Perfect.
My name is Gilles Brassard. I am a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal.
Let me speak in English and give my credentials, so that you know about me a little bit. I was involved in quantum information, informatique quantique, in the late 1970s, so I was the earliest person in Canada working on this topic. I invented, with Charles Bennett of IBM, quantum cryptography in the early 1980s and quantum teleportation.
That being said, my position about quantum information science, informatique quantique, is that it indeed should be a priority by the government for funding and research and development. This is a golden opportunity for Canada to remain at the top. Again, I was there with Charlie Bennett when there was essentially no one else in the world doing this type of research. Therefore, Canada was from the start leading the world in this discipline.
I want to tell you why it's so important to develop quantum information in all of its manifestations. One is that quantum computing poses a very significant threat to security. I'm sure you've heard it already, but I will say it again. Quantum computers, when they are built and we finally have a full-scale quantum computer, as opposed to the toys that are currently available.... These are fantastic technological feats, but at the moment they cannot really do anything useful that we would not do classically. But it is only a matter of time. Once full-scale quantum computers become available, then all of the security on which the Internet is based—not only the Internet, but essentially all of the cryptographic infrastructure on which we rely—will collapse, because of an algorithm invented by Peter Shor that essentially breaks all of the cryptography that is currently used on the Internet.
Let me be more precise on key establishment. Once a key is established, then it is used with more and more conventional systems, which are not so much threatened by quantum computing, but key establishment is. The reason why this is so serious is that whenever this happens it's not that secure communication will no longer be possible, but that all past communications become vulnerable. This is because nothing prevents what we call the “harvest now and decrypt later” strategy, which consists of taking down all of the information that goes on the Internet and storing it, even though the encryption cannot be broken yet. When a quantum computer comes along, then you can just go back, take all of that from your discs and decrypt retroactively. In other words, everything that's been sent on the Internet since essentially the beginning of time will become an open book when a quantum computer is available. Therefore, there's no way to try to protect the past. The past is gone forever—forget about it. But we can still hope to protect the future. This can only be done if we realize the importance of quantum secure communication.
There are two ways to do that. One is to use classical, ordinary cryptography and hope it is secure against quantum computing, which we will never be able to prove. All we know is that our currently used systems are vulnerable. Some new systems are being developed that may be secure, but we won't be able to prove that.
Or, you can use quantum cryptography. Of course, I have a vested interest in quantum cryptography, having invented it, but I have no commercial interest. Quantum cryptography is an alternative in which instead of using mathematics we use physics to protect the information in a way that is provably, unconditionally secure, regardless of the eavesdropper's computing power and technological sophistication. Quantum cryptography is secure even against a quantum computer and should be considered very seriously.
At the moment, China is deploying a large-scale quantum cryptographic network. They already have a network that links Beijing to Shanghai, which is used for real already with a satellite that they launched to experiment with long-distance space quantum cryptography. Quantum crypto is very seriously considered in China. Also, it is to a lesser extent, but quite a bit, in Europe. It's much less in North America, and really not very much at all in the United States. I think Canada should get back the lead on this topic to secure communications, because our society needs it.
Quantum computers can also be used for good to do all kinds of wonderful things like develop new medications, but that's another story.
My time is up, so I'll stop here.