Science and Research committee  Thank you very much.

Science and Research committee  It's a really remarkable program that started off in Vancouver and then sort of went viral. Now there's a Creative Destruction Lab Rockies, there's one in the Maritimes and there are subsections for health sciences, space and quantum. The idea obviously has a lot of interesting momentum behind it, but basically it gathers together mentor investors.

Science and Research committee  It is a pitch program. I think the subtle difference is that the investors are there to invest in those technologies. The idea is that, by the end of the program, some of them will have invested in the technologies that have been successfully advanced through the program.

Science and Research committee  I think there's almost a feeling that, once you patent something, it's ready to go. There's so much more to making something commercially successful than simply filing a patent. I think that's exactly what you're talking about. We really need to find those resources to put people on projects to accelerate them.

Science and Research committee  It really is remarkable how, for those basic research ideas that seem very esoteric, like “We're looking for neutrinos in a giant water tank in Japan”, we can take that detector technology that we use to keep the water clean in those giant tanks and turn our attention to, “Could we make a clean water monitoring system that would ensure remote communities and first nation communities have clean water?”

Science and Research committee  Yes.

Science and Research committee  That's a really good question. Part of the rationale behind accredited investors is that they're investors who have a lot of investment experience or a lot of capital, so it's not jeopardizing their retirement savings to participate in an investment. I think we do have to continue to find that balance of coming out with the right end points.

Science and Research committee  Of course, we work very closely with our member universities. As we're on the UBC campus, we interact with UBC significantly. One of the great resources that we have been interacting with is their Creative Destruction Lab program, which I think was mentioned in the earlier session.

Science and Research committee  We do in a way. We are all part of the group that is working on the Canadian medical isotope ecosystem proposal that is part of the strategic innovation fund stream five, which is for building new national ecosystems. That is what we have been hard at work doing for the past few years.

Science and Research committee  SNOLAB is one of our sister labs in Canada. They do remarkable work. If you ever get a chance to visit, you should. It is a lab that is deep underground. It shares a mining space with an actual mining company, and the kinds of experiments they do there are remarkable. They have giant detectors they've built underground that they're trying to detect rare particles with.

Science and Research committee  I think it's a common feeling that we have a shortage of risk capital in Canada. It is a key component. As some of the other witnesses have talked about, it's not the only component, but it is a key component in that valley of death that early-stage technologies face. Many Canadian companies have to build consortiums of investors that include investors from outside of Canada.

Science and Research committee  It's been studied for a long time. I think that having government matching or tax incentives will attract more of those capital pools to be built in Canada and to continue to grow. A lot of firms have trouble continuing to kind of re-up on their investments. They may come in early, but then not have the capital to continue investing.

Science and Research committee  We have an incredible base to build on. Canada has been a leader in this space for decades. I say that quite seriously because I think that Canada is a small country on this stage, but we punch above our weight in the medical isotope space. We have decades of investment in cyclotrons and reactors across the country that give us an edge that we can leverage in a booming sector.

Science and Research committee  Hello, Vice-Chair and committee members. Thank you so much for inviting TRIUMF Innovations to appear before you on this important study. My name is Kathryn Hayashi, and I am president and CEO of TRIUMF Innovations, the business interface and commercialization arm of TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre.