Industry Committee on April 1st, 2022

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your contribution, Ms. Simmons.

One of your recommendations was to create a committee within government.

Do you think industry stakeholders should sit on the committee? Something I've noticed since the committee began its study is that Canada's quantum industry is relatively small. Everyone seems to know everyone, and mutual respect is widespread.

In light of that, should the committee you are recommending be supported by the private sector? I, personally, think it should.

Should such a committee make recommendations?

As you know, NSERC is currently active in quantum computing. The para-governmental institution provides financial assistance in various areas of quantum computing.

Where should the committee start its work? When should the committee start that work? I imagine the answer is as soon as possible.

[Dr. Stephanie Simmons]

The flavour of how that group of people is formed is very important. If it is simply a part-time job, staffed by people who have skin in the game, there is going to be squabbling over more funding for their own particular version of quantum and their own particular flavour.

The model that I would like to recommend is a team of people that is funded separately, independently and well. The salaries here are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but you need to have a team of people that the government could go to and say “Is this bid or this application warranted?” They can be the ones, for example, to choose external experts to do some due diligence.

It's the lack of due diligence, awareness and consulting capability within the government that means we have no single point to go to talk to. There's no team of people, and teams exist. They exist in the U.S. They exist in the U.K. They exist in Australia. I know all of them. I know the ones in Germany. I know the ones in France. There are none in Canada.

I can't even go and speak with a team of quantum experts who are paid by the government to be able to offer policy recommendations to the government. It should not necessarily be me and my part-time staff, or any of the other people around this table. Although we have our views, you need to have a team of independent experts who could navigate or help navigate the space. They're going to be expensive, and they're only going to be more expensive over time.

It's important that they have that independence and not currently wear another hat. Otherwise, you have that natural bias that creeps in, when people start to think territorially.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Ms. Simmons, you talked about the importance of retaining talent and matching global quantum salaries, which are sometimes five to 10 times the Canadian national salary average.

If we look at Quebec's technology sector, we see that the province has become an expert in the video game arena. In fact, the government gives companies a 40% refundable tax credit on salaries. Ubisoft and others have significantly benefited from the tax credit.

Are provinces aware of what is happening in the quantum industry?

[Dr. Stephanie Simmons]

What I would say is that SR and ED takes this role and, if anything, there should be a quantum addition. It's phenomenal. It's absolutely how we can help to compete, but the only way we can ever match those kinds of salaries is for these companies to be able to raise that kind of capital. That capital can only be raised if we have contracts.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I'll end on a very positive note.

Ms. Simmons, I'm going to compare you to the actor Will Smith. You pulled a Will Smith, so to speak, by giving the Government of Canada a wake-up call today.

I have to tell you that your comments felt like a slap in the face. What you told us is absolutely incredible. The reality you've described is this:

Move your butt, because we're not going to be far behind. We have to move really quickly.

I hope that among the committee recommendations that we'll see, the first one will be this committee that you want to create. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Généreux. I agree with you. This is a helpful and necessary wake-up call.

Thank you to all the witnesses for their insight.

Go ahead, Ms. Lapointe.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Ms. Schwartz. Your company says you're the world's only commercial supplier of quantum computers. With your experience in government policy, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how current government policy helps or hinders your business as a global supplier.

[Allison Schwartz]

Thank you so much for the question. Governments are focusing on the research side of how to get the hardware systems bigger and better, because they want to be the first ones, as Steph has mentioned, to have a quantum computer inside their geography.

Where governments are not going is procuring and utilizing the technologies that are available today and helping to advance them. In Australia, you're looking at it for transportation. The army is looking at it for autonomous vehicle resupply. In Japan, they've looked at it for piloting and for tsunami evacuation route optimization, as well as how to reduce CO2 emissions during waste collection.

Canada does not have any focus on anything in the near term. If you were to ask if there are different quantum funds and foci out there, and what could be utilized to see benefits within the next one to five years, it might end up being a big zero. Governments can lean in and look at what they are doing for the near term, mid term and long term. That's the one to five years, five to eight years, eight to 10 years, and 10 years and beyond. That's where you're looking at the hybrid technologies that are out there, such as HPC and data centres. That's going to be critically important to navigate through.

There's also no supply chain domestically within Canada. We use superconducting chip fabrication. There is no domestic, commercial-sized superconducting chip fabrication plant in Canada. We have to use one in the United States.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you. We have heard about supply chain issues from other witnesses.

My next question is for Mr. Fursman.

We've heard a lot about the talent pool. I'd like to ask for your thoughts on how we can attract and also develop the talent pool here in Canada.

[Andrew Fursman]

I think we're doing a great job of attracting talent to Canada. Most of the best graduates in this space from Canadian universities have probably not been through Canadian elementary schools. I'm noticing that a lot of people come over after their undergrads to go to our grad schools, and they end up being some of the top graduates.

Attracting students is something that I think our universities are doing very well. It might be worth noting, for example, that a typical Mitacs intern might come and work at 1QBIT, with a starting salary—while they're part of the Mitacs program—at around, say $45,000 and slightly higher. These are the levels that grad students might expect to make as they're going through school. Within about two years, we find that these people are receiving offers at the equivalent of $200,000 Canadian and above to go and staff up many of the organizations around the world, in the United States, Australia, Singapore and Japan.

We understand that we're creating incredible value within these students as they go through the very end of their development process, but we are also investing in those students and making them significantly more valuable, so then retaining them is a nice problem to have. You're creating an investment in students that is making them much more valuable, but because they are much more valuable, they are also therefore more expensive. If you don't compensate them more, then they will be acquired by other organizations.

