Science and Research Committee on Nov. 5th, 2025

[Kaylie Tiessen]

We didn't really think it was very risky at all until nine months ago. All of a sudden, we had a neighbouring president who is a lot more erratic than previous presidents. We've also had some new laws in the last six years in the United States. We are coming to understand a little more about what it means to have written the digital trade chapter in CUSMA. It means that we can't govern the American tech companies that operate in Canada in the way we'd like to. That's how we're learning about some of the risks at this time.

We saw yesterday in the budget that there is some movement toward at least building the capacity to store certain data in a sovereign way that's protected from being shared, stolen or stopped at the border and we are unable to get it back. There's a lot more work to do on this topic to understand what we need to protect in Canada with a sovereign cloud and sovereign AI, and what we might be able to store in other places.

I don't think we will quickly build the capacity that we need to build to store everything in Canada, nor would we want to. However, it is a very important conversation to have because of the risks of having that information stolen or looked at by American authorities and having it stopped at the border, if that's what someone wanted to do.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

You said red tape is making it difficult to access funding.

Do you think small and mid-size post-secondary education establishments find themselves at a disadvantage, because they have less money, less time and fewer resources to clear this administrative hurdle?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I do think the application can be an administrative obstacle. My colleagues here would be able to answer this question with direct experience from having filled out these forms, but there are ways that we can reduce the red tape and reduce the friction without necessarily reducing the rules or making access to capital and R and D funding sort of laissez-faire.

We need to be thinking intentionally about how government money is invested, and having that rule is important. Then, if we can develop technology and systems that operate in a different way to help small and medium-sized universities and companies access the system in a more frictionless fashion, that would be the way to go.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

More and more federal innovation programs are directing research funds to the private sector, and our universities are losing out. The budget presented yesterday was clear on that.

How can public research remain independent when federal innovation policy is more and more focused on commercialization and industry partnership?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

That's where the sovereign innovation asset bank comes in. This is one of the ideas we had in my opening remarks. When we talk about this, we talk about a public institution with the capability to generate, assert and defend the ideas, the IP, so that we can catch up with some of the other countries. We want it to be a bank, not a vault, so that it's a public tool whereby multiple institutions can access the IP that has been created and then build on it to actually create more innovation.

It means that there would be conditional licensing or other ways to access the IP. That is one way, if we have this asset bank, and when government invests in research and development, it is required that the IP developed from that enter into this bank, so that it's benefiting all Canadians and benefiting the Canadian economy, instead of being siphoned off somewhere else. That's one important way that we could make this happen.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

The development of public policies on AI is a shared responsibility.

Do you think the federal government is working effectively with provinces, especially Quebec, to avoid overlap and ensure consistent governance of digital innovation?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I don't have the expertise to answer that question, but we will include it in our brief if you send me that question by email. Then we can look into it and get back to you.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

Finally, do you wish to send us other essential information on how to improve commercialization?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

A 15-second answer, please.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

Thinking about this asset bank is something incredibly important in actually producing more innovation in Canada. Exactly how something gets commercialized on the other side is not something I can speak to, but if we have more companies with access to low-cost or frictionless innovations that have already taken place so that they have the freedom to operate in order to produce the additional innovation, that stays right in their companies, and that's how we get to commercializing ideas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

With that, this panel comes to an end.

I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee and providing their important input.

As we dealt with the committee business portion and what we needed to deal with at the beginning, this meeting comes to an end.

This meeting is adjourned.