Science and Research Committee on March 21st, 2023

[Kathryn Hayashi]

I think it's a common feeling that we have a shortage of risk capital in Canada. It is a key component. As some of the other witnesses have talked about, it's not the only component, but it is a key component in that valley of death that early-stage technologies face.

Many Canadian companies have to build consortiums of investors that include investors from outside of Canada. That's the current reality of risk capital in Canada, but I think anything we could do to strengthen that base in Canada will help the whole ecosystem.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Do you have any specific recommendations that you've heard from your industry or that you have personally on how we can increase risk capital in Canada?

[Kathryn Hayashi]

It's been studied for a long time. I think that having government matching or tax incentives will attract more of those capital pools to be built in Canada and to continue to grow.

A lot of firms have trouble continuing to kind of re-up on their investments. They may come in early, but then not have the capital to continue investing. Particularly in the radiopharmaceutical space, where it takes many hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a successful product, they need to be able to continue to reinvest along the way.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Singh, you talked about a seven-member panel that you've been involved with on IP commercialization. You said it was released yesterday. Is that correct? I haven't seen the study. I don't know if many members of the committee have. Could you submit that report to the committee?

Maybe I'll ask you right now, sir, to give us a quick summarization of that report. What were the biggest findings of that?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

The report was actually focused on federal research support systems and, within that, there's a component of study and recommendations focused on how to connect our innovation, our inventions, to commercialization, because when we had consultations across our country, people from the private sector also came to speak to the panel.

The report was released yesterday, as I said. It's on the website. I will be very happy to submit the report to the committee.

For example, as previous panellists this morning have said, we have the basic elements of the system in place. One of the challenges in Canada, which is a large and diverse country, is the connectivity of the system, of the various elements to each other. How do universities create business-facing entities within their environments so that private sector investors can come looking for a technology at the university and the universities can talk to the private sector, simply creating a database where people can search for the patents, connect with each other and go from there.

As for the lack of risk capital investment in our country, I believe, considering the size of the country, we may have some appropriate amount of investments available, but I think the role of the federal and provincial governments is to tie it together into a package by creating incentives and blended funding. The speed with which we can create the blended funding to invest in our technology is something that we need to tighten up, and that's one of the recommendations we have made in the report.

The second part within that is the training program. I think in our universities we need to create an investment so that graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and newly recruited professors are much more savvy and flexible and keep an eye on commercialization and creating an economic advantage for our country when they create a technology.

I think that ecosystem connect is something that we were focused on, and in the next steps on the report we have submitted to the federal government we would really like to see some action on that.

These are the two points, based on the recommendations, that I submit to you and the committee.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, do I have time left?

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Maxime Blanchette-Joncas]

Your time is up, Mr. Williams.

Thank you.

We now go to Ms. Diab for six minutes.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the witnesses joining us this afternoon.

Let me just first ask you this, Mr. Singh. You were asked by Mr. Williams about the report that was just released yesterday. You talked about your university in Saskatchewan being a powerhouse in food production systems and the collaboration that you have seen in order to get the university to that stage.

Can you elaborate a little bit more and tell us if there are other places in Canada that are doing similar things? What collaborations do you have outside of Saskatchewan within Canada?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

Respectfully, are you asking about the agri-food system or the broader question, please?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

It's the agri-food system.

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

I think in Canada we can be so proud of our agri-food production system, plants and animals both. From Prince Edward Island to the University of British Columbia, whether we look at the veterinary medical faculty at the Université de Montréal or the agriculture college at Laval or at Guelph or Manitoba, you just name it, if you look at the growth of our country, which grew out of a land production system-based economy, and where we are today, I think the role of the veterinary and agricultural colleges is very clear.

When we look at the Ontario Veterinary College or the Ontario Agricultural College, their contribution to turning Ontario into a production house when it comes to pork, to poultry and to the plants system is clear.

Take the example of Saskatchewan over the last 115 years and its creation of knowledge, which was in response to the challenges that our farmers faced. This has really galvanized our food production system, not only on the sustainability front, where we sustain our land, we're stewards of our water resources and we're stewards in environmental care, but actually, about $18 billion in food production exports come from the province of Saskatchewan.

Now again, if I may say, it is about connectedness. Once we have connected the end-users to the people who are discovering new knowledge, then the cycle keeps on amplifying itself over and over again. Within that space there are developments. For example, the creation of the superclusters or the global clusters. Within the ecosystem of Saskatchewan now we have Protein Industries Canada, our global cluster. Now that's where we are trying to convert our agri-food product into a protein product at the end of the day that the world needs in greater and greater amounts, from India to Africa to Bangladesh and anywhere else.

The evolution of our agri-food production system over the 115 years in sophistication and investment I think shows how we can do better from discovery to the economic product at the end of the day.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

In Nova Scotia we have the agricultural college, for example, that's been doing really good things.

How can we better collaborate, co-operate and work together across the country so that we learn best practices? That's one question.

The second question is this: In terms of research processes for academics, when do you believe researchers and academics should start engaging with commercialization and intellectual property, if at all?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

That's a good question. Thank you.

To the first part of the question, I'm a veterinarian by training. I have taught in Prince Edward Island. I have visited that beautiful college in Truro, Nova Scotia. Specifically that college has made contributions to agri-food policy in our country in a significant way. I'm very proud of the work that happened at Nova Scotia Agricultural College, which is now part of Dalhousie University. It's truly a jewel in our country.

The colleges across the country are connected already through a deans council, which meets every third or fourth month. I used to be a member of that council. We would exchange ideas, programmatic information and information on how to work together with federal and provincial jurisdictions.

