Thank you for the invitation to join you again this afternoon.
Tech-Access Canada is our national network of technology access centres that work directly with Canadian companies to help them adopt technologies, develop prototypes, validate innovations and move new products and processes into real-world use. Our centres focus on solving practical innovation challenges faced by small and medium-sized companies by providing access to highly specialized equipment, applied R and D, and commercialization expertise that helps translate promising ideas into the usable solutions people will pay for. Our non-dilutive support lets companies retain 100% of their IP and subsequent profits.
Over the past five years, more than 28,000 innovative Canadian companies have worked with our network, trusting our centres to help them improve productivity, adopt new technologies and bring innovations to market. One of our health tech centres has supported nearly 500 companies over the past five years and helped develop or improve more than 400 products and services, strengthening our digital health sector with made-in-Canada innovations.
From our perspective, Canada’s innovation ecosystem is not lacking in inspiration. My friend Dr. Chan from the University of Toronto will speak to how Canada already punches well above its weight in breakthrough and interdisciplinary research.
One of the consistent challenges identified—both in Canada and internationally—is translating knowledge into adoption to generate real economic and societal value. That is precisely where our centres operate. One of our Ontario centres helped a small company validate a proprietary predictive maintenance technology that uses smart sensors to detect equipment failures before they happen, helping them grow to $5 million in global sales and creating seven new jobs in Ontario. We work at the stage where novel technologies must be tested, adapted, prototyped and validated in real-world operating environments—steps that are often difficult for smaller companies to do without in-house R and D capacity.
In other countries, researchers describe themselves as “working with” national government research organizations. In Canada, we far too often hear these relationships described as “funder” and “award recipient”. Strengthening that “working with” dimension—connecting researchers, companies and national-scale infrastructure like our centres and the National Research Council—can help ensure that we translate more research into real-world outcomes.
At the same time, it is important to recognize that not all research outcomes are commercial in nature. Canada’s strength depends on a broad and balanced research ecosystem capable of supporting adoption and deployment. Our work complements longer-term research investments by helping ensure that emerging knowledge and technologies are actually used by companies, in the economy and in communities. One of our centres in western Canada partnered with northern communities to design high-performance buildings, achieving a 41% reduction in annual emissions while creating shared data to guide future infrastructure decisions in those same communities.
The technology access centre model has now been operating nationally for more than a decade and has been studied internationally, including by the OECD, as an example of applied research infrastructure that supports and enables firm-level innovation and technology adoption. Today, the network includes 70 centres across the country operating under a common, proven model. Demand is strong, the model is well understood and the results are consistent. In that sense, this is not a concept or pilot. It is proven infrastructure that is already delivering outcomes at scale.
A clean-tech company approached one of our centres to develop an automated solar panel recycling system. We helped them reduce manufacturing emissions by 33%, while also helping them recover valuable materials for reuse in their core product.
At a time when there is a strong focus on evidence and measurable outcomes, independent economic analysis using StatsCan data examined the performance of firms that collaborate with technology access centres. This analysis found that small companies working with one of our centres experienced substantially stronger growth in both sales and employment than comparable firms that did not. On average, small firms saw employment growth of 70% and increased sales of more than 140% following their engagement with a technology access centre. These are firm-level outcomes—measurable, real-world impacts that reflect companies adopting technology and creating wealth here at home.
As you consider questions of governance, accountability and effectiveness within the science and innovation ecosystem, we offer a simple observation: Strong outcomes depend not only on how research is funded but also on whether it is ultimately used. Canada has a diverse and capable research ecosystem. Ensuring that it delivers maximum benefit requires increased attention to adoption, deployment and scale. Our centres are designed to operate in that space, working shoulder to shoulder with companies to translate capability into impact. We are a proven, national network with a consistent model. We are trusted by thousands of companies each year and deliver measurable results. The infrastructure exists. The demand exists. The results are measurable. We are well positioned to do even more.
My parents raised me to be an optimist, and I think the future is bright.
Thank you. I look forward to the discussion.