Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to have had the opportunity to address the Committee today.
I am Dr. William Ghali, vice-president of research at the University of Calgary.
I am joining you from the traditional territories of the Treaty 7 first nations of southern Alberta. Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, region 3.
Like Dr. Murphy before me, I am a stakeholder from a Canadian post-secondary institution. More specifically, I am a vice-president for research, a role that oversees not only research but also my university’s innovation ecosystem.
The backdrop of Canadian innovation and commercialization unfortunately isn’t great. While Canada scores in the top 10 countries for basic research by various traditional measures, the impact of our innovations, assessed by metrics such as patents, licences and company creation, is modest.
Our post-secondary sector presents a paradox. Data show that our universities are sought after internationally because of the strong reputation of our educational programs. Our post-secondary research is also very strong, and we achieve internationally leading levels of scientific publication and citation per capita, yet, despite this, Canada lags in those previously mentioned innovation metrics. Why is this?
One challenge may be the sometimes competing missions of universities. Our provincially funded universities exist, after all, to deliver educational programs. We also need to retain our professoriate and uphold campus research infrastructure: laboratories, IT systems and so on.
In the face of budget pressures—and universities in several provinces have faced that—something has to give. In such situations, innovation expenditures are sometimes seen to be a luxury, nice to have but not necessarily must-haves. Clearly, there needs to be a change of mindset. Knowledge economies, in their fullest form, are fuelled by research universities if and only if the research in those universities is mobilized toward innovation.
At the University of Calgary, we have activated a number of programs that attempt to demystify and enable commercialization pathways. We have the Hunter hub for entrepreneurial thinking, which does exactly what its name suggests, campus-wide. We have an exciting cohort program called e2i, evolve to innovate, which exposes large cohorts to group innovation training, early-stage exposure. We have a more intensive and personalized academic entrepreneurs in residence program, which provides longitudinal mentorship to selected teams by experienced research entrepreneurs. We also have a set of UCeed funds, evergreening venture funds established through philanthropy.
Is it all working? Maybe yes. The University of Calgary has been number one in Canada in start-up company creation from the university for each of the last two years, according to AUTM, with about 20 new companies created annually. Many of these companies have gone on to achieve maturity and growth, create jobs and attract capital.
I know this is a parliamentary committee and questions of science policy are paramount here, and I think there is an important federal government role here. Several federal government programs are noteworthy. These include a number of PrairiesCan investments in my region and ISED’s new ElevateIP program, for which the University of Calgary will be one of the hubs.
I’m also optimistic about the lab-to-market program announced in budget 2022. I look forward to hearing the specifics of that program. I also, of course, want to see the details of the new Canada innovation corporation, from which I hope there will be strong program connections with Canada's post-secondary sector.
In closing, I’ll point to Singapore and Switzerland, two quintessential knowledge economies. In both, federal government funding plays a major role. In Singapore, the two major universities, NUS and NTU, have impressive tech transfer systems fuelled by substantial government investments. In Switzerland, two federally funded R and D institutions, EPFL and ETH, shine particularly brightly as innovation exemplars internationally.
I am optimistic about some of the trends I see, both nationally and, of course, at my institution. I am hopeful that this committee and the federal government will continue to explore ways to advance Canada’s knowledge economy.
Thank you for your attention.