Science and Research Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[Dr. Michael Rudnicki]

A lot of the professionals, and I'm thinking for medical doctors and nurses.... Nurses have to write an exam in every province. That's kind of ridiculous. There should be national certification.

Barriers are put up. If you're a vet from Afghanistan, you may have a hard time getting into a vet school so you can spend a few years getting certified. It's that kind of thing.

For Ph.D.s, it's a lot easier. You find a lab that will host you as a post-doctoral fellow and so on, and away you go. You get your Canadian credentials or get your degree here. However, for foreign faculty, it's very difficult to get a job here in Canada doing research and teaching at a university, for whatever reason.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Very good.

Dr. Singh or Dr. Banerjee, have you anything to offer?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

Thank you very much.

The shortage of skilled professionals is occurring across all sectors. In my role as vice-president, I hear form the private sector all the time. There are some mechanisms that we can ramp up in our country. For example, the tri-council funds a training program called the CREATE program, which has six-year-long funding. Dr. Banerjee is a graduate of that program. We brought him from Germany to come to Canada to do a Ph.D. and stay here.

We could also, within that program, create a bridging program for the new Canadians we bring here. Sometimes we do not connect them to meaningful training opportunities to get entry into the workforce.

I think we are a magnet for immigrants. If we could do that last piece of integration, we might have a pretty steady supply to the workforce into all of our sectors.

Thank you.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Excellent.

[Arinjay Banerjee]

Mr. Chair, I would just add very quickly that perhaps in graduate studies your future is not very predictable. That's perhaps what affects the ability of students to come to join a graduate program. If you go to a trade course, your future is predictable. If you want to do this—if you want to be a mechanic—this is how much money you're going to make. If you come to do graduate school, everything has a big question mark at the end of it.

How do we convince our future students to come to join graduate school?

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Dr. Singh, I wanted to expand a little bit more on what my colleague Mr. Lauzon was talking about on the agriculture moonshot program. That's near and dear to my heart.

Would you, in 20 seconds, expand on that a little bit more? What would that look like, especially here in Canada and working on a North American type of approach?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

That is one moonshot idea for which we have literally every ingredient in place in our country. That goes from the supply chain systems to innovation to artificial intelligence to quantum to public policy frameworks and really to the land, the water and the energy.

The question is, can we have the whole country saying what people used to say in the 1960s? It didn't matter who was working on the project; they would say, “I am putting a man on the moon.”

Can we as Canadians really think about that? I am feeding the world. I can bring the pieces together—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. Singh. It was really good of you to keep that so tight.

Thank you, Mr. Mazier.

Now we'll go to Ms. Bradford for five minutes, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much to all of our witnesses tonight. It's been a very educational and fascinating evening so far.

I had the benefit of attending the Sprott Centre at Ottawa General last week. It's their centre where they focus on regenerative medicine. I'm so happy that you were both able to join us in person tonight.

Ms. Murray, your opening remarks were very inspiring and compelling for all of us.

I wanted to point out that while I was there, it felt like the United Nations. It seemed like just about all of the students were international and had come from somewhere else. I think it's because of the excellent work that you're doing there and your reputation, Dr. Rudnicki, that they want to be here and they want to stay. I certainly hear about the struggles and frustrations with the immigration and visa process to make that happen.

We all know that it takes time to bring these therapies and technologies to market. Can you tell us what the Stem Cell Network plans to do over the coming decade to ensure that the research will be translated and benefit patients?

[Cate Murray]

I'm happy to take that.

Stem Cell Network is about following the research and supporting it as it develops. Clinical trials are a key piece of work that the Stem Cell Network invests in. We fund early phase I and phase II clinical trials. We support companies through research projects to ensure that those companies that are at the preclinical or clinical stage can develop the data, validation materials and packages they need to bring investors in on their projects. This is absolutely critical at the translational space. It's not widely done by organizations or networks like ours, and it's absolutely essential for moving research forward.

In fact, two of our projects and programs that we have been working on over the years on type 1 diabetes and premature infants with underdeveloped lungs will now be launching into clinical trials in December. These will be world firsts for Canada.

That's how we're moving things forward.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That's very exciting. Thank you for that.

We always get down to the affordability aspect when we talk about health care. The affordability of...stem cell and gene therapies are known to be very expensive, because they're customized to the patient. Some would suggest that they could bankrupt our health care system.

What, in your estimation, needs to be done so that they can be effectively integrated in a cost-effective manner?

[Cate Murray]

That's a great question.

Access, affordability and cost structures are major conversations for this country to have, and for policy-makers such as you to be informed on and thinking about. Cell and gene therapies will be revolutionary for our health care system. The way that we think about them, where the costs will come up front rather than over a lifetime, is different from how our health care system thinks about these drugs and therapies at this point. We need to reconceptualize that.

We need to understand the values that Canadians have around cell and gene therapies and how to adopt them. We need to think about the tools that decision-makers need to be able to make decisions around what will be adopted by our health care system. This will take a number of years and all sorts of different voices at the table, from industry to academia and regulators.

The Stem Cell Network in our next strategic plan is proposing to do exactly that and bring those parties together so that by the time we get to 2030, we have the path forward in place. We'll know how to think about access and affordability.

The science is going to come. It's up to governments and the rest of us to think about how we make that sure these technologies are adopted and not lost to others.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Speaking of others, there seems to be a lot of interest in travelling to locations outside of Canada for stem cell treatments.

Why do Canadians need to go outside of the country to locations like Mexico? Is it safe for them to do so?

She's flashing a card, so you'll have to be tight on that.

[Dr. Michael Rudnicki]

It's called stem cell tourism. If it sounds too good to be true, then it's often too good to be true. These can be very dangerous. Some of these patients have died. They have sprouted tumours and have had other adverse effects.

This has been an area of active study for many years in Canada, led by the Stem Cell Network. We're internationally known for this type of research and the dissemination of the dangers of these sorts of clinics.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you. I think the regulation in Mexico is not the same as here.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. Rudnicki.

Thank you, Ms. Bradford.

Unfortunately, we've come to the end of our time for this panel.

I want to thank all our witnesses. Thank you for your testimony, for your answers and for your expertise. You've given the committee a lot to think about, and we hope that it's been a good experience and that we will continue to see you at the committee.

We will say thank you and we will briefly suspend before our third panel.

Thank you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dear colleagues, I'm going to call us back to order.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

All comments should be addressed through the chair.

I'd now like to welcome our witnesses. We're delighted to have, from General Fusion, Amee Barber, director, government relations and business development, and, from the University Health Network, Dr. Kevin Smith, the president and chief executive officer.

We're grateful to both of you for joining us and we're eager to hear from you. You will each have five minutes to present. At four and a half minutes, I will hold up this green card, and it lets you know that you have 30 seconds to finish.

With that, we will now go to the testimony.

Dr. Smith, we will begin with you. The floor is yours.

[Kevin Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, University Health Network]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to be back with your committee.

My name is Kevin Smith and, as the chair said, I work at the University Health Network. I have the good fortune of working with literally thousands of researchers and research staff. I'm here this evening to enthusiastically support moonshot opportunities.

We have great infrastructure in Canada, thanks to investment. We have great science in Canada and remarkably talented scientists. The question before us is, how do we harness that talent and potential to solve the world's most pressing problems and provide answers to Canadians and policy-makers?

I'd like to recommend to the committee the moonshot program work done by the Brookfield Institute. I will quickly identify five policy recommendations the institute made for successful moonshots.

First, define a clear, grand challenge anchored in unaddressed real-world needs.

Second, facilitate policy innovation by giving delivery agencies lean, agile and independent governance structures.

Third, create a portfolio of moonshot projects that are truly cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and inclusive, and that embrace a range of different risk levels.

Fourth, support the full innovation continuum and value chain, from invention and basic science right through to manufacturing and commercialization.

Last, but certainly not least, focus on clear, central metrics that matter to the success of the grand challenge; in this case, show value to Canadians.

In 2019, we saw an important moonshot innovations publication called “Wishful Thinking or Business-as-Usual?” that truly helped us understand how moonshots are about imagining a desired world we may never eventuate.

I'll take us back to President Kennedy, who in 1961 mentioned we would get a man to the moon—or a person to the moon, in today's language—before the end of the decade. Eight years later, that was achieved. Few of us believe the microcomputer revolution that came out of that literal moonshot would have occurred, but it truly and fundamentally changed our economy, quality of life, scientific integrity and every facet of human society. Think of a world without microcomputing, if that moonshot had not been undertaken. Investment in discovery research fuelled an explosion in microcomputing and other important endeavours.

I hope the same will be true should the Government of Canada pursue a moonshot. Advances like these have created unprecedented opportunities to address society's most important challenges. Realizing these opportunities, of course, requires selection, development and targeted investments in breakthrough technologies focused on delivering rapid and transformative change.

At UHN, we envision a national strategy—one set, in large part, by your group—as the path forward to meaningfully advancing areas in this work. A national strategy would provide the necessary structure to select, enable and deliver on key areas of focus where Canada can and should lead. This is already happening in many other areas around the world, and it is also badly needed for Canada.

I would recommend a number of areas that immediately come to mind for me and my colleagues at University Health Network.

The one we talk about most frequently is a sustainable, universally accessible health care system—the one before us each and every day—that is adequately staffed as a moonshot that truly focuses on what is likely to be our next pandemic: antimicrobial resistance.

