Tag Archives: National Research Council of Canada (NRC)

Canadian quantum companies chase US DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) $$$ and RIP Raymond Laflamme

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Canada’s quantum community, i.e., three companies, are currently ‘competing’ for US science funding. It seems like an odd choice given all of the news about science funding cuts and funding freezes along with the Trump administration’s chaotic and, increasingly, untrustworthy government management.

On April 3, 2025 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that approximately 20 companies were embarked on what they describe as Stage A of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) ‘challenge’,

Here’s more from that April 3, 2025 DARPA notice,

Nearly 20 quantum computing companies have been chosen to enter the initial stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), in which they will characterize their unique concepts for creating a useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer within a decade.

QBI, which kicked off in July 2024, aims to determine whether it’s possible to build such a computer much faster than conventional predictions. Specifically, QBI is designed to rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation — meaning its computational value exceeds its cost — by the year 2033.

“We selected these companies for Stage A following a review of their written abstracts and daylong oral presentations before a team of U.S. quantum experts to determine whether their proposed concepts might be able to reach industrial utility,” said Joe Altepeter, DARPA QBI program manager. “For the chosen companies, now the real work begins. Stage A is a six-month sprint in which they’ll provide comprehensive technical details of their concepts to show that they hold water and could plausibly lead to a transformative, fault-tolerant quantum computer in under 10 years.”

The following companies* are pursuing a variety of technologies for creating quantum bits (qubits) — the building block for quantum computers — including superconducting qubits, trapped ion qubits, neutral atom qubits, photonic qubits, semiconductor spin qubits, and other novel approaches listed below:

  • Alice & Bob — Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Paris, France (superconducting cat qubits)
  • Atlantic Quantum — Cambridge, Massachusetts (fluxonium qubits with co-located cryogenic controls)
  • Atom Computing — Boulder, Colorado (scalable arrays of neutral atoms)
  • Diraq — Sydney, Australia, with operations in Palo Alto, California, and Boston, Massachusetts (silicon CMOS spin qubits)
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise — Houston, Texas (superconducting qubits with advanced fabrication)
  • IBM — Yorktown Heights, NY (quantum computing with modular superconducting processors)
  • IonQ — College Park, Maryland (trapped-ion quantum computing)
  • Nord Quantique — Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada (superconducting qubits with bosonic error correction)
  • Oxford Ionics — Oxford, UK and Boulder, Colorado (trapped-ions)
  • Photonic Inc. — Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (optically-linked silicon spin qubits)
  • Quantinuum — Broomfield, Colorado (trapped-ion quantum charged coupled device (QCCD) architecture)
  • Quantum Motion — London, UK (MOS-based silicon spin qubits)
  • QuEra Computing — Boston, Massachusetts (neutral atom qubits)
  • Rigetti Computing — Berkeley, California (superconducting tunable transmon qubits)
  • Silicon Quantum Computing Pty. Ltd. — Sydney, Australia (precision atom qubits in silicon)
  • Xanadu — Toronto, Canada (photonic quantum computing)

Companies that successfully complete Stage A will move to a yearlong Stage B, during which DARPA will rigorously examine their research and development approach, followed by a final Stage C where the QBI independent verification and validation (IV&V) team will test the companies’ computer hardware.

“During Stage B we’ll thoroughly review all aspects of their R&D plans to see if they can go the distance — not just meet next year’s milestones — and stand the test of trying to build a transformative technology on this kind of a timeline,” Altepeter explained. “Those who make it through Stages A and B will enter the final portion of the program, Stage C, where a full-size IV&V team will conduct real-time, rigorous evaluation of the components, subsystems, and algorithms – everything that goes into building a fault-tolerant quantum computer for real. And we’ll do all these evaluations without slowing the companies down.”

QBI is not a competition between companies [emphasis mine]; rather, it aims to scan the landscape of commercial quantum computing efforts to spot every company on a plausible path to a useful quantum computer.

DARPA recently announced that Microsoft and PsiQuantum are entering the third and final phase of the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program, a pilot effort that was expanded to become QBI. Both companies were participating in the second phase of US2QC when the QBI expansion was announced. The final Phase of US2QC has the same technical goals as Stage C of QBI – verification and validation of an industrially useful quantum computer.

“We’ve built and are expanding our world-class IV&V team of U.S. quantum experts, leveraging federal and state test facilities to separate hype from reality in quantum computing,” Altepeter said. “Our team is eager to scrutinize the commercial concepts, designs, R&D plans, and prototype hardware — all with the goal of helping the U.S. government identify and support efforts that are genuinely advancing toward transformative, fault-tolerant quantum computing.”

For more information on QBI visit: www.darpa.mil/QBI.

*16 of the 18 companies are being announced; two are still in negotiations. DARPA will update this announcement once their agreements are signed.

Editor’s Note: This update was edited on April 29, 2025 to add QuEra Computing to the list of companies selected for Stage A.

This sounds like DARPA will pick and choose which bits of technology it may want to develop. Also, who owns the technology? An April 5, 2025 article by Sean Silcoff and Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail raises the question and answers it (more or less), Note: I have the paper version of the article,

Three Canadian quantum computer companies are in the running for up to US$316-million apiece in funding from the US government if they can prove within eight years that their machines will work at scale.

The companies – Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. of Toronto , Vancouver-based Photonics Inc. and Nord Quantique from Sherbrooke, Que. – are among 18 groups from Canada, the US, Britain, and Australia that have qualified for the first stage (Stage A) of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI).

…

“QBI is not meant to choose a winner and fund your research and development plan, [emphasis mine]” said Dr. Joe Altpeter, the QBI’s program manager. Rather, the program is structured to reward only those that can quickly execute against their roadmaps and deliver something useful.

However, making it through will likely anoint a winner or winners in the global race to develop a working quantum computer. [emphasis mine]

“I can’t think of any other program that has generated this much excitement and interest from startups and big companies – and a lot of investors know about it,” said Christian Weedbrook, Xanadu’s founder and chief executive officer [CEO].

Quantum computer developers have collectively raised and spend billions of dollars so far, and QBI will likely influence financiers in determining who to continue backing.

Conversely, “groups that don’t get in will be challenged to raise venture capital,” said Ray [Raymond] Laflamme, co-chair of the federal Quantum Advisory Council. The council has recommended the Canadian government provide matching funds [emphasis mine] to any domestic company that makes it through QBI.

Council co-chair Stephanie Simmons, who is also the founder and chief quantum officer [CQO] of Photonic, said the US government will gain access to “deep knowledge that other governments won’t have” [emphasis mine] through QBI.

“That will give them geopolitical and other advantages [emphasis mine] that are important in the upcoming economy.” Creating a matching program here would mean “This information would also be owned by the Canadian government.”

…

“I would love to be proved surprised if companies make it through the gauntlet, you’re really will to advocate for them inside the US government in rooms that they can’t go to and say, ‘Look, we did our best to show this doesn’t work, these guys made it, they can really build this thing,'” he [Dr. Joe Altpeter] said adding that the program was designed to a “simple, cheap way” to determine that.

Mr. Laflamme agreed that QBI “is a very smart way for the US to keep at the front. By tis, the US will who has the lead in the world and people are, everywhere.” [p. B11 paper version]

…

Clearly, the US has much to gain from this ‘non-competition’. It’s not clear to me what Canada will gain.

One quick note. D-Wave Systems is mentioned in Silcoff’s and Semeniuk’s April 5, 2025 article and described as a Canadian company. That is questionable. It was headquartered in the Vancouver area, British Columbia, Canada for a number of years but is now, according to its Wikipedia entry, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, US (see the sidebar). The company retains laboratories and offices in British Columbia.

It would seem that Silcoff’s and Semeniuk’s April 5, 2025 article hosted one of M. Laflamme’s last interviews.

RIP Raymond Laflamme, July 19, 1960 – June 19, 2025

I’ve had to interview more than one ‘horse’s behind’ (two members of the forestry faculty at the University of British Columbia spring to mind); M. Laflamme was most assuredly not one of them. It was a privilege to interview him for a May 11, 2015 posting about Research2Reality, a Canadian social media engagement project (scroll down to the subhead with his name),

Who convinces a genius that he’s gotten an important cosmological concept wrong or ignored it? Alongside Don Page, Laflamme accomplished that feat as one of Stephen Hawking’s PhD students at the University of Cambridge. Today (May 11, 2015), Laflamme is (from his Wikipedia entry)

… co-founder and current director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Laflamme is currently a Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information.

…

The Council of Canadian Academies’ (CCA) July 22, 2025 The Advance newsletter (received via email) held this notice, Note: A link has been removed,

…

And Ray Laflamme, the theoretical physicist and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, died on June 19 [2025] following a lengthy battle with cancer. Laflamme, founding director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, served as chair of our Expert Panel on the Responsible Adoption of Quantum Technologies. …

I have a commentary on the CCA report issued by Laflamme and his expert panel. The report was published in November 2023 and my commentary published in two parts about 15 months later,

To wildly paraphrase John Donne (For Whom the Bell Tolls), M. Laflamme’s death diminishes us but more importantly his life enhanced us all in ways both small and large. Thank you.

And the quantum goes on

Members of the Canadian quantum community that M. Laflamme helped build have recently announced a breakthrough. From a July 10, 2025 TRIUMF news release (also on Quantum Wire), Note: A link has been removed,

A cross-Canada team of researchers have brought quantum and generative AI together to prepare for the Large Hadron Collider’s next upgrade.

In the world of collider physics, simulations play a key role in analyzing data from particle accelerators. Now, a cross-Canada effort is combining quantum with generative AI to create novel simulation models for the next big upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest particle accelerator [located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, in Switzerland].

In a paper published in npj Quantum Information, a team that includes researchers from TRIUMF, Perimeter Institute, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) are the first to use annealing quantum computing and deep generative AI to create simulations that are fast, accurate, and computationally efficient. If the models continue to improve, they could represent a new way to create synthetic data to help with analysis in particle collisions

Why simulations are essential for collider physics

Simulations broadly assist collider physics researchers in two ways. First, researchers use them to statistically match observed data to theoretical models. Second, scientists use simulated data to help optimize the design of the data analysis, for instance by isolating the signal they are studying from irrelevant background events.

“To do the data analysis at the LHC, you need to create copious amounts of simulations of collision events,” explains Wojciech Fedorko, one of the principal investigators on the paper and Deputy Department Head, Scientific Computing at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre in Vancouver. “Basically, you take your hypothesis, and you simulate it under multiple scenarios. One of those scenarios will statistically best match the real data that has been produced in the real experiment.”

Currently, the LHC is preparing for a major shutdown in anticipation of its high luminosity upgrade. When it comes back online, it will require more complex simulations that are reliably accurate, fast to produce, and computationally efficient. Those requirements have the potential to create a bottleneck, as the computational power required to create these simulations will no longer be feasible.

