in grabbing all the Canadian brains that we have.
It's crucial that we not repeat the mistakes we made in the past to avoid experiencing those same losses. Two situations that come to mind are the CF‑105 Arrow aircraft manufactured by Avro in the 1950s and the Avro Canada Jetliner in 1949.
Do you think it is the government's responsibility to provide that leadership? If so, what should a Team Canada look like?
2:25 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
Is that question directed to me?
2:25 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
I think we need to have some kind of Manhattan-style project, or something similar, that concentrates focus and collaboration on what looks like a dominant design through prize or DARPA-like projects. People do mobilize. There's an array of programs that could be adopted. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; we just need to actually coordinate and work towards goals.
One very natural goal is a computer, yes, but another very natural goal is a repeater, so that we can develop the quantum network infrastructure that Canada will uniquely need because of our geography.
There are a lot of ways to incentivize collaboration, but it has to come through procurement contracts. It's not going to be built in a university. Universities are absolutely fantastic for training people, but that's not where these large-scale systems are going to go. They should be collaborating with organizations on these large-scale, large investment projects—$50 million to $100 million. Let's do the moon shot. Let's own it. We absolutely have the talent for it. We just need the support.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Dr. Simmons, I really like your historical comparisons, because we have some ideas of what happened before and what we should do for the future.
I have one last question.
Mr. Kram raised the issue of the banking system. Do we have to be concerned also about our defence system, our army system?
2:25 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
Yes, sir. RSA is everywhere. It's medical records. It's every classical communication that is still.... The biggest risk actually is that people are storing communications right now for the near term, but quantum computers will be able to go back and retroactively read them all. If you layer on all of these other post-quantum algorithms, that will buy us time, but if all of those do eventually fall under attack, then all of those will be read in the future as well.
It's foundational. If we can get in front of it, this is the opportunity. I don't want to be the harbinger of something negative here. If we get in front of it, then quantum computers will come online and be seen as the fantastic contribution to human technological progress that they should be known for being. We have an absolute opportunity to entirely redefine how we think about chemistry, how we do drug discovery and material discovery. Imagine if we were actually finally able to simulate the brain and room-temperature superconductors. There's going to be so much good that comes from this technology, but I don't want the public's first impression of quantum computers to be, “Oh my goodness, they broke the Internet.”
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity.
Thank you to the witnesses for making time.
Dr. Simmons, your testimony is, I think, scaring all of us a little bit. My question is about research contracts, which you talked about, with public universities, for which secrecy is contracted and IP could be taken.
Could you expand on that a little bit? Why don't universities have more leverage here?
2:25 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
The business model for universities is undergoing a dramatic shift, and this speaks to some of the research funding that's happened recently. The Canadian research system is fantastic. The NSERC system and the tri-council agencies are truly fantastic, but they need about 10 times the amount of funding.
Correspondingly, there is an incentive for professors to seek external research contracts from a whole host of organizations, both domestic and international, at basically any cost. It's how they compete globally. Correspondingly, those can come with all kinds of terms, but they're typically IP terms. We are going through a mass sale of our IP right now because research contracts usually come with this proviso.
The secrecy element was surprising to me when I found out about it, but it's pervasive. If you look at the research funding across universities, over the last 10 years in particular, there's been this massive teeter-totter shift in how research is funded. It's not across the board. It's quite disproportionate for different sectors and different researchers, and I want to bring that to your attention because I think it's important.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
Do you think universities in America, for example, or elsewhere are doing a better job than Canadian universities are at fighting this imbalance of power?
2:30 p.m.
Founder and Chief Quantum Officer, Photonic Inc.
They have different funding mechanisms, so they're not so desperate. They have more funding by far. They have more research funding, so they're not so desperate. At the same time, yes, I am aware that this is how the IP tends to go. That's what this tech translation office is. They use research contracts in this format as a mechanism to measure success. More is better, right? That's their incentive right now.
They want more research contract funding, but they don't recognize the value of the IP they have. This is just the new funding model for corporate R and D. They don't do it in-house anymore; they do it through these research contracts. Instead of having just internal R and D teams, they have those as well as all of these IP purchase arrangements with universities globally.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
That's great.
My next question is for Dr. McCauley.
You mentioned that quantum information storage and security in quantum computing are areas in which Canada is currently leading. I'm wondering where we are in relation to other countries, our competitors in these fields, and what they are doing better than we are and what we should replicate.
2:30 p.m.
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Calgary, As an Individual
First of all, I'm not an expert in quantum computing, but I have been involved with several other presidents of universities in Canada, including UBC, the University of Waterloo and the Université de Sherbrooke, as well as Andrew, in terms of trying to bring forward to ISED the notion of a quantum Canada strategy.
I highlighted some areas where I know we excel. Dr. Simmons mentioned them, as well as Dr. Broadbent. This notion of building the next secure quantum Internet I think is something that we in Canada can take and have taken a very, very strong role in, and I want to reinforce that as one area.
I believe that in some of the recent analysis we've looked at historically over the last decade—and I think Andrew can comment on this as well—Canada was ranked at about number five in terms of a variety of different areas of quantum, but as I mentioned in my opening comments, and as other people today have mentioned in their testimony, we're losing ground.
The U.S., China and the EU are investing huge dollars in this area, for all the reasons that I think have come in front of this community. We need increased funding in this area to support our existing position, and if we're going to improve, we need another multiplier, which is why I was advocating for the quantum Canada strategy.
I also think, as the other members have testified today, that we need this to really clearly identify public-private partnerships and a pull—i.e., procurement contracts, as Dr. Simmons mentioned. Developing the Canadian equivalent, CARPA, or a challenge-based approach to supporting this as a mechanism, I think is a really strong vehicle for the way forward. It's investing in talent, and it's making sure that we can develop the product with industry and it can be rapidly mobilized around the world.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
That's great. Thank you.
My final question is open for the panel.
Is this an area where we can work in conjunction with other countries? Or do you think our technologies and strategies in this area have to be developed locally and kept local as well?
2:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Global Government Relations and Public Affairs, D-Wave Systems Inc.
I'll try to answer that, since I do global government relations.
I think Canada has a leadership role in many aspects of quantum, but not in all, so yes, you do need to partner internationally. You need to partner with folks in the United Kingdom and in Europe. You need to partner with folks in the U.S. Australia is actually looking at application development for transportation systems. I do think that there is international co-operation and international partnership that needs to be had amongst allied nations, so I think this is an area in which to lean in.
As to a CARPA-style program, if you look at what DARPA is already doing right now, they have a quantum program on benchmarking. They're looking at how to build a quantum computer in a phased approach. I mentioned in my testimony the quantum sandbox with application development. That could also be within one of these styles of programs, wherein you're actually building the applications while also looking at how to make the systems better.
To answer your question, yes, it does need to be in an international fashion.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you, Ms. Schwartz.
Go ahead, Mr. Généreux. You have five minutes.
