Evidence of meeting #15 for Science and Research in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Do you think less red tape and lower taxes would help drive that?
Liberal
Liberal
Jennifer McKelvie Liberal Ajax, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My first question is for Mr. Linke.
The pan-Canadian AI strategy, I think you would argue, has been very successful. I'm wondering if you could outline what that recipe for success was.
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
The core is that great ecosystems are built on top of talent. What we've done extremely well here is to continue investing in the talent we have to attract incredible outside people to set up here and make Canada their home, and to attract talented young researchers in the form of grad students who come to make Canada their home and build their companies and their lives here. That is the basis or the core of every incredible ecosystem. It's what every country and every region around the world is trying to do: to grow and attract the best and the brightest in the world. That's what creates new start-ups and new R and D in companies. You have to have that base or you can't have further success on top of it.
To me, that has been the most successful thing.
Liberal
Jennifer McKelvie Liberal Ajax, ON
We had the talent, we had the ideas and we had the people. We know we're trying to do more of that through this budget with the piece that's in there to attract and retain researchers here in Canada. We were intentional in setting up a strategy that played to the strengths across the country and really enabled them.
Do we need to do more of that as a country and be deliberate in our research investments and try to be strategic? Are there fields, like quantum computing, for example, or things in the defence sector? What should be our next pan-Canadian strategy from your point of view?
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
There are two pieces to that.
We very intentionally invested in centres where there was a centre of gravity and a critical mass of expertise like, specifically, Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton. Continuing that makes a lot of sense. The field of AI is growing like crazy. Continued investment is going to see enormous returns, so seeing that is really important.
The other thing we did in the recent round of researchers we brought into the group is what I refer to as bilingualism, so that's AI plus X. There are researchers who typically would be in computing science and instead are in biology, medicine, linguistics, physics, space and other areas like those. There's a big opportunity for Canada to double down on dual expertise. If we say that we're really incredible in the area of virology or we're really incredible in the area of quantum, or specific areas of quantum, are there ways we could double down by saying we're great in quantum or we're great in genomics and we're great in AI, so let's pair the two together to really do something special, where we're really great in each but together the combination of the two is something that couldn't be found anywhere else in the world?
That's a very big opportunity for the entire country.
Liberal
Jennifer McKelvie Liberal Ajax, ON
Thank you.
I agree that interdisciplinarity is definitely a strength of Canadians.
My next question is for Dr. Outterson.
Your work has been in partnerships with the U.S., the U.K., Germany and international foundations. When you look internationally to some of your partners, are there examples we should be learning from about IP retention and commercialization? Who is doing it well? If we want to look for models elsewhere, who should we be looking to?
Founding Executive Director, CARB-X
One of the advantages of CARB-X is that instead of the small companies having to apply to 10 different governments and foundations, we collect it and they all apply through a single portal. That helps them to not waste money. We're non-dilutive. We don't take their IP in any form. We actually put them through a process in which we help them to improve their IP estate. We look back at the original licence, typically from a university, and try to clean up any mistakes that were made in that regard.
More broadly, something that other governments do well that Canada might think about is the SBIR grant, which helps ideas translate from university into a small start-up. There's a form of that in the U.S.. There are forms of that in Europe. To my knowledge, there's not one in Canada. It's been very valuable in those other settings.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
We will now proceed to MP Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes.
Please go ahead.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have some more questions for Mr. Linke.
Canada already has some of the best artificial intelligence centres, including Mila, located in Montreal, which you also mentioned. That centre was founded by the Quebecker Yoshua Bengio, who is now the most frequently cited living researcher in the world. We have talented people in Quebec and we are proud to say so.
Despite this exceptional strength in artificial intelligence, we have still not been able to build an industrial ecosystem that can compete with the big American or Asian companies. In the last budget, Ottawa focuses primarily on attracting foreign talent, allocating more than $1 billion to that, and on tax incentives for big companies. So there is no clear strategy for keeping the intellectual property, data and economic benefits in Canada, even when they are generated by centres of excellence such as Mila in Montreal.
Would you not say that the problem is that Canada excels in research, but systematically allows its economic value, patents, data and companies to be picked up elsewhere? In other words, are we not becoming a country that trains researchers for other countries rather than a country that transforms its science into economic strength?
November 17th, 2025 / 12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
This is an area of particular interest for me. My background is on the start-up investment side of the world so realizing this in Canada matters a lot to me.
There are a couple of pieces to it. One is that the provinces also invest in the area. We see provincial investment in commercialization activities. That is one way of the government investing in the area and of the federal government and the provinces working together on this. The second part to it is that while I do think grants and programs can be targeted and very helpful, the biggest challenge is still in capital.
When I look at our grads, for instance, who've ended up leaving, it's not because they wanted to leave Canada. It's not because they didn't have an incredible life here. It's for opportunity. We see more of, “I needed to move because my first cheque was elsewhere,” or “My first cheque and my first customer were elsewhere.” Now the commercialization activity of that graduate ends up being elsewhere as well. It's very important to have a well-capitalized system, especially [Technical difficulty—Editor]
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry. I'll stop the clock. I think there are some problems. Mr. Linke's Internet is not very stable. I'll give him a second.
Mr. Linke, are you good? Can you say a few sentences?
He's frozen.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Madam Chair, Mr. Linke's connection is just like the federal budget: disconnected from the public.
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
It's always embarrassing as a technology organization to have bad Internet or for the Internet to go down in a situation like this. I apologize.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
He's back.
Mr. Linke, you can please respond to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas' question. You have 20 seconds.
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
I'm sorry. I didn't catch the question. I just caught the comment about my Internet.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas, can you please repeat the question? We'll give you—
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC
Yes, Madam Chair.
Mr. Linke, I was simply saying that your connection is just like the budget: disconnected from the public and the real needs.
Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute
As I mentioned, investment in capital and investment in researchers coming to Canada, these were important investments in seeing commercialization. Hopefully, it's better connected than, unfortunately, my Internet here.