“Simulations are projected to cost millions of CPU years annually when the high luminosity LHC turns on,” says Javier Toledo-Marín, a researcher scientist jointly appointed at Perimeter Institute and TRIUMF. “It’s financially and environmentally unsustainable to keep doing business as usual.”

When quantum and generative AI collide 

Particle physicists use specialized detectors called calorimeters to measure the energy released by the showers of particles that result from collisions. Scientists combine the readings from these and other detectors to piece together what happened at the initial collision. It’s through this process of comparing simulations to experimental data that researchers discovered the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012. Compared to the other sub-detector systems within the LHC experiments, calorimeters and the data they produce are the most computationally intensive to simulate, and as such they represent a major opportunity for efficiency gains.

In 2022, a scientific “challenge” was issued by researchers seeking to spur rapid advances in calorimeter computations, in an attempt to address the coming computational bottleneck at the LHC. Named the “CaloChallenge,” the challenge provided datasets based on LHC experiments for teams to develop and benchmark simulations of calorimeter readings. Fedorko and the team are the only ones so far to take a full-scale quantum approach, thanks to an assist from D-Wave Quantum Inc.’s annealing quantum computing technology.

Annealing quantum computing is a process that is usually used to find the lowest-energy state for a system or a state near to the lowest energy one, which is useful for problems involving optimization.

After discussing with D-Wave, Fedorko, Toledo-Marín, and the rest of the team determined that D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers could be used for simulation generation. You just need to use annealing to manipulate qubits (the smallest bits of quantum information) in an unconventional way.

“In the D-Wave quantum processor, there is a mechanism that ensures the ratio between the ‘bias’ on a given qubit and the ‘weight’ linking it to another qubit is the same throughout the annealing process. With the help of D-Wave, the team realized that they could use this mechanism to instead guarantee outcomes for a subset of the qubits on a device. “We basically hijacked that mechanism to fix in place some of the spins,” says Fedorko. “This mechanism can be used to ‘condition’ the processor – for example, generate showers with specific desired properties – like the energy of a particle impinging on the calorimeter.”

The end result: an unconventional way to use annealing quantum computing to generate high-quality synthetic data for analyzing particle collisions.

The next phase of collider physics simulations

The published result is important because of its performance in three metrics: the speed to generate the simulations, their accuracy, and how much computational resources they require. “For speed, we are in the top bound of results published by other teams and our accuracy is above average,” Toledo-Marín says. “What makes our framework competitive is really the unique combination of several factors – speed, accuracy, and energy consumption.”

Essentially, many types of quantum processing units (QPU) must be kept at an extremely low temperature. But giving it multiple tasks doesn’t significantly impact its energy requirements. A standard graphics processing unit (GPU), by contrast, will increase its energy use for each job it receives. As advanced GPUs become more and more power-hungry, QPUs by contrast can potentially scale up without leading to increasing computational energy requirements.

Looking forward, the team is excited to test their models on new incoming data so they can finetune their models, increasing both speed and accuracy. If all goes well, annealing quantum computing could become an essential aspect of generating simulations.

“It’s a good example of being able to scale something in the field of quantum machine learning to something practical that can potentially be deployed,” says Toledo-Marín.

The authors are grateful for the support of their many funders and contributors, which include the University of British Columbia, the University of Virginia, the NRC, D-Wave, and MITACS [originally funded as: Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems; now a nonprofit research organization].

A joint July 10, 2025 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and TRIUMF news release on Newswise (also on the Quantum Insider but published July 11, 2025) is markedly shorter more ‘boosterish’ than what appears to be the TRIUMF news release,

In a landmark achievement for Canadian science, a team of scientists led by TRIUMF and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have unveiled transformative research that – for the first time – merges quantum computing techniques with advanced AI to model complex simulations in a fast, accurate and energy-efficient way.

“This is a uniquely Canadian success story,” said Wojciech Fedorko, Deputy Department Head, Scientific Computing at TRIUMF. “Uniting the expertise from our country’s research institutions and industry leaders has not only advanced our ability to carry out fundamental research, but also demonstrated Canada’s ability to lead the world in quantum and AI innovation.”

…

In any event, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Conditioned quantum-assisted deep generative surrogate for particle-calorimeter interactions by J. Quetzalcóatl Toledo-Marín, Sebastian Gonzalez, Hao Jia, Ian Lu, Deniz Sogutlu, Abhishek Abhishek, Colin Gay, Eric Paquet, Roger G. Melko, Geoffrey C. Fox, Maximilian Swiatlowski & Wojciech Fedorko. npj Quantum Information volume 11, Article number: 114 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-025-01040-x Published: 07 July 2025

This paper is open access.

Raymond Julien Joseph Laflamme (July 19, 1960 – June 19, 2025))

[image downloaded from https://uwaterloo.ca/news/global-impact/opinion-canadas-stake-quantum-race]

Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) provides July 31, 2025 update on upcoming virtual panels and submissions for CSPC’s Special Editorial Series

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Here are some of the high points from the Canadian Science Policy Centre’s (CSPC) July 31, 2025 update (received via email),

Register Now for Upcoming Virtual Panels

[Nature-based Solutions in Canada – policies, frameworks and multi-sector cooperation to reach Canada’s 2030 climate and biodiversity goals]

Organized by Future Earth, this panel will explore how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can be effectively designed, measured, and aligned with community and Indigenous priorities in Canada. NbS uses natural ecosystems to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss while benefiting communities. They are key to meeting Canada’s 30×30 conservation goals and reducing carbon emissions. However, clear frameworks to monitor their impact are still lacking.
 
To read more about the panel, click here.

Register (for free) Here

[Navigating Geopolitical Shifts: Canada’s Innovation Strategy for the Life Sciences Sector]

The Canadian life sciences sector is undergoing rapid and profound transformation, shaped by shifting geopolitical dynamics, evolving international partnerships, emerging health threats, and the accelerating pace of scientific and digital innovation. These forces are redefining how health technologies are developed, regulated, and distributed across borders—creating both complex challenges and promising opportunities for industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers.

This panel is the next in CSPC’s ongoing series exploring Canada’s Innovation Strategy in key sectors. We will have more sessions coming this fall so stay tuned for the details in the coming weeks.

To read more about the panel, click here.

Register (for free) Here

…

I have more details (e.g., date and time) for both panels. First, from the “Nature-based Solutions in Canada – policies, frameworks and multi-sector cooperation to reach Canada’s 2030 climate and biodiversity goals” event page, Note: I have edited the speaker list, please see the event page to access the speakers’ biography pages,

Date: Aug 19 [2025]

Time: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm EDT

Event Category: Virtual Session

Website: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kQQEnUr1QmCQDDMgBNLPxQ

Venue

Zoom

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are actions to protect, manage and restore ecosystems for the benefit of people and nature. NbS are a promising avenue to meet Canada’s commitments to protect at least 30% of land and oceans by 2030 (30×30) under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and to address up to 35% of Canada’s 2030 carbon reduction commitment. But few frameworks exist to adequately monitor NbS implementation. To achieve sustained impact NbS must be co-created by multiple interest holders and align with social well-being, including priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This panel will dive into the topic with the questions below. Join us for a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion on the future of Nature-based Solutions in Canada.

The panelists will address the following questions:

  1. What exactly do we mean by Nature-based solutions (NbS) and how to incentivize multiple sectors (academia, government, financial, civil) to move forward on solutions that are equitable for all?
  2. What is Canada doing to achieve its 30×30 targets, and why is that important in the lead-up to the next UN Climate Conference in November [2025] (COP30)?
  3. What are some examples in practice of sustainable finance investments for biodiversity or climate action?
  4. What are the economic pathways that can support equitable, Indigenous-led, and scalable NBS across Canada?

Register Here

Moderated by: Damon Matthews

Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Interim Executive Director, Future Earth Canada Hub and Sustainability in the Digital Age

Émilie Le Beuze

Senior Advisor, Engagement for Sustainable Finance & Biodiversity, Finance Montréal

Jason Taylor

Co-Founder and CEO, Climate Finance Advisors

Stephanie Poirier

Senior Policy Analyst, Climate Change and Sustainability, Standards Council of Canada

Zahra Jandaghian

Research Officer – Nature-based Solutions Lead, National Research Council of Canada

Kirsten Zickfeld

Distinguished SFU Professor of Climate Science, Simon Fraser University

Michael Twigg

Director, Nature Economies, Smart Prosperity Institute

A strong financier/financial services presence in the first panel, eh? The second panel has a speaker list dominated by the professional class that bounces from government to for-profit enterprises to non-profit enterprises while they rove from one business sector to another.. From the “Navigating Geopolitical Shifts: Canada’s Innovation Strategy for the Life Sciences Sector” event page, Note: I have edited the speaker list, please see the event page to access the speakers’ biography pages,

Date: Sep 11 [2025]

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT

Event Categories: Innovation Virtual Series, Virtual Session

Website: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BeuZjs4XTuqE54CL6aeiMg

Venue

Zoom

This panel aims to explore how Canada’s life sciences sector can navigate the evolving geopolitical and economic landscape to foster sustained innovation and competitiveness. Panelists will discuss the key challenges that are currently limiting innovation. The conversation will delve into how both government and industry can respond strategically, with a focus on improving policy alignment, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and enhancing private sector R&D investment. The panel will also identify emerging global and domestic opportunities that Canada is uniquely positioned to leverage in this period of transformation.

The panelists will address the following questions:

  1. Considering the geopolitical shift, tariffs and a new dimension into the Canadian economy, what are the top three challenges currently hindering innovation in your sector?
  2. How should the government and industry respond to these challenges to enable long-term innovation and competitiveness?
  3. How can Canada enhance private sector R&D investment and capitalize on emerging opportunities in this sector?
  4. What new opportunities or advantages should Canada exploit in this sector despite (or because of) the changing global landscape?

Register Here

Moderated by: Dr. Jason Field

President & CEO Life Sciences Ontario

Karimah Es Sabar

Canadian Life Sciences Leader/Corporate Director/Strategic Advisor

Wendy Zatylny

President & CEO, BIOTEC [s.b. BIOTECanada; BIOTEC is a company in Thailand]

Stephanie Michaud

President & CEO, BioCanRx

Alexandre Le Bouthillier

Founding Partner & CEO, Linearis

Bethany Moir

VP Partnerships, AdMare [also known as, adMare BioInnovations]

Wendy Hurlburt

President & CEO, BC Life Sciences [also known as, Life Sciences British Columbia or Life Sciences BC]

Anne Stevens

VP of Business Development, AbCellera

Now for the call for editorial submissions. From the Canadian Science Policy Centre’s (CSPC) July 31, 2025 update, *ETA August 11, 2025: The deadline for submissions has been extended to September 5, 2025,*

Only Three Weeks Left Until 
Deadline for Editorial Submissions 

Only three weeks left to submit your editorials for CSPC’s Special Editorial Series. Canada’s defence spending is set to rise significantly—reaching NATO’s 2% target by 2025–2026 and projected to hit 5% by 2035. This historic shift presents a unique opportunity to strategically align defence investments with research, innovation, and economic development goals.
 
