Science and Research Committee on Nov. 14th, 2022

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm running out of time here, but X-energy runs different kinds of fuel through the reactor. Can you explain that a little bit further for the committee, please?

[Rosemary Yeremian]

I'd be happy to.

We use a form of fuel called TRISO fuel. The beauty of this fuel is that it's been called, as I said in my opening remarks, “the most robust fuel on earth”. If you'll let me geek out for a moment, I'll tell you a bit about it.

We take a poppy seed-sized kernel of uranium carbon and oxygen. We then coat it in three layers of ceramic using pharmaceutical-grade technology. Nineteen thousand of those kernels are then put in a ball and covered in graphite. Graphite doesn't melt under any temperature a nuclear reactor can get to, so you're left with a very safe, very robust fuel that nobody can take apart and do anything nefarious with. It's sealed. It's contained. If someone walks away from the control room—not that they would, but if they did—the reactor would just slightly go up, and then shut down on its own. That's the beauty of our fuel.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Wonderful. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lobb and Mr. Tochor.

Again, we're grateful to our witnesses.

Now we're going to go to Mr. Collins for five minutes, please.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for attending this evening.

I want to start with Professor Bengio.

Sir, are you aware of best practices or design principles for deploying moon shot programs? You've jumped around, I know, because time is limited tonight, and you've given some examples of programs here in Canada that have been supported. Is there a blueprint outside of Canada that we should turn to as a starting point for developing policies related to the same?

[Yoshua Bengio]

I already mentioned the cell atlas project. Let me mention another organization that was recently created in the U.S., called BARDA. I don't remember exactly the breakdown of the acronym, but it's like “Biomedical Advanced Research” something. What it's meant to do is fund mission-oriented research and development to protect Americans from potential biomedical threats. That includes pandemics and also bioterrorism and things like this.

I think this is a great initiative. We don't have to do exactly the same thing, but I think there are a lot of interesting lessons to take. I already mentioned how DARPA, which has been around since the 1960s, has completely transformed the American economy. It was meant to fund military research, but as a side effect of wanting to develop better electronics, it gave rise to the revolution that you know about.

Having these mission-oriented organizations—and I'm not saying they're perfect; they're interesting examples—in places where the markets would not have gone or would have gone much later is really essential. I haven't done a study to compare all of these things, but this is something that could be done.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I have a follow-up question.

You talked about the traditional funding model that we're used to, and that is matching funding between the government and our private industry partners. Then you referenced that we need to attach some strings to a new funding scenario or program that might be created by the government. What do those strings look like in terms of additions or criteria?

[Yoshua Bengio]

Thanks for asking.

The strings would be first on the topics. Right now, if you look at R and D tax credits or superclusters.... I mean, superclusters are somewhat in a limited area, but overall, the money is spread out very broadly, and that can have nice advantages. However, for these moon shots, that's not what we need. We need to have a much clearer picture of what needs to be done and only fund those efforts that are sufficiently aligned with that. That's number one. That's kind of obvious; that's the point of a moon shot.

Number two, which is less obvious and maybe more difficult, is to force the organizations that are going to be using government money to do that work to be transparent, as I was talking about before. That means sharing the knowledge that has been generated, sharing the data that has been generated, sharing the code. In some cases, we also want to make sure that the IP or the licences that are going to be attached to the created property are easily and cheaply transferable, for example, to developing countries. The reason this is important is.... Think about pandemics or climate change. We really want poorer countries in Africa to use the technology we might develop so that it's going to protect us against climate change or future pandemics. However, we need to put that up front in the contracts that we sign with companies.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Are there examples of those strings and conditions in other countries around the world that have moon shot programs and funding available to academia and the private market?

[Yoshua Bengio]

Yes, for these kinds of licences, one example I know about is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a huge funder of moon shot things and it has such clauses. I think other foundations have similar things.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

All right.

My last question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Collins, that's the end.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Again, thank you to the witnesses.

Because we started late, we will go for five more minutes. That will give Mr. Blanchette-Joncas and Mr. Cannings their last two and half minutes.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, the floor is your.

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

Madam Chair, I'm not sure I understand.

In the last round of questions for the other subject, we could not get more speaking time. Now, however, we are being given extra minutes. In both cases, we lost time because of technical problems.

Can you explain why it is now possible to add speaking time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, we aim to be very fair in this committee. I cannot help it if one of the witnesses had technology issues and we lost many minutes. Then we lost in the second round because of debate. We try to be fair, and I think you all know that I am fair to a T.

If you would like your two and half minutes, the floor is yours.

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

Am I correct in thinking that in the event of technical problems, we can seek the unanimous consent of committee members to extend debate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Could you repeat that, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas?

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

Am I correct in thinking that when there are technical problems, we can seek the unanimous consent of committee members to extend debate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you for the question.

That's for an individual speaker. You would ask for unanimous consent. It does not apply to an agenda item. Again, I cannot help if there were technology issues. The committee ends at 9:30. I'm trying to be as fair as possible. It's unfortunate that in the second hour time was lost during debate.

Would you like your time for this?

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

That's fine for me, Madam Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

Mr. Cannings, would you like your last two and half minutes?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

In the interest of time—I know it's late where you are and it's not so late where I am, but I haven't had dinner yet—I will cede my time as well, especially to let the translators and the staff get home after a very long day.

Thank you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

With that, I'm going to say, colleagues, thank you to our clerk, to our analysts, to our interpreters and to everyone else who supports this committee and works so hard for all of us.

I'd like to really thank our witnesses. We appreciate your expertise and thank you for joining us so late. We hope you had a good experience and that you will come back and join us.

The meeting is adjourned.