We talk about an opportunity to partner with our United States colleagues, with whom we do so much work together in science, to truly conquer cancer in our lifetime.

Last, but certainly not least, we talk about a moonshot that deals with brain disease and the scourge of dementia affecting so many Canadians.

If I could, I'd also encourage, in that moonshot thinking, understanding the basic science theme of inflammation, which spans almost every major chronic disease, and I'd also encourage reinforcing how moonshots rooted in basic science bear the most fruit of all.

In my mind, there is opportunity in looking at a structure that once existed in Canada in the early days of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which I had the privilege of chairing for a period of time. It shows us a structure that can be extremely helpful to us. This would be separate and discrete from the importance of the tri-councils and CFI, which can and should continue to focus on funding investigator-driven, appropriate research questions.

I saw the green book go up, Madam Chair, so I will wrap up.

We at UHN are enthusiastic about the opportunities to champion moonshots that will affect all Canadians and indeed all citizens of the world, enabling the best of Canada to collectively focus and to bring the greatest challenges of our generation to resolution.

Thank you for the opportunity to address your committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Smith.

I hope the committee will not mind me saying this. I'd like to thank you for your work over the last two years particularly. Thank you for your life-saving work, from you and your colleagues, and thank you for your testimony today.

I'm delighted that we will now hear from Ms. Barber, the director for government relations and business development at General Fusion.

The floor is yours.

[Amee Barber, Director, Government Relations and Business Development, General Fusion]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for having me this evening. It's an honour to be able to discuss a visionary moonshot program with an all-party committee. I appreciate your time so late in the evening.

The problem that General Fusion seeks to solve is environmental. Our technology will produce electricity with zero emissions. By 2050 there will be a 265% increase in global electricity demand. In that same year, 33 countries, including Canada, have pledged to reach net zero in electricity production.

Although progress has been made introducing decarbonization strategies, the International Energy Agency reports that 50% of the reductions will likely come from technologies that have yet to be commercialized. This makes sense. We haven't had a new clean energy source introduced to the grid in a very long time.

A Canadian moonshot program should focus on bringing forward new energy sources, such as fusion. Fusion is the energy that powers the stars, when two hydrogen atoms fuse and release a neutron and helium. To harness that energy, we need to replicate the conditions of the sun on earth to achieve net energy.

There are primarily four reasons that fusion energy is hailed as the holy grail of energy.

One is that fusion fuel is abundant and energy-dense. Fuel is extracted from seawater. One kilogram of fuel is equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of coal.

Fusion is also carbon-free. There are no harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process.

Fusion can provide utility-scale energy on demand as well, making it an excellent complement to renewables and to battery storage.

Finally, fusion energy is also low risk. Fusion is the opposite of fission in many ways. It has a risk profile that is akin to medical isotopes and is both well understood and well regulated. It does not use special nuclear material; it does not have long-lived radioactive waste; and it does not have risk for criticality accidents.

Because of these benefits, our company, General Fusion, has been pursuing fusion energy since 2002. Since then we've secured over $300 million U.S. We currently employ over 200 people in Vancouver and have over 150 patents.

I'm not a technical expert, but I'll tell you how our technology works. We inject magnetized hydrogen plasma into a steel vessel that is coated with liquid lithium metal via centrifugal force. From there, high-powered pistons compress the liquid metal around the plasma into a perfect sphere, creating high temperatures and pressure. At that point, fusion occurs.

Our real game-changer and our competitive advantage compared with many of the other players is our proprietary liquid metal liner. This allows the machine to be protected from spinoff neutrons. At the same time, those neutrons interact with the liquid metal wall and produce tritium, which in essence is producing our own fuel supply. Third, the hot liquid metal then runs through a heat exchanger and produces electricity. Lastly, our use of mechanical compression with this liquid metal wall avoids the need for expensive magnets and high-powered lasers to sustain the fusion process. This results in a cost of electricity that is equivalent to coal.

Over the past 20 years, we have proven the core components of our system. We're now at the stage to assemble these together into our fusion demonstration program. In partnership with the UKAEA, we will build a prototype plant that will be 70% the scale of a commercial plant and located next to the record-breaking Joint European Torus at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.

At the same time that we build this plant, our brain trust in Canada will remain busy building out the commercial maturation program. Our objective is to put energy on the grid by 2030. Within the past two years, a significant number of factors have converged that will make us very—

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

Madam Chair, sorry to interrupt the witness, but the interpretation has stopped.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

I'm sorry to interrupt, Ms. Barber.

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

The interpretation stopped a few seconds ago.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas.

Could we try to see if we have translation now, please?

Ms. Barber, would you like to try talking to see if we have translation, please?

[Amee Barber]

Sure.