CSPC invites editorials on how this investment can strengthen Canada’s innovation ecosystem, research capacity, and economic growth. Contributions from researchers, policymakers, and industry experts are welcome. The deadline for submissions is Friday, August 22 [2025]. *ETA August 11, 2025: Thedeadline for submissions has been extended to September 5, 2025*

For more information on editorial guidelines and to submit an editorial, click the button below!

Submit an Editorial

From the “2025 Special Editorial Series” webpage, Note: Submissions are accepted in either English or French,

Defence spending as a catalyst for R&D, innovation, and economic growth in Canada

The Canadian government has committed to increasing defence spending, reaching NATO’s 2% GDP target ahead of schedule by 2025–2026, with spending projected to rise to 5% by 2035. Given the research-intensive nature of the defence sector and its heavy reliance on new technologies and scientific innovation, this marks a historic shift in Canada’s defence framework and opens up new opportunities for strategic investments in research and development (R&D). Many technologies in everyday public use today were originally developed through defence-related funding, highlighting the sector’s broader impact on technological advancement.

The CSPC invites editorials on how this increase could be strategically aligned with investments in R&D, drawing from international examples where defence spending has driven innovation. How can this shift bolster Canada’s innovation ecosystem, strengthen our research capacity, and contribute to long-term economic growth? What policies and practices from other countries could Canada adopt to make the most of this historic opportunity for innovation and economic development?

We welcome analyses from researchers, policymakers, and industry experts on how to leverage defence funding to advance science, innovation, and national prosperity.

Editorial Guidelines

Editorial Format & Requirements

  1. Word Count: Editorials should be 600–1000 words (some may range up to 1200 if needed).
  2. Original Work: Submissions must be the original work of the author(s) and should not have been published in any other media outlet.
  3. If any AI tools are used during preparation, please see below for more details.
  4. Submission Platform: Editorials must be submitted through the designated online form.
  5. Figures: You may include up to 3 high-quality figures to support your editorial. Submit figures as separate files (in addition to embedding them in the text) to ensure high-resolution publishing.
  6. Please provide artist credit where applicable.
  7. CSPC will not be accepting articles, which are promotional in nature (E.g., promoting a product, innovation, or service) or which include profanity of any form.

AI Usage Policy for CSPC Editorials

CSPC editorials must reflect the original thought and voice of the author(s). However, we recognize the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in content creation, research, and productivity.

Authors may use AI tools (e.g., for idea generation, drafting assistance, editing, summarization, or image generation) to support their writing process. All final editorial content must be written, reviewed, verified, and approved by the author(s) to ensure accuracy, clarity, and integrity.

If AI tools are used in any part of the editorial process, authors must include an acknowledgment indicating the use of AI.

CSPC does not permit editorials to be entirely generated by AI without human authorship, accountability, and oversight. Our goal is to promote transparency while supporting responsible and ethical use of technology in science policy dialogue. We are looking forward to presenting and highlighting your thoughts and perspectives on various topics for readership by a Canada-wide audience.

…

Where to Submit

We thank you for your submission. Please add editorial@sciencepolicy.ca to your contacts so that we can make sure any follow-up messages reach you.

If you have any questions about writing an editorial for CSPC, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Committee at editorial@sciencepolicy.ca.

EDITORIAL SUBMISSION FORM (ENG)

EDITORIAL SUBMISSION FORM (FR)

With the extraordinary emphasis on economic benefits, it sometimes seems like it’s the Canadian Science Moneymaking Policy Centre rather than the Canadian Science Policy Centre.

*ETA August 11, 2025: The deadline for submissions has been extended to September 5, 2025.*

Last call for Science and Innovation in a Time of Transformation—the Canadian Science Policy Conference (November 13 – 15, 2023)

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Unless something really exciting happens, this will be my last post about the upcoming 2023 (and 15th annual) Canadian Science Policy Conference. I will be highlighting a few of the sessions but, first, there’s this from an October 26, 2023 Canadian Science Policy Centre announcement (received via email),

Only Two Weeks Left to Register for CSPC [Canadian Science Policy Conference] 2023!

Only two weeks left to register for CSPC 2023! The deadline to register is Friday, November 10th! With the overarching theme of ‘Science and Innovation in a Time of Transformation’ CSPC 2023 expects more than 1000 participants, 300+ speakers in 50+ panel sessions, and will include a spectacular Gala Dinner featuring its award ceremony which has become a signature annual event to celebrate Canadian science and innovation policy achievements. 

CSPC 2023 will feature more than 300 amazing speakers. To view the list of speakers, click here, and here are some of the international speakers: 

Multiple ticket discounts are also available. CSPC offers a 5% discount on groups of 5-9 registrations and a 10% discount for 10 registrations or more. Please note GROUP REGISTRATION DISCOUNTS are available until Friday, November 10th. Please contact conference@sciencepolicy.ca for more information.

Register now by clicking the button below!
Register Now

View the CSPC 2023 Program and Speakers List!

The biggest and most comprehensive annual Science and Innovation Policy Conference, CSPC 2023, is fast approaching! Explore more than 60 concurrent and plenary panel sessions. Navigate the CSPC 2023 Program: the Interactive Agenda is available here, and the Agenda at a Glance can be viewed here.

There are four sessions that seem particularly interesting to me. First, from the session webpage,

804 – Discussion between Dr. Mona Nemer and Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, moderated by Dr. Alejandro Adem

Monday, November 13, 20231:00 PM – 2:00 PM

This year’s CSPC opening panel will bring together two of North America’s most recognized science leaders for a discussion about their experience in the Canadian and U.S research landscape. Panelists will discuss the importance of societally-relevant science, broadening participation in science, the increasing need for open science, and science & technology in green economic development, as well as their vision for the role of science in international relations.

Organized by: Canada Research Coordinating Committee

Speakers

Dr. Alejandro Adem
President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Dr. Mona Nemer
Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, Government of Canada

Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan
Computer Scientist and Engineer
15th Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Second, from the session webpage,

901 – The new challenges of information in parliaments

Monday, November 13, 20232:30 PM – 4:00 PM

In a democratic environment, members of parliament work with information gathered from parliamentary staff, media, lobbies and experts. With the aim of maintaining a strong democracy, parliaments around the world have developed mechanisms to facilitate access to high-quality information for elected representatives, with variations according to continent, language and culture. This panel proposes an overview of these mechanisms including a discussion on emerging issues impacting them, such as the integration of artificial intelligence and the risks of digital interference in democratic processes.

Organized by: Fonds de recherche du Quebec

Speakers

…

Interestingly, the Canadian Science Policy Centre recently published a research report titled “Survey of Parliamentarians; Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Use of Science in Policy Making,” you can my comments about it in my October 13, 2023 posting.

Third, from the session webpage,

277 – Science for Social Justice: Advancing the agenda set by the 2022 Cape Town World Science Forum

Tuesday, November 14, 202310:30 AM – 12:00 PM

South Africa had hosted the 10th World Science Forum (WSF), a platform for global science policy dialogue, in Cape Town in December 2022. The WSF is co-organised by a partnership involving global science organisations including UNESCO, the AAAS and the International Science Council, and Hungarian Academy of Science. The theme of the 2022 WSF was “Science for Social Justice.” During a week of intense debate more than 3000 participants from across the world debated the role of science in advancing social justice. This session will review the outcomes of the Forum, including the WSF Declaration on Science for Social Justice.

Organized by: South African Department of Science and Innovation

Speakers

…

The fourth and final session to be mentioned here, from the session webpage,

910 – Canada’s Quantum potential : critical partnerships and public policy to advance Canada’s leadership in Quantum science and technology.

Tuesday, November 14, 202310:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Canada’s early commitment to invest in Quantum research and technology has made our nation one of the global leaders in that field, and the $360 million earmarked over a seven-year period to foster the National Quantum Strategy (NQS) is a testament to Canada’s leadership ambition in the future. This panel discussion will address the ever-evolving field of quantum science and technology and offer a unique opportunity to explore its policy dimensions including the current state of the field, its advancements and potential applications, and the overall impact of quantum innovations across various sectors. It will explore the transformative impact of quantum science and technologies, and the quantum revolution 2.0 on society, from diverse expert perspectives, using examples such as the impact of quantum computing on drug discovery or financial modelling, as well as discussing the ethical considerations and potential for misuse in surveillance or disinformation campaigns. This panel will examine a variety of policy and social implications of Quantum technologies, including the impact of foundational research and training, approaches to support Quantum industries at their development stages, risks, obstacles to commercialization, and opportunities for better inclusion.

Organized by: University of Ottawa

Speakers

Dr. Khabat Heshami
Research Officer at the National Research Council Canada [NRC]

Jeff Kinder
Project Director
Council of Canadian Academies

Professor Ebrahim Karimi
Co-Director the Nexus for Quantum Technologies Research Institute
University of Ottawa

Professor Ghassan Jabbour
Canada Research Chair in Engineered Advanced Materials and Devices
University of Ottawa – Faculty of Engineering

Rafal Janik
Chief Operating Officer
Xanadu

Tina Dekker
Research Fellow of the University of Ottawa Research Chair in Technology and Society

A few comments

I have highlighted speakers from two of the sessions as I’m going to make a few comments. Dr. Mona Nemer who’s part of the opening panel discussion and Canada’s Chief Science Advisor and Dr. Mehrdad Hariri, the founder and current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Canadian Science Policy Centre, which organizes the conference, are both from a region that is experiencing war.

I imagine this is a particularly difficult time for many people in Canada whose family and friends are from the various communities in that region. Along with many others, I hope one day there is peace for everyone. For anyone who might want a little insight into the issues, there’s an October 15, 2023 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio programme segement on ‘The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay’,

How to maintain solidarity in Canadian Jewish and Palestinian communities

The events in Israel and Gaza in the last week have sparked high levels of grief, pain and outrage, deepening long-simmering divides in the region and closer to home. For years, Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson have embarked on a joint project to bring North American Palestinian and Jewish communities together. They join Piya Chattopadhyay to discuss how the events of the last week are challenging that ongoing mission in Canada… and how to strive for solidarity in a time of grief and trauma.

You can find the almost 22 mins. programme here. Khouri’s and Wilkinson’s book, “The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know about Each Other” was published on October 3, 2023 just days before the initial Hamas attacks,

The Wall Between is a book about the wall that exists between Jewish and Palestinian communities in the Diaspora. Distrust, enmity, and hate are common currencies. They manifest at university campuses, schools and school boards, at political events, on social media, and in academic circles. For Jews, Israel must exist; for Palestinians, the historic injustice being committed since 1948 must be reversed. Neither wants to know why the Other cannot budge on these issues. The wall is up.

These responses emanate, primarily, from the two “metanarratives” of Jews and Palestinians: the Holocaust and the Nakba. Virtually every response to the struggle, from a member of either community, can be traced back to issues of identity, trauma, and victimhood as they relate to their respective metanarrative. This book examines the role that propaganda and disinformation play in cementing trauma-induced fears for the purpose of making the task of humanizing and acknowledging the Other not just difficult, but almost inconceivable. The authors utilize recent cognitive research on the psychological and social barriers that keep Jews and Palestinians in their camps, walled off from each other. They present a clear way through, one that is justice-centered, rather than trauma-and propaganda-driven.

The authors have lived these principles and traveled this journey, away from their tribal traumas, through embracing the principles of justice. They insist that commitment to the Other means grappling with seemingly incompatible narratives until shared values are decided and acted upon. This book is a call to justice that challenges the status quo of Zionism while at the same time dealing directly with the complex histories that have created the situation today. The book is both realistic and hopeful—a guide for anyone who is open to new possibilities within the Israel-Palestine discourse in the West.

From the publisher’s author descriptions, “Jeffrey J. Wilkinson, PhD, is an American Jew who lives in Canada.” From his Wikipedia entry, “Raja G. Khouri is a Lebanese born Arab-Canadian..”

Also, thank you to Dr. Nemer and Dr. Hariri for the science policy work they’ve done here in Canada and their efforts to expand our discussions.

On a much lighter note, the ‘quantum session’ panel is dominated by academics from the University of Ottawa, a policy wonk from Ottawa, and a representative from a company based in Toronto (approximately 450 km from Ottawa by road). Couldn’t the panel organizers have made some effort to widen geographical representation? This seems particularly odd since the policy wonk (Jeff Kinder) is currently working with the Canadian Council of Academies’ Expert Panel on the Responsible Adoption of Quantum Technologies, which does have wider geographical representation.

This CSPC 2023 panel also seems to be another example of what appears to be a kind of rivalry between D-Wave Systems (based in the Vancouver area) and Xanadu Quantum Technologies (Toronto-based) or perhaps another east-west Canada rivalry. See my May 4, 2021 posting (scroll down to the ‘National Quantum Strategy’ subhead) for an overview of sorts of the seeming rivalry; there’s my July 26, 2022 posting for speculation about Canada’s quantum scene and what appears to be an east/west divide; and for a very brief comment in my April 17, 2023 posting (scroll down to the ‘The quantum crew’ subhead.)

As for the conference itself, there’s been a significant increase in conference registration fees this year (see my July 28, 203 posting) and, for the insatiable, there’s my March 29, 2023 posting featuring the call for submissions and topic streams.

Canadian Science Policy Centre panel on Sept. 6, 2023 [date changed to October 4, 2023]: Science, technology and innovation (STI) between Brazil and Canada plus a quantum panel on Sept. 13, 2023

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In an August 17, 2023 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) newsletter (received via email), they’ve announced a panel about science and technology opportunities with a country we don’t usually talk about much in that context (nice to see a broader, not the US and not a European or Commonwealth country, approach being taken),

Canada-Brazil Cooperation and Collaboration in STI [Science, Technology, and Innovation]

This virtual panel aims to discuss the ongoing Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) cooperation between Brazil and Canada, along with the potential for furthering this relationship. The focus will encompass strategic areas of contact, ongoing projects, and scholarship opportunities. It is pertinent to reflect on the science diplomacy efforts of each country and their reciprocal influence. Additionally, the panel aims to explore how Canada engages with developing countries in terms of STI.

Click the button below to register for the upcoming virtual panel!

Register Here

Date: Sept. 6 [2023] October 4, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm EDT

Here are the speakers (from the CSPC’s Canada-Brazil Cooperation and Collaboration in STI event page),

Fernanda de Negri
Moderator
Director of Studies and Sectoral Policies of Innovation, Regulation and Infrastructure at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Brazil
See Bio

Alejandro Adem
President of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – NSERC
See Bio

Ambassador Emmanuel Kamarianakis
Canadian Embassy in Canada
See Bio

Ambassador Ademar Seabra da Cruz Jr.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil
See Bio

If you haven’t gotten your fill of virtual science policy panels yet, there’s this one on quantum technologies, from the August 17, 2023 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) newsletter,

Canada’s Quantum Strategy and International Collaboration

Countries are investing heavily in quantum computing and other quantum technologies. As Canada has recently released its Quantum Strategy [Note: There is also report on Quantum Technologies expected from the Canadian Council of Academies, no release date yet], this is an opportunity to foster further international collaborations. Panelists will discuss the opportunities and challenges Canada will be facing and what this could mean for Canada’s leadership in quantum research and the development of quantum technologies.

Click the button below to register for the upcoming virtual panel!

Register Here

Date: Sep 13 [2023]
Time: 1:00 pm EDT

Here’s some information about the panel participants, from the CSPC’s Canada’s Quantum Strategy and International Collaboration event page,

Dr. Sarah Burke
Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
See Bio

Dr. Aimee K. Gunther
Deputy Director, Quantum Sensors Challenge Program, National Research Council Canada
See Bio

Prof. Andrea Damascelli
Scientific Director, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute | Professor, Physics and Astronomy | Canada Research Chair in the Electronic Structure of Quantum Materials
See Bio

Nick Werstiuk
CEO, Quantum Valley Ideas Lab
See Bio

Eric Miller
Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute
See Bio

Ms. Alexandra Daoud
Moderator
Vice President, Intellectual Property at Anyon Systems
See Bio

Interestingly, the moderator, Alexandra Daoud, is a patent agent.

As for the Council of Canadian Academies, you can find out about the proposed report on Quantum Technologies here.

The 2023 Canadian federal budget: science & technology of the military and cybersecurity and some closing comments (2 of 2)

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So far in part 1, the budget continues its focus on life sciences especially biomanufacturing, climate (clean energy, clean (?) manufacturing, mining, space, the forest economy, agriculture, and water. The budget also mentioned funding for the research councils (it’s been a while since I’ve seen them in a budget document).

Now, it’s time to focus on the military and cybersecurity. As noted in part 1 (third paragraph of my introduction), the military is often the source for technology (e.g., television, the internet, modern anesthesiology) that transforms society.

Chapter 5: Canada’s Leadership in the World

Finally, for this blog posting, there’s Chapter 5, from https://www.budget.canada.ca/2023/report-rapport/toc-tdm-en.html,

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Key Ongoing Actions

In the past year, the federal government has announced a series of investments that have enhanced Canada’s security and our leadership around the world. These include:

  • $38.6 billion over 20 years to invest in the defence of North America and the modernization of NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command; emphasis mine];
  • More than $5.4 billion in assistance for Ukraine, including critical financial, military, and humanitarian support;
  • More than $545 million in emergency food and nutrition assistance in 2022-23 to help address the global food security crisis and respond to urgent hunger and nutrition needs;
  • $2.3 billion over the next five years to launch Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy [emphasis mine], including the further global capitalization of FinDev Canada [also known as Development Finance Institute Canada {DFIC}], which will deepen Canada’s engagement with our partners, support economic growth and regional security, and strengthen our ties with people in the Indo-Pacific;
  • $350 million over three years in international biodiversity financing, in addition to Canada’s commitment to provide $5.3 billion in climate financing over five years, to support developing countries’ efforts to protect nature;
  • $875 million over five years, and $238 million ongoing, to enhance Canada’s cybersecurity capabilities [emphasis mine];
  • Delivering on a commitment to spend $1.4 billion each year on global health, of which $700 million will be dedicated to sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls; and,
  • Channeling almost 30 per cent of Canada’s newly allocated International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights to support low-income and vulnerable countries, surpassing the G7’s 20 per cent target.

…

Defence Policy Update

In response to a changed global security environment following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the federal government committed in Budget 2022 to a Defence Policy Update that would update Canada’s existing defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged.

This review, including public consultations, is ongoing, and is focused on the roles, responsibilities, and capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces. The Department of National Defence will return with a Defence Policy Update [emphasis mine] that will ensure the Canadian Armed Forces remain strong at home, secure in North America, and engaged around the world.

With this review ongoing, the Canadian Armed Forces have continued to protect Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic, support our NATO allies in Eastern Europe, and contribute to operations in the Indo-Pacific.

In the past year, the government has made significant, foundational investments in Canada’s national defence, which total more than $55 billion over 20 years. These include:

  • $38.6 billion over 20 years to strengthen the defence of North America, reinforce Canada’s support of our partnership with the United States under NORAD, and protect our sovereignty in the North [emphases mine];
  • $2.1 billion over seven years, starting in 2022-23, and $706.0 million ongoing for Canada’s contribution to increasing NATO’s [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] common budget [emphasis mine];
  • $1.4 billion over 14 years, starting in 2023-24, to acquire new critical weapons systems needed to protect the Canadian Armed Forces in case of high intensity conflict, including air defence, anti-tank, and anti-drone capabilities;
  • $605.8 million over five years, starting in 2023-24, with $2.6 million in remaining amortization, to replenish the Canadian Armed Forces’ stocks of ammunition and explosives, and to replace materiel donated to Ukraine;
  • $562.2 million over six years, starting in 2022-23, with $112.0 million in remaining amortization, and $69 million ongoing to improve the digital systems of the Canadian Armed Forces;
  • Up to $90.4 million over five years, starting in 2022-23, to further support initiatives to increase the capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces; and,
  • $30.1 million over four years, starting in 2023-24, and $10.4 million ongoing to establish the new North American regional office in Halifax for NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic [emphasis mine].

In addition, the government is providing $1.4 billion to upgrade the facilities of Joint Task Force 2, Canada’s elite counterterrorism unit.

…

Establishing the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Montreal

Climate change has repercussions for people, economic security, public safety, and critical infrastructure around the world. It also poses a significant threat to global security, and in 2022, NATO’s new Strategic Concept recognized climate change for the first time as a major security challenge for the Alliance.

At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, Montreal was announced as the host city for NATO’s new Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence, which will bring together NATO allies to mitigate the impact of climate change on military activities and analyze new climate change-driven security challenges, such as the implications for Canada’s Arctic.

  • Budget 2023 proposes to provide $40.4 million over five years, starting in 2023-24, with $0.3 million in remaining amortization and $7 million ongoing, to Global Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence to establish the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence [emphasis mine].

…

Protecting Diaspora Communities and All Canadians From Foreign Interference, Threats, and Covert Activities

As an advanced economy and a free and diverse democracy, Canada’s strengths also make us a target for hostile states seeking to acquire information and technology [emphasis mine], intelligence, and influence to advance their own interests.

This can include foreign actors working to steal information from Canadian companies to benefit their domestic industries, hostile proxies intimidating diaspora communities in Canada because of their beliefs and values, or intelligence officers seeking to infiltrate Canada’s public and research institutions.

Authoritarian regimes, such as Russia, China, and Iran, believe they can act with impunity and meddle in the affairs of democracies—and democracies must act to defend ourselves. No one in Canada should ever be threatened by foreign actors, and Canadian businesses and Canada’s public institutions must be free of foreign interference.

  • Budget 2023 proposes to provide $48.9 million over three years on a cash basis, starting in 2023-24, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to protect Canadians from harassment and intimidation, increase its investigative capacity, and more proactively engage with communities at greater risk of being targeted. 
  • Budget 2023 proposes to provide $13.5 million over five years, starting in 2023-24, and $3.1 million ongoing to Public Safety Canada to establish a National Counter-Foreign Interference Office.

…

5.4 Combatting Financial Crime

Serious financial crimes, such as money laundering, terrorist financing, and the evasion of financial sanctions, threaten the safety of Canadians and the integrity of our financial system. Canada requires a comprehensive, responsive, and modern system to counter these sophisticated and rapidly evolving threats.

Canada must not be a financial haven for oligarchs or the kleptocratic apparatchiks of authoritarian, corrupt, or theocratic regimes—such as those of Russia, China, Iran, and Haiti. We will not allow our world-renowned financial system to be used to clandestinely and illegally move money to fund foreign interference inside Canada. [emphases mine]

Since 2019, the federal government has modernized Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing (AML/ATF) Regime to address risks posed by new technologies and sectors, and made investments to strengthen Canada’s financial intelligence, information sharing, and investigative capacity.

Canada’s AML/ATF Regime must continue to be strengthened in order to combat the complex and evolving threats our democracy faces, and to ensure that Canada is never a haven for illicit financial flows or ill-gotten gains.

In Budget 2023, the government is proposing further important measures to deter, detect, and prosecute financial crimes, protect financial institutions from foreign interference, and protect Canadians from the emerging risks associated with crypto-assets.

Combatting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing

Money laundering and terrorist financing can threaten the integrity of the Canadian economy, and put Canadians at risk by supporting terrorist activity, drug and human trafficking, and other criminal activities. Taking stronger action to tackle these threats is essential to protecting Canada’s economic security.

In June 2022, the Government of British Columbia released the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia [emphasis mine], also known as the Cullen Commission. This report highlighted major gaps in the current AML/ATF Regime, as well as areas for deepened federal-provincial collaboration [emphasis mine]. Between measures previously introduced and those proposed in Budget 2023, as well as through consultations that the government has committed to launching, the federal government will have responded to all of the recommendations within its jurisdiction in the Cullen Commission report.

In Budget 2023, the federal government is taking action to address gaps in Canada’s AML/ATF Regime, and strengthen cooperation between orders of government.

  • Budget 2023 announces the government’s intention to introduce legislative amendments to the Criminal Code and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) to strengthen the investigative, enforcement, and information sharing tools of Canada’s AML/ATF Regime.

These legislative changes will:

  • Give law enforcement the ability to freeze and seize virtual assets with suspected links to crime;
  • Improve financial intelligence information sharing between law enforcement and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), and law enforcement and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC);
  • Introduce a new offence for structuring financial transactions to avoid FINTRAC reporting;
  • Strengthen the registration framework, including through criminal record checks, for currency dealers and other money services businesses to prevent their abuse;
  • Criminalize the operation of unregistered money services businesses;
  • Establish powers for FINTRAC to disseminate strategic analysis related to the financing of threats to the safety of Canada;
  • Provide whistleblowing protections for employees who report information to FINTRAC;
  • Broaden the use of non-compliance reports by FINTRAC in criminal investigations; and,
  • Set up obligations for the financial sector to report sanctions-related information to FINTRAC.

Strengthening Efforts Against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing

In keeping with the requirements of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA), the federal government will launch a parliamentary review of this act this year.

This review will include a public consultation that will examine ways to improve Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (AML/ATF) Regime, as well as examine how different orders of government can collaborate more closely. This will include how governments can better use existing tools to seize the proceeds of crime, and the potential need for new measures, such as unexplained wealth orders. Other topics of consultation will include, but will not be limited to, measures to support investigations and prosecutions, enhance information sharing, close regulatory gaps, examine the role of the AML/ATF Regime in protecting national and economic security, as well as the remaining recommendations from the Cullen Commission [also known as, the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia].

  • Budget 2023 announces that the government will bring forward further legislative amendments, to be informed by these consultations, to give the government more tools to fight money laundering and terrorist financing.

Canada is also leading the global fight against illicit financial flows, having been chosen to serve for two years, effective July 2023, as Vice President of the Financial Action Task Force (from which Russia has been suspended indefinitely), as well as co-Chair of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering for two years, [emphases mine] beginning in July 2022. 

Implementing a Publicly Accessible Federal Beneficial Ownership Registry

The use of anonymous Canadian shell companies can conceal the true ownership of property, businesses, and other valuable assets. When authorities don’t have the tools to determine their true ownership, these shell companies can become tools of those seeking to launder money, avoid taxes, evade sanctions, or interfere in our democracy.

To address this, the federal government committed in Budget 2022 to implementing a public, searchable beneficial ownership registry of federal corporations by the end of 2023.

This registry will cover corporations governed under the Canada Business Corporations Act, and will be scalable to allow access to the beneficial ownership data held by provinces and territories that agree to participate in a national registry.

While an initial round of amendments to the Canada Business Corporations Act received Royal Assent in June 2022, further amendments are needed to implement a beneficial ownership registry.

The government is introducing further amendments to the Canada Business Corporations Act and other laws, including the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Income Tax Act, to implement a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry through Bill C-42. This represents a major blow to money laundering operations and will be a powerful tool to strengthen the security and integrity of Canada’s economy.

The federal government will continue calling upon provincial and territorial governments to advance a national approach to beneficial ownership transparency to strengthen the fight against money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorist financing.

Modernizing Financial Sector Oversight to Address Emerging Risks

Canadians must be confident that federally regulated financial institutions and their owners act with integrity, and that Canada’s financial institutions are protected, including from foreign interference.

  • Budget 2023 announces the government’s intention to amend the Bank Act, the Insurance Companies Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) to modernize the federal financial framework to address emerging risks to Canada’s financial sector [emphasis mine].

These legislative changes will:

  • Expand the mandate of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) to include supervising federally regulated financial institutions (FRFIs) in order to determine whether they have adequate policies and procedures to protect themselves against threats to their integrity and security, including protection against foreign interference;
  • Expand the range of circumstances where OSFI can take control of an FRFI to include where the integrity and security of that FRFI is at risk, where all shareholders have been precluded from exercising their voting rights, or where there are national security risks;
  • Expand the existing authority for the Superintendent to issue a direction of compliance to include an act that threatens the integrity and security of an FRFI;
  • Provide new powers under the PCMLTFA to allow the Minister of Finance to impose enhanced due diligence requirements to protect Canada’s financial system from the financing of national security threats, and allow the Director of FINTRAC to share intelligence analysis with the Minister of Finance to help assess national security or financial integrity risks posed by financial entities;
  • Improve the sharing of compliance information between FINTRAC, OSFI, and the Minister of Finance; and,
  • Designate OSFI as a recipient of FINTRAC disclosures pertaining to threats to the security of Canada, where relevant to OSFI’s responsibilities.

The government will also review the mandate of FINTRAC to determine whether it should be expanded to counter sanctions evasion and will provide an update in the 2023 fall economic and fiscal update. In addition, the government will review whether FINTRAC’s mandate should evolve to include the financing of threats to Canada’s national and economic security as part of the parliamentary review.

These actions will continue the strong oversight of the financial sector that underpins a sound and stable Canadian economy.

Canada Financial Crimes Agency

To strengthen Canada’s ability to respond to complex cases of financial crime, Budget 2022 announced the government’s intent to establish a new Canada Financial Crimes Agency (CFCA), and provided $2 million to Public Safety Canada to undertake this work.

The CFCA will become Canada’s lead enforcement agency against financial crime. It will bring together expertise necessary to increase money laundering charges, prosecutions and convictions, and asset forfeiture results in Canada. These actions will address the key operational challenges identified in both domestic and international reviews of Canada’s AML/ATF Regime.

Public Safety Canada is developing options for the design of the CFCA, working in conjunction with federal, provincial and territorial partners and external experts, as well as engaging extensively with stakeholders. Further details on the structure and mandate of the CFCA will be provided by the 2023 fall economic and fiscal update.

Protecting Canadians from the Risks of Crypto-Assets

Ongoing turbulence in crypto-asset markets, and the recent high-profile failures of crypto trading platform FTX, and of Signature Bank, have demonstrated that crypto-assets can threaten the financial well-being of people, national security, and the stability and integrity of the global financial system.

To protect Canadians from the risks that come with crypto-assets, there is a clear need for different orders of government to take an active role in addressing consumer protection gaps and risks to our financial system.

The federal government is working closely with regulators and provincial and territorial partners to protect Canadians’ hard-earned savings and pensions, and Budget 2023 proposes new measures to protect Canadians.

  • To help protect Canadians’ savings and the security of our financial sector, Budget 2023 announces that the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) will consult federally regulated financial institutions on guidelines for publicly disclosing their exposure to crypto-assets.

Secure pension plans are the cornerstone of a dignified retirement. While pension plan administrators are required to prudently manage their investments, the unique nature and evolving risks of crypto-assets and related activities require continued monitoring.

  • To help protect Canadians’ retirements, Budget 2023 announces that the government will require federally regulated pension funds to disclose their crypto-asset exposures to OSFI. The government will also work with provinces and territories to discuss crypto-asset or related activities disclosures by Canada’s largest pension plans, which would ensure Canadians are aware of their pension plan’s potential exposure to crypto-assets.

The federal government launched targeted consultations on crypto-assets as part of the review on the digitalization of money announced in Budget 2022. Moving forward, the government will continue to work closely with partners to advance the review, will bring forward proposals to protect Canadians from the risks of crypto-asset markets, and will provide further details in the 2023 fall economic and fiscal update.

Leadership in the world?

Maybe they should have titled chapter 5, “Shoring up Canada’s position in the world.” Most of the initiatives in this section of the budget seem oriented to catching up with the rest of world than forging new paths.

