Thank you for the question, Mr. Lemire.
I see that you've read our documents carefully.
In Quebec, 450 companies—mainly SMEs—are associated with the advanced materials sector. That's 45,000 jobs. I'm talking about Quebec, but that gives you an idea of what that means across Canada.
Remember that the advanced materials sector is intersectional. There are applications in various sectors, whether it be the environment, chemistry, transport or energy. In short, it's very broad.
How can the Government of Canada, or a provincial government, increase private investment?
PRIMA Québec's approach is to promote collaborative innovation projects. It must be understood that a project will always receive funding from the Government of Quebec. It can also obtain funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC. The company or companies also have to put money into the project. Thanks to this collaborative innovation formula, the domestic spending on research and development that businesses put forward increase this figure, which—as you are probably aware—has been trending downwards in recent years.
More recognition of the strategic role of advanced materials could most certainly help. What we often notice is that we will think in terms of finished products. Let me give you the example of clean technologies. Several of them could not exist without the use of advanced materials. Think of sensors, membranes and filters. I think that recognition is very important.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, advanced materials have an important role to play in the quantum sector, in equipment production, in particular. Quantum materials have quite unusual properties. One example is superconductors, which allow no loss of thermal energy. I think that's very important.
I believe that advanced materials should be promoted more by governments, whether federal or provincial, but also in the various policies. Whether it's the national quantum strategy, the hydrogen strategy, or all approaches to net‑zero emissions or climate change, advanced materials have a role to play.