The second part of your question was at what stage. It's never too early, because sometimes it is having an eye on the discovery of new knowledge that makes a difference. How do we protect that intellectual property? How do we put a patent on it? Before it disappears anywhere else, how do we work with the private sector to mobilize it?

That's where, respectfully, I was making the case of speeding up our education system for graduate students and new professors, to sensitize them to the idea of intellectual property, because that would be a multi-billion dollar enterprise coming out of that piece.

Radioisotopes—

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much for that.

Very quickly, I just want to congratulate you for all the work that you folks are doing to bring everything to light.

Maybe I'll just give you a few seconds to talk a bit about the SNOLAB facility. I'm sure my colleagues will ask about it.

[Kathryn Hayashi]

SNOLAB is one of our sister labs in Canada. They do remarkable work. If you ever get a chance to visit, you should.

It is a lab that is deep underground. It shares a mining space with an actual mining company, and the kinds of experiments they do there are remarkable. They have giant detectors they've built underground that they're trying to detect rare particles with. That's the magic of science.

I do think this idea of providing those brilliant researchers with bandwidth, time and funding to turn those brilliant minds to real-world problems is something that we're very interested in.

We have had experience with the old NCE CECR program—the centres of excellence for commercialization and research—which provided funding to TRIUMF Innovations to focus on developing technologies with real-world applications. That's where Ideon was born.

We also had the good fortune of being part of an NRCan ITAP project, which brought together TRIUMF as well as—

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Maxime Blanchette-Joncas]

Sorry to cut you off, Ms. Hayashi, but Ms. Diab's time is up.

We now go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

Thanks to both the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to start with Dr. Singh.

You mentioned, I think, 500 varieties that your group has had patents or some IP protection on over the last years. I come from the Okanagan Valley, where we have the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research station. I'm very familiar with its development of tree fruit varieties. For instance, whenever I go travelling in the world and I see cherries for sale, I always ask what kinds of cherries they are. They're almost always cherries developed not only in Canada but in that research station in Summerland.

I want to get a sense of the history of protecting IP for these varieties. One of the most common cherry varieties is Lapins. It has no patent protection; it's used freely around the world.

I know, for the last 20 years or so I think, the Canadian government has been patenting those varieties. Perhaps you can talk about the history of protecting IP on the production of new varieties of plants and anything else for our agricultural sector.

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

As is the case with intellectual property protection, it has evolved over the last many decades to the point where the germplasm of the plants and animals is considered a national treasure and a resource. Countries are becoming quite protective of the germplasm.

In Saskatchewan, at the University of Saskatchewan, most of the varieties we own were released directly in partnership with producer groups for them to cultivate across the country. There was no record of intellectual property protection on them.

Over the years, the crop development centre, in partnership with the producer groups, for example, whether canola, lentils or wheat.... Now we work in partnership with them to protect the seed lines, the variety lines, which are housed at the crop development centre in partnership with the producers, and we release to them directly. The control of the release of those varieties is still in partnership with the CDC and the producer groups.

The intellectual property piece is still done, because producer groups are the ones taking the varieties from us, particular producer groups. They're releasing it to them.

The exact number of the varieties that we might put an intellectual property or patent on is something I can't recall right now, but I will be happy to submit a one-page brief to this committee in a matter of days, within the week. I will be happy to do that.

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

Do you know if there are any differences between putting IP protection on or patenting varieties of living things versus the other inventions and innovations we've been talking about here over the last few weeks? Are there certain things we should be aware of, the timing of this, how it's done or who does it, so that we can get a sense of how we can best protect these Canadian innovations?

[Dr. Baljit Singh]

One difference I can speak to is the way we produce our crops compared with creating a product in a factory. For the seed lines or the varieties, the cultivars that we have are eventually turned into a seed. The seed is released through a regulatory mechanism after it has been approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, for example, or Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Then it is released into the market.

The sale overseas and in other countries of that seed we might produce, again, if possible, is transferred over to the seed production companies that sell it globally under licensing from the inventors.

Again, I don't have the full details on it, but I will be very happy to submit a brief to the committee.

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

Thank you.

I'll turn now to Dr. Hayashi.

I'm really looking forward to a visit to TRIUMF. Hopefully we'll be allowed to travel and see your facility again. It's been many years since I've been there.

We just heard from Dr. Murphy of UBC, vice-president for research and innovation. How closely do you work with UBC as a whole in your work, especially with regard to IP development?

[Kathryn Hayashi]

Of course, we work very closely with our member universities. As we're on the UBC campus, we interact with UBC significantly.

One of the great resources that we have been interacting with is their Creative Destruction Lab program, which I think was mentioned in the earlier session. It brings together a remarkable community of innovators, investors, researchers and trainees all trying to find commercialization paths for innovative new technologies. We've found some excellent connections and investors for our spinoff companies through the Creative Destruction Lab program at UBC.

Of course, whenever we have a project that has IP potential, one of the things we always do is create a project agreement wherein it's very clear how the IP is handled, who will be taking the lead on commercialization of that IP, how the funding will work or whether there are project milestones, clearly laying out project budgets, funding sources, etc.

I think we have really developed a good working relationship with UBC and our other partner universities in technology innovation.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Maxime Blanchette-Joncas]

You have 10 seconds left, Mr. Cannings.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Maxime Blanchette-Joncas]

Thank you.

We'll begin the second round now. Everyone will have five-minute turns.

Go ahead, Mr. Lobb.