NORAD, NATO, and sovereignty in the North

It’s about time we contributed in a serious way to the “defence of North America and the modernization of NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command].” The same goes for NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), where we have failed to contribute our fair share for decades. For the latest NATO/Canada dustup, you may want to read Murray Brewster’s April 7, 2023 article (NATO is getting ready to twist Canada’s arm on defence spending) for CBC news online,

…

In late March [2023?], NATO published an annual report that shows Canada’s defence spending amounted to just 1.29 per cent of GDP in fiscal 2022-2023.

It’s not much of a stretch to say Canada has no plan to meet that 2 per cent target. There wasn’t one when the previous Conservative government signed on to the notion at the 2014 NATO leaders summit (when the goal was for allies to reach 2 per cent by 2024).

The Liberal government’s 2017 defence policy tiptoed around the subject. Whenever they’ve been asked about it since, Trudeau and his ministers have bobbed and weaved and talked about what Canada delivers in terms of capability.

…

In an interview with the London bureau of CBC News this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly was asked point-blank about Stoltenberg’s [NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg] assertion that allies would soon consider the two per cent benchmark the floor, not the ceiling.

She responded that Canada recognized the world changed with the war in Ukraine and that tensions in the Indo-Pacific [emphasis mine] mean “we need to make sure that we step up our game and that’s what we’ll do.”

“Step up our game” may be a relative term, because Joly went on to say that the government is engaged “in a very important defence policy review, which is required before announcing any further investments.”

That defence policy review was announced in the 2022 federal budget. A year later, shortly after presenting its latest fiscal plan, the government announced there would be public consultations on how best to defend Canada in a more uncertain world.

The best-case scenario, according to several experts, is the defence policy being delivered next year and the necessary investments being made at some indeterminate point in the future.

In fairness, the Liberals have committed to spending $19 billion on new fighter jets, starting in 2026. They have agreed to put $4.9 billion toward modernizing continental defence through NORAD.

…

The current Liberal government has followed a longstanding precedent of many Canadian governments (Liberal or Conservative) of inadequately funding national defence.

Getting back to NATO commitments, yes, let’s pull our weight. Further, I hope they follow through with protecting sovereignty in the North as there’s more than one jurisdiction interested in claiming to be an ‘Arctic” country of some kind, including Scotland (on behalf of the UK?). My November 20, 2020 posting features the Scottish claim. Interestingly, the closest Scottish land (Shetland Islands, which have a separatist movement of their own) is 400 miles south of the Arctic.

China too claims to be close to the Arctic despite being some 900 miles south at its closest point. Roslyn Layton’s August 31, 2022 article (Cold Front: The Arctic Emerges As A New Flashpoint Of Geopolitical Challenge) for Forbes magazine provides good insight into the situation, including this tidbit: ‘on August 26, 2022 the US appointed an Ambassador-At-Large for the Arctic’.

For a Canadian take on the challenges vis-à-vis China’s interest in the Arctic, there’s a January 12, 2021 posting on the University of Alberta’s China Institute website, “China in the Canadian Arctic: Context, Issues, and Considerations for 2021 and Beyond” by Evan Oddleifson, Tom Alton, and Scott N. Romaniuk. Note: A link has been removed,

Shandong Gold Mining Co., a Chinese state-owned enterprise, brokered a deal in May 2020 to acquire TMAC Resources, a Canadian gold mining company with operations in the Hope Bay region of Nunavut [emphasis mine]. At the time, observers voiced concern about the merits of the deal, speculating that Shandong Gold may be motivated by political/strategic interests rather than solely firm-level economic considerations.

…

I don’t see it mentioned in their posting, but the Shandong acquisition would be covered under the ‘Agreement Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the People’s Republic of China for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments‘ (also known as Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) or Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (FIPPA). It was not a popular agreement in Canada when it was signed, from a September 12, 2014 opinion piece by Scott Harris for The Council of Canadians, Note: Links have been removed,

In the world of official government announcements, a two-paragraph media release sent out in the late afternoon on the Friday before Parliament resumes sitting is the best way for a government to admit, “We know this is really, really unpopular, but we’re doing it anyway.”

That’s the way the Harper government, by way of a release quoting Trade Minister Ed Fast, announced that it had decided to ignore widespread public opposition, parliamentary opposition from the NDP, Greens and even lukewarm Liberal criticism, an ongoing First Nations legal challenge, and even division at its own cabinet table and grassroots membership [emphases mine] and proceed with the ratification of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA).

With China’s ratification of the deal long since signed, sealed, and delivered (and, really, when you can convince another government to sign a deal this lopsided in your favour, wouldn’t you ratify as quickly as possible too?) Canada’s ratification of the deal means it will enter into force on October 1 [2014]. …

The CBC published this sharply (unusual for them) worded September 19, 2014 article by Patrick Brown for CBC news online,

The secrecy shrouding the much-delayed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China makes it hard for experts, let alone average Canadians, to figure out what benefits this country will see from the deal.

While reporting on Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the first time, during his visit to China in early 2012, I wrote a column with the headline Great Glorious and Always Correct, which began: “If Stephen Harper ever gets tired of being Canada’s Prime Minister, he might like to consider a second career in China – he’d fit right in.” [Note: Our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, once indicated that he found some aspects of the Chinese Communist Government’s system appealing. November 8, 2013 (article) Trudeau under fire for expressing admiration for China’s ‘basic dictatorship’]

…

The government revealed the text of the FIPA agreement and signed [emphasis mine] it in Vladivostok not long after the Beijing trip, and gave a briefing to the parliamentary trade committee for one single hour in October 2012 [emphasis mine]. Then the cone of silence descended.

…

Then late Friday afternoon, the witching hour favoured by spinmeisters with stealthy announcements they hope everyone will forget by Monday, a press release revealed that the agreement with China, mysteriously unratified [emphasis mine] for almost two years, has been approved by cabinet. It goes into effect Oct. 1 [2014].

Critics of the agreement, such as Gus Van Harten, an Osgoode Hall law professor who has written two books on investment treaties, raise several key objections:

  • Canadian governments are locked in for a generation. If Canada finds the deal unsatisfactory, it cannot be cancelled completely for 31 years [emphasis mine].
  • China benefits much more than Canada, because of a clause allowing existing restrictions in each country to stay in place. Chinese companies get to play on a relatively level field in Canada, while maintaining wildly arbitrary practices and rules for Canadian companies in China.
  • Chinese companies will be able to seek redress against any laws passed by any level of government in Canada which threaten their profits.[emphasis mine] Australia has decided not to enter FIPA agreements specifically because they allow powerful corporations to challenge legislation on social, environmental and economic issues. Chinese companies investing heavily in Canadian energy will be able seek billions in compensation if their projects are hampered by provincial laws on issues such as environmental concerns or First Nations rights, for example [emphasis mine].
  • Cases will be decided by a panel of professional arbitrators, and may be kept secret at the discretion of the sued party [emphasis mine]. This extraordinary provision reflects an aversion to transparency and public debate common to the Harper cabinet and the Chinese politburo.
  • Differences between FIPA and the North American Free Trade Agreement may offer intriguing loopholes for American lawyers [emphasis mine] to argue for equal treatment under the principle of Most Favoured Nation.

It is a reciprocal agreement but it seems China might have more advantages than Canada does. So, we’ll be able to establish sovereignty in the North, eh? That should be interesting.

There doesn’t seem to be any mention of involving the indigenous peoples in the discussion around sovereignty and the North. Perhaps it’s in another chapter.

An updated defence policy, the Indo-Pacific region, and cybersecurity

Hopefully they will do a little more than simply update Canada’s defence policy as Paul T. Mitchell’s (Professor of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College) September 23, 2021 essay (Canada’s exclusion from the AUKUS security pact reveals a failing national defence policy) for The Conversation suggests there are some serious shortcomings dating back at least 100 years, Note: Links have been removed,

The recently announced deal on nuclear submarines between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUKUS, likely seems irrelevant to many Canadians.

But AUKUS is about far more than submarines. And Canada’s exclusion from the pact represents growing suspicions about the Canadian commitment to the rules-based international order.

The problem stems from Canada’s tacit “grand strategy” [emphasis mine] underlying our defence policy.

A country’s grand strategy typically outlines geopolitical realities alongside a plan to achieve its diplomatic goals.

In 1924, Liberal politician Raoul Dandurand famously said “Canada is a fire-proof house, far removed from flammable materials,” putting into words Canada’s approach to defence since 1867 [emphasis mine]. Simply put, three oceans and a superpower sufficiently shield us from having to think about how to achieve national security.

Canadian defence policy has never varied from three priorities — defend Canada, defend North America and contribute to international peace and security — that have appeared in every Defence Department white paper since the 1950s, regardless of the governing party. This attitude was evident in the recent election campaign, when discussions about defence were largely absent, despite growing threats from abroad and the turmoil within our own military.

Since the heydays of defence spending of the 1950s, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have been gradually shedding fundamental capabilities — including long-range artillery, tanks, fighters that are now obsolete, submarine forces, destroyers and maritime logistics.

…

And while the CAF specifically faces new challenges in terms of diversity, its traditional approach to leadership has alienated thousands within the ranks, causing a rush to the exits, especially among the most experienced of personnel. The lack of support for modern equipment has also contributed to this problem.

…

We can continue to drag our heels, but eventually the bill will come due when our government commits our forces to a mission they can no longer fulfil because we thought we didn’t need to concern ourselves with the health of the military.

…

Just prior to the 2023 budget announcement, AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, and United States) moved forward on a security deal in the Indo-Pacific region. As far as I’m aware, the UK no longer has any exposure (colonies/territories) in the Indo-Pacific region while Canada, like the US, has one border (defined by the Pacific Ocean) on the region. Lee Berthiaume’s March 13, 2023 article for The Canadian Press can be found on both the CBC website and the CTV website,

Experts are warning that, as the U.S., Britain and Australia move ahead on an expanded military pact, Canada’s omission from that group suggests a larger problem with how this country is perceived by its friends. [emphasis mine]

U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian leader Anthony Albanese were at a naval base in San Diego on Monday [March 13, 2023] to confirm the next steps of the trilateral agreement, known as “AUKUS” after the three countries involved.

Those next steps include formalizing American and British plans to help Australia develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines in response to growing concerns about China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Trudeau government has downplayed [emphasis mine] the importance of AUKUS to Canada, saying Ottawa is not in the market for nuclear-powered submarines — even as others have lamented its absence from the pact.

One senior Canadian Armed Forces commander, Vice-Admiral Bob Auchterlonie, told The Canadian Press he worries about Canada not having access to the same cutting-edge technology [emphasis mine] as three of its closest allies.

Canada’s exclusion is seen by some as further evidence that its allies do not believe Ottawa is serious about pushing back against Chinese ambitions, despite the release of a new Indo-Pacific strategy late last year.

…

Canada’s strategy seeks to strike a balance between confronting and co-operating with China. It says Canada will challenge China “in areas of profound disagreement” while working together on areas of shared interest, such as climate change.

The U.S. is taking a very different approach. In a defence strategy released earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described “an increasingly aggressive China” as a “generational challenge” and the American military’s top priority.

…

Numbers remain uncertain, but Australia reportedly is poised to spend billions of dollars as part of the deal to purchase new submarines. Britain and the U.S. are also expected to put money into the agreement for technology development [emphasis mine], training and other areas.

Defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute noted the U.S., Britain and Australia are all spending two per cent or more of their national gross domestic product on defence, compared to less than 1.3 per cent in Canada. [emphases mine]

They also have solid plans to build new submarines, while Ottawa has yet to even commit to replacing the Royal Canadian Navy’s four trouble-plagued Victoria-class vessels, let alone start work on plans to build or buy a new fleet.

Canadian military commanders — including chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre — have repeatedly underscored the need for submarines.

…

Swiss cheese cybersecurity with a special emphasis on our research

While our defence spending is considered problematic, I suspect our cybersecurity is also in question, as I’ve noted previously in a September 17, 2021 posting (Council of Canadian Academies (CCA): science policy internship and a new panel on Public Safety in the Digital Age), scroll down about 45% of the way to the ‘What is public safety?’ subhead; look for the Cameron Ortis story (hints: (1) he was the top ranking civilian RCMP staff member reporting directly to the commissioner; (2) he was tasked with overseeing cybersecurity issues; and (3) he was fluent in Mandarin). You’ll also find information about the first AUKUS announcement and a link to a documentary about the Cameron Ortis affair further down under the ‘Almost breaking news’ subhead.

The Cameron Ortis story is shocking enough but when you include both the issues around the Winnipeg level 4 virology lab (see the Karen Pauls/Kimberly Ivany July 8, 2021 article for CBC online news for a summary and an analysis) and the National Research Council of Canada’s serious security breach (see the Tom Spears/Jordan Press July 29, 2014 article “Suspected Chinese cyber attack forces NRC security overhaul” for the Ottawa Citizen; it seems unbelievable and yet—it is.

This February 15, 2022 article for CBC news online by Catharine Tunney announces a report on a series of security breaches,

Gaps in Ottawa’s cyber defences could leave the government agencies holding vast amounts of data on Canadians and businesses susceptible to state-sponsored hackers from countries like China and Russia, says a new report from Parliament’s security and intelligence committee.

Their report, tabled late Monday in the House of Commons, shows previous mistakes have allowed state-sponsored actors to infiltrate and steal government information over the past decade.

“Cyber threats to government systems and networks are a significant risk to national security and the continuity of government operations,” says the report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.

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Intellectual property, advanced research already stolen

A year-long attack by China while Stephen Harper was prime minister served as a “wake-up call” for the federal government, said the report.

Between August 2010 and August 2011, China targeted 31 departments and eight suffered “severe compromises,” the report said. [emphases mine]

“Information losses were considerable, including email communications of senior government officials, mass exfiltration of information from several departments, including briefing notes, strategy documents and secret information, and password and file system data,” said the report.

In 2014 [emphasis mine], a Chinese state-sponsored actor was able to compromise the National Research Council.

“The theft included intellectual property and advanced research and proprietary business information from NRC’s partners. China also leveraged its access to the NRC network to infiltrate a number of government organizations,” said the report. [emphases mine]

…

You can find the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Special Report on the Government of Canada’s Framework and Activities to Defend its Systems and Networks from Cyber Attack here. By the way, we have had a more recent ‘cyber incident’ at the National Research Council as reported in a March 21, 2022 article for CBC online news by Catharine Tunney.

Meanwhile, the 2022 budget (released April 7, 2022) made these announcements (from my April 19, 2022 posting; scroll down about 50% of the way to the ‘Securing Canada’s Research from Foreign Threats’ subhead),

To implement these guidelines fully, Budget 2022 proposes to provide $159.6 million, starting in 2022-23, and $33.4 million ongoing, as follows:

  • $125 million over five years, starting in 2022-23, and $25 million ongoing, for the Research Support Fund [emphasis mine] to build capacity within post- secondary institutions to identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks to research security; and
  • $34.6 million over five years, starting in 2022-23, and $8.4 million ongoing, to enhance Canada’s ability to protect our research, and to establish a Research Security Centre [emphasis mine] that will provide advice and guidance directly to research institutions.

The About page for the Research Support Fund on the SSHRC website (perhaps there’s another fund with the same name somewhere else?) doesn’t mention identifying, assessing, and/or mitigating risks to research security and I cannot find any mention of a Research Security Centre on the government of Canada website or from a Google search. The government doesn’t seem to be rushing to address these issues.

Cybersecurity for the rest of us

As a reminder, there’s this from Chapter 5,

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Canada must not be a financial haven for oligarchs or the kleptocratic apparatchiks of authoritarian, corrupt, or theocratic regimes—such as those of Russia, China, Iran, and Haiti. We will not allow our world-renowned financial system to be used to clandestinely and illegally move money to fund foreign interference inside Canada. [emphases mine]

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Money laundering and terrorist financing can threaten the integrity of the Canadian economy, and put Canadians at risk by supporting terrorist activity, drug and human trafficking, and other criminal activities. Taking stronger action to tackle these threats is essential to protecting Canada’s economic security.

In June 2022, the Government of British Columbia released the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia [emphasis mine], also known as the Cullen Commission. This report highlighted major gaps in the current AML/ATF Regime, as well as areas for deepened federal-provincial collaboration [emphasis mine]. Between measures previously introduced and those proposed in Budget 2023, as well as through consultations that the government has committed to launching, the federal government will have responded to all of the recommendations within its jurisdiction in the Cullen Commission report.

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A March 29, 2023 article by Bob Mackin for The Breaker News comments on some of the government initiatives announced in the wake of the Cullen report about BC’s investigation into money laundering

In the wake of B.C. case collapse, Liberal government promises new regulation of money services businesses

The federal government has pledged to fill a gap in Canada’s anti-money laundering laws, less than a month after a special prosecutor’s report blamed it for the failure to bring a Richmond man to justice.

…

The Jin case had been one of the biggest organized crime investigations in B.C. history and was featured throughout the B.C. NDP government’s $19 million Cullen Commission public inquiry into money laundering. 

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I want to emphasize that it’s not just the Chinese Communist Government that abuses our systems, there is other state-backed interference with various diaspora communities and other Canadian communities.

According to a February 14, 2023 article (The Canadian businessmen accused of helping Iran’s regime) for CBC news online by Ashley Burke and Nahayat Tizhoosh, it seems Iran has used Canada as a ‘safe haven’ for evading US sanctions and to conduct “… transactions on the Iranian regime’s behalf worth more than $750 million US.”

A February 15, 2023 followup article for CBC news online by Ashley Burke and Nahayat Tizhoosh reiterates the businessmen’s claims that the allegations are baseless and not proven in court. The article includes this,

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the government is working “very closely with American partners” and the Iranian diaspora in Canada to target people with ties to Iran’s regime.

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Iranian-Canadians accuse the government of doing too little to ensure Canada isn’t a safe haven for the Iranian regime’s business transactions. [emphasis mine] Trudeau defended the government’s actions on Wednesday [February 15, 2023], citing the sanctions it has imposed since the fall on Iranian individuals and entities.

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In October 2022 [emphasis mine], the government announced it would be spending $76 million to help enforce sanctions on Iran. Some of the money was earmarked for an additional 30 staff members at the RCMP. But the national police force confirmed it’s still working with the Department of Finance on receiving the funds. 

“The process is ongoing and its implementation is expected to start during next fiscal year [2024?],” wrote Robin Percival, a spokesperson for the RCMP.

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If memory serves, the Iranian (Persian) diaspora communities like the Chinese communities in Canada have also warned of being targeted by overseas agents.

Coincidentally or not, the Council of Canadian Academies; Expert Panel on Public Safety in the Digital Age released its report, Vulnerable Connections on March 30, 2023. The expert panel was asked to answer these questions, from p. 17 (xvii) of the report,

How have activities relating to serious criminal activity (including organized crime and child sexual exploitation) and online harms (including disinformation, violent extremist and terrorist use of the internet) in Canada changed to exploit the evolving information and communications technologies (ICTs) landscape?

The headline for the CCA’s Vulnerable Connections March 30, 2023 news release highlights what the 2023 federal budget is tacitly confirming, “Advances in digital technology [are] outpacing efforts to address online harms: expert panel report” [emphasis mine].

As you can see from the budget, state-backed efforts extend from the financial sector to attempts to affect elections, intimidate various communities, and more. Let’s not forget the ‘average’ consumer; criminal enterprises are also active. So, the federal government is playing ‘catch up’ with a complex set of issues.

My final comments

As I noted, no splashy announcements but there are some interesting developments, especially with regard to military spending and a focus on cyber issues, and with the announcement of a Canada Water Agency. It all comes back to science and technology.

Always a little disappointment

There are a number of commentaries but I’m most interested in the ‘science and research’ aspect of the budget for which I found two.

First, Universities Canada issued a March 28, 2023 media release that states a position in its headline “Budget 2023 a missed opportunity to keep Canada competitive in science and research,”

“Canada’s universities are disappointed in Budget 2023’s lack of any significant support for Canadian research,” says Paul Davidson, President of Universities Canada. “With no new funding that matches the ambition of our peers, today’s budget is without the investments across Canada’s research ecosystem which are urgently needed to keep Canada competitive and ensure inclusive and sustainable growth.” 

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Second, a March 28, 2023 Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences briefing note holds forth in a similar fashion,

Without a plan to attract and support our next generation of researchers, Budget 2023 is a missed opportunity for Canada. Despite a call for action from students, researchers, and our post-secondary sector, the Budget lacks urgently-needed investments in Canada’s graduate students and early-career researchers.

Over the past two decades, Canada’s graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have faced rising living costs and stagnating funding levels. Dedicated support is needed to reverse the declining value of this funding, and to ensure it remains competitive and keeps pace with rising inflation. Investment in Canada’s research talent and skilled workforce will bolster our capacity to solve our most important challenges here in Canada and internationally.

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Disappointment is inevitable with any budget. The writers have a point but where will the money come from? We’re having to spend money on our military after ignoring it for decades. As well, we have security issues that are urgent not to mention the oncoming climate crisis, which faces everyone research scientists and graduate students included.

Will our money be well spent?

I don’t think I’ve ever addressed that question in any of my budget commentaries over the years.

The emphasis on the climate is encouraging as is the potential Canada Water Agency. and finally addressing some of our obligations to our military is a relief. (I have a friend who’s been in the regular Army and in the reserves and he’s been muttering about a lack of and outdated equipment for years.) Assuming the government follows through, it’s about time.

