Science and Research committee  Thank you for the question. For commercialization, we actually have a separate arm of TRIUMF called TRIUMF Innovations. The intent of TRIUMF Innovations is to look into TRIUMF and identify any IP that can be spun out or commercialized in work with both our researchers and external groups to try to develop new approaches or techniques that can be put to market.

Science and Research committee  That's a great question for somebody who came from the U.K. to Canada in 2009. I actually came here to run SNOLAB, which is a deep underground facility in northern Ontario. I was so enamoured with the Canadian system, the opportunities here, that I am now a joint Canadian-U.K. citizen.

Science and Research committee  This touches on the question of building an ecosystem across the major research facilities and making sure we are able to support that ecosystem in a way that optimizes the investment that is being made. This is where I would go back to ensuring that we are building a strategy across the major research facilities and then providing sufficient support across the entire life cycle of those facilities, not just for the capital investment, but also for the operational aspects of a facility, which are generally about 10%, year on year, of the capital cost.

Science and Research committee  I have to agree with the previous two speakers. Yes, more funding is always good.

Science and Research committee  We have two aspects there. One is the detectors that the researchers are interested in, and also the accelerator at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider. One of the aspects that TRIUMF is engaged in at the moment.... We secured $10 million to build components of the next generation of the LHC.

Science and Research committee  This is an area where there is a lot of collaboration between the players within Canada, and this is to do with the development of technetium 99 as a radioisotope for medical imaging. There are several players. The Canadian Light Source has an approach. TRIUMF is heavily engaged in the production of these isotopes, as well, so we developed a new process to allow us to create those isotopes.

Science and Research committee  That's a great question. I think it touches on many of the grand challenges that people will be aware of in terms of climate change, which is an obvious one, and looking at how we can bring our tools to bear. TRIUMF is a fundamental research facility. It's based in particle physics.

Science and Research committee  We have expanded the number of Canadian universities who are effectively members of TRIUMF. We're just going through an incorporation process at the moment, but we hope that by the end of the year we will actually have 21 Canadian universities as members of TRIUMF. That goes all the way from Vancouver through to Halifax.

Science and Research committee  I think the coordination has certainly proved that this is one of the areas where additional improvement could be made in thinking about a national strategy for some of the major research facilities, and thinking about the priorities we are trying to address as a country, the tools we need and the way we develop those tools.

Science and Research committee  I think it revolves around thinking about the priorities the country has, the sorts of tools and techniques that will be required to deliver on those questions and the ability to tie together, and work collaboratively on, the infrastructures that we need to develop. As you build a new large-scale accelerator, for instance, it will take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Science and Research committee  It's a matter of choice in the areas in which we work. One of the benefits the Canadian system does have is the way that people will collaborate together and actually make decisions and focus on particular areas. I'll give you an example with the particle physics community in Canada.

Science and Research committee  I think one of the key aspects here is the scale of the projects that we have to deal with in areas like particle physics, nuclear physics and even moving into medical isotopes. These are large-scale platforms that one needs to develop. The way that you have to build those platforms is to make sure that you have a consistent strategy across the community.

Science and Research committee  The funding for that was a combination of federal, provincial, and additional research funds from other organizations. The $60 million that was required to build the facility came from a variety of those sources. It demonstrated one of the challenges of building the research portfolio in having to draw across all of these various sources of funding to make sure that you were able to actually execute on these sorts of programs.

Science and Research committee  Good evening, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you so much for inviting TRIUMF to appear before you on this important study. My name is Nigel Smith and I am the executive director of TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre. I would like to first acknowledge that TRIUMF is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.