The important thing is recognizing that because having an opportunity to work at one of these companies is still the bottleneck for giving people industrial experience, once you have someone with that experience, they become tremendously valuable. Keeping them in the country at that point is really a matter of matching the new global standard of salaries that we're seeing emerge.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I'm not sure how much time I have left, but I'd like to ask you a similar question that I asked Ms. Schwartz.

With regard to government's role in developing policies, what do we need to stop doing and what do we need to start doing?

[Andrew Fursman]

The things you can keep doing include investing in all of the things at the beginning of the talent pipeline. It seems that there is great work happening there, and things that can be incrementally improved on that front.

What might be something that we can start doing is thinking about the nuts and bolts of Canada's national quantum strategy. How do we define success? What does success look like there? Then, how do we make sure that we're going to be investing in the long term?

Compared to my colleagues here, I'm slightly less optimistic about the very short timelines around quantum computing, even though I'm very aligned in terms of the impact. My concern is that we can't have spikes of funding that then disappear and expect to retain people through that process. I would want to look at a 10-year program that has an understanding of how that scaling up of funding can grow with the organizations and whether we should see an acceleration of this process, to be able to understand that we would need to accelerate that funding, and also to recognize that this is something that's likely to play out over the next 100 years, even though it is just starting now and we can expect some tremendous development over the next decade.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

We now go to you, Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas. You have two and a half minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have two questions, and the first is for Ms. Broadbent.

Ms. Broadbent, I want to revisit something you said earlier. You mentioned how the University of Ottawa's bilingual status affected your dealings with NSERC.

My understanding is that you have to submit the paperwork in both languages. Do you face other barriers because the University of Ottawa is a bilingual institution?

Right now, some francophones do not have the option to conduct research in their mother tongue—to use one of Canada's two official languages.

Can you tell us more about that?

[Dr. Anne Broadbent]

Thank you for your question.

I was referring to the fact that we have to allocate double the resources to provide instruction and services to the entire student body in both official languages.

As far as funding applications are concerned, they can be submitted in the language of the applicant's choice.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Ms. Broadbent, what do you think of the fact that people aren't able to study certain science disciplines in Canada in one of the country's two official languages?

[Dr. Anne Broadbent]

I don't have any data on that, specifically, but I would encourage them to come to the University of Ottawa, where they can study in the official language of their choice.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I don't think certain research chairs carry out their work in French, but I would be glad to visit you and provide you with some information.

Ms. Schwartz, one of the things you talked about was alignment between applications and quantum technology, especially to support the energy transition.

Canada is a country rich in resources and minerals, many of which are found in Quebec. The committee has done studies on that area.

Do you think your work in quantum technology could be leveraged to support the energy transition and efforts to combat climate change?

[Allison Schwartz]

Thank you for your question.

The answer is, yes, there is a lot of work being done in the energy field. E.ON, a German company, is looking at distribution of energy and how to put energy back onto the grid as you're driving an electric vehicle.

As I mentioned, in Japan they're looking at AI and are piloting quantum applications looking at waste collection and reducing CO2 emissions by 60%.

In the United States, there was just a workshop in the Office of Electricity, which D-Wave participated in, looking at a variety of areas where we could utilize quantum computing and quantum hybrid applications for energy.

So the short answer to your question is, yes, there are lots of places to look. We need to get the smart minds together to identify those. That's where a quantum sandbox could throw those questions out and start to develop answers coming in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Masse, you have two and a half minutes. Go ahead.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with you, Madam Schwartz, with regard to global competition and other international groups. Is there a strong quantum computing coalition, almost like a lobby group, in the private sector in the United States or in Europe? What is the lay of the land for those elements? In many industries there are associations and so forth, and I'm not familiar with the quantum computing ones. I'm more familiar with auto and other heavy industry, but not those aspects.

Are those happening? Are they effectively lobbying on that in Washington, for example?

[Allison Schwartz]

Absolutely. Yes. The Quantum Economic Development Consortium, the QED-C, was actually created by congressional law. It has industry, academia, the national labs and government. It's starting to open up its membership to other countries as well, and Canada is one of them.

You also have the Quantum Industry Coalition in the United States, which is a factor of quantum industry. Similarly, we have the quantum industry council in Canada, which Steph and I are both members of. There's also stuff in Japan with Q-STAR. Other consortiums and other think tanks are looking at this in Europe and in the U.K. as well.

We are very coordinated in our efforts. A lot of the focus is on exactly what's been discussed today. How do governments prepare? How do we actually utilize the technology today? How do we look at supply chains? How do we identify talent? What are the best ways in which to navigate?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

On that, are you part of the Canadian business council in the United States? I'm a vice-chair of the Canada-U.S. parliamentary association. We lobby quite a bit there and a lot of businesses have joined from the Canadian perspective, but I haven't yet run into any quantum organizations.

Is this just kind of emerging, or are there things we can do as members of Parliament and also in our trade councils to get you further support and get your voices across the country and also, more importantly, internationally? What can we do to help?

[Allison Schwartz]

I appreciate that. We are not members yet of the Canadian business council. However, it is on my list of things to look at. We have been focusing on quantum specifically, because a lot of the issues that these larger organizations tackle are above and beyond where quantum needs to focus.

Over the next year, at the end of 2022 and in 2023, I think those are the areas that a lot of these different quantum organizations are going to navigate into, especially with some use cases in the auto industry—which I'm happy to follow up on privately—of areas that auto manufacturers are looking at for PFAS as well as optimizing manufacturing floors.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Excellent.

Thank you very much and thank you, Mr. Chair.