As for obligations to NATO and NORAD, our partners have rightly been applying pressure. It’s good to see money going to NORAD and perhaps the promised Defence Policy update will include policy that supports greater contributions to NATO and, since we’ve been left out of AUKUS, perhaps some fleshing out of the federal government’s new found interest in the Indo-Pacific Region. (This represents a seismic shift from the federal government’s almost exclusively eurocentric focus when looking beyond the border with our southern neighbour, the US.)

The greatest focus for election interference and influence on immigrant diaspora communities has been on the Chinese Communist Government (CCG) but there are others. The Trudeau government’s response has not been especially reassuring even with these budget promises. The best summary of the current situation regarding CCG interference that I’ve seen is an April 13, 2023 article by Frederick Kelter for Al Jazeera.

We definitely could do with a boost in our cybersecurity. The latest incident may have involved Russian hackers according to an April 13, 2023 article for CBC news online by Catharine Tunney, Note: A link has been removed,

One of Canada’s intelligence agencies says a cyber threat actor “had the potential to cause physical damage” to a piece of critical infrastructure recently, a stark warning from the Communications Security Establishment [CSE] amid a string of hits linked to pro-Russian hackers.

“I can report there was no physical damage to any Canadian energy infrastructure. But make no mistake — the threat is real,” said Sami Khoury, head of the CSE’s Canadian Centre for Cyber Security during briefing with reporters Thursday.

Earlier this week, leaked U.S. intelligence documents suggested Russian-backed hackers successfully gained access to Canada’s natural gas distribution network.

Defence Minsiter Anita Anand said Canada has seen a “notable rise in cyber threat activity by Russian-aligned” [sic] and issued a cyber flash on April 12 to let critical Canadian sectors know about an ongoing campaign.

Earlier Thursday [April 13, 2023], a pro-Russian hacking group claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Hydro Quebec, the province’s state-owned electricity provider.

The same group took credit for knocking the Prime Minister Office website offline [emphasis mine] earlier this week in a distributed denial-of-service attack as Canada played host to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.

Denial-of-service attacks flood the target website with traffic, triggering a crash. Earlier this week CSE said these types of attacks have very little impact on the affected systems.

…

Khoury said that state-sponsored cyber threat actors like to target critical infrastructure “to collect information through espionage, pre-position in case of future hostilities, and as a form of power projection and intimidation.”

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My answer (will our money be well spent?) is yes, assuming at least some of it goes to the projects mentioned.

Shifting winds

The world seems an unfriendlier place these days, which is what I see reflected in this budget. Multiple references to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a major focus on Canada’s financial system being used to support various state-sponsored hostile actions suggest the Canadian government is beginning to recognize a need to respond appropriately and, I hope, in a more time sensitive fashion than is usual for a government that is known for ‘dragging its feet’.

There’s a quite interesting April 19, 2023 article by Alexander Panetta for CBC news online, which highlights some of the tensions, Note: A link has been removed,

A massive leak of U.S. national security documents has now spilled over into Canada.

The Washington Post says it has seen a Pentagon document criticizing Canada’s military readiness among materials allegedly posted online by a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman arrested last week.

The purported document, which CBC has not seen, makes two broad claims, according to the Post.

First, it says that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told NATO officials privately that Canada will never reach the military spending target agreed to by members of the alliance.

Second, the document claims wide-ranging deficiencies in Canada’s military capabilities are a source of tension with allies and defence partners.

…

That US security leak is a good reminder that everyone has problems with security and (not mentioned in Panetta’s article) that the US spies on its ‘friends’. BTW, Canada does the same thing. Everyone spies on everyone.

The past and the future and the now

Strikingly, the 2023 budget went back in time to revisit the ‘staples theory’ when mining, agriculture, and forestry were Canadian economic mainstays.

It’s the first time I’ve seen a reference in a budget to a perennial R&D (research and development) problem, Canadian companies do not invest in research. We score low on investment in industrial research when compared to other countries. In fact, a 2018 report from the Council of Canadian Academies, “Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada; The Expert Panel on the State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada” executive summary states this,

… The number of researchers per capita in Canada is on a par with that of other developed countries, and increased modestly between 2004 and 2012. Canada’s output of PhD graduates has also grown in recent years, though it remains low in per capita terms relative to many OECD countries.

In contrast, the number of R&D personnel employed in Canadian businesses dropped by 20% between 2008 and 2013. This is likely related to sustained and ongoing decline in business R&D investment across the country. R&D as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) has steadily declined in Canada since 2001, and now stands well below the OECD average (Figure 1). As one of few OECD countries with virtually no growth in total national R&D expenditures between 2006 and 2015, Canada would now need to more than double expenditures to achieve an R&D intensity comparable to that of leading countries. [p. xviii on paper or p. 20 PDF]

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Our problems in this area will not be solved quickly. Nor will our defence issues; it’s about time we started paying our way with NORAD and NATO and elsewhere. By the way, I wasn’t expecting to find a “new North American regional office in Halifax for NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic” (innovation, in this case, being code for technology). This hearkens back to the military being a resource for scientific and technological advances, which affect us all.

More generally, it’s good to see some emphasis on the climate and on water and food security.

There was one odd note regarding the 2023 budget according to an April 18, 2023 CBC news online article by Janyce McGregor (confession: I missed it),

King Charles, Canada’s head of state, will no longer include the phrase “Defender of the Faith” in his official royal title in Canada.

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The new language was revealed late Monday [April 17, 2023] when the Liberal government published its notice of the Ways and Means Motion for this spring’s budget implementation bill — the legislation that actually brings into force the measures Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced on March 28.

The new title will read: “Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.”

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In addition to dropping the religious role, the revised title also deletes a reference to Charles as King of the United Kingdom — an update consistent with Canada’s status as an independent country among the 14 other countries that share the same monarch.

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Getting back to the budget, I’m mildly optimistic.

Making graphite from coal and a few graphite facts

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Canada is the 10th largest (1.2%) producer of graphite in the world with China leading the way in the top spot at 68.1%. That’s right, 1.2% can get you into the top 10.

If you’re curious about which countries fill out the other eight spots, The National Research Council of Canada has a handy webpage titled, Graphite Facts,

Graphite is a non-metallic mineral that has properties similar to metals, such as a good ability to conduct heat and electricity. Graphite occurs naturally or can be produced synthetically. Purified natural graphite has higher crystalline structure and offers better electrical and thermal conductivity than synthetic material.

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Among the many applications, natural and synthetic graphite are used for electrodes, refractories, batteries and lubricants and by foundries. Coated spherical graphite is used to manufacture the anode in lithium-ion batteries. High-grade graphite is also used in fuel cells, semiconductors, LEDs and nuclear reactors.

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The Lac des Iles mine is the only mine in Canada that is producing graphite. However, many other companies are working on graphite projects.

Canada’s graphite shipments reached 11,937 tonnes in 2020, up slightly from 11,045 tonnes in 2020 [sic].

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Global production and demand for graphite are anticipated to increase in the coming years, largely because of the use of graphite in the batteries of electric vehicles. In 2020, global consumption of graphite reached 2.7 million tonnes. Synthetic graphite accounted for about two-thirds of the graphite consumption, which was largely concentrated in Asia.

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In 2020, the value of Canada’s exports of graphite was $31.6 million, a 9% decrease compared to the previous year. Imports also decreased in 2020, by 33% to $20.9 million.

Natural graphite accounted for 46.7% ($14.8 million) of the value of Canada’s exports of graphite and 13.5% ($2.8 million) of Canada’s imports of graphite in 2020. Synthetic graphite accounted for 53.3% ($ 16.9 million) of Canada’s exports of graphite and 86.5% ($18.0 million) of Canada’s imports of graphite in 2020.

In 2020, the United States was the primary destination for Canada’s exports of natural and synthetic graphite, accounting for 85% and 42% of the total exports, respectively.

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I think the writer meant that shipments were up slightly from 2019. The page was last updated on February 4, 2022.

The news from Ohio

A June 10, 2022 news item on Nanowerk about research into a new type of graphite (Note: A link has been removed),

As the world’s appetite for carbon-based materials like graphite increases, Ohio University researchers presented evidence this week for a new carbon solid they named “amorphous graphite.”

Physicist David Drabold and engineer Jason Trembly started with the question, “Can we make graphite from coal?”

“Graphite is an important carbon material with many uses. A burgeoning application for graphite is for battery anodes in lithium-ion batteries, and it is crucial for the electric vehicle industry — a Tesla Model S on average needs 54 kg of graphite. Such electrodes are best if made with pure carbon materials, which are becoming more difficult to obtain owing to spiraling technological demand,” they write in their paper that published in Physical Review Letters (“Ab initio simulation of amorphous graphite”).

Ab initio means from the beginning, and their work pursues novel paths to synthetic forms of graphite from naturally occurring carbonaceous material. What they found, with several different calculations, was a layered material that forms at very high temperatures (about 3000 degrees Kelvin). Its layers stay together due to the formation of an electron gas between the layers, but they’re not the perfect layers of hexagons that make up ideal graphene. This new material has plenty of hexagons, but also pentagons and heptagons. That ring disorder reduces the electrical conductivity of the new material compared with graphene, but the conductivity is still high in the regions dominated largely by hexagons.

…

A June 10, 2022 Ohio University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, delves further into the research (Note: Links have been removed),

Not all hexagons

“In chemistry, the process of converting carbonaceous materials to a layered graphitic structure by thermal treatment at high temperature is called graphitization. In this letter, we show from ab initio and machine learning molecular dynamic simulations that pure carbon networks have an overwhelming proclivity to convert to a layered structure in a significant density and temperature window with the layering occurring even for random starting configurations. The flat layers are amorphous graphene: topologically disordered three-coordinated carbon atoms arranged in planes with pentagons, hexagons and heptagons of carbon,” said Drabold, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.

“Since this phase is topologically disordered, the usual ‘stacking registry’ of graphite is only statistically respected,” Drabold said. “The layering is observed without Van der Waals corrections to density functional (LDA and PBE) forces, and we discuss the formation of a delocalized electron gas in the galleries (voids between planes) and show that interplane cohesion is partly due to this low-density electron gas. The in-plane electronic conductivity is dramatically reduced relative to graphene.”

The researchers expect their announcement to spur experimentation and studies addressing the existence of amorphous graphite, which may be testable from exfoliation and/or experimental surface structural probes.

Trembly, Russ Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University, has been working in part on green uses of coal. He and Drabold — along with physics doctoral students Rajendra Thapa, Chinonso Ugwumadu and Kishor Nepal — collaborated on the research. Drabold also is part of the Nanoscale & Quantum Phenomena Institute at OHIO, and he has published a series of papers on the theory of amorphous carbon and amorphous graphene. Drabold also emphasized the excellent work of his graduate students in carrying out this research.

Surprising interplane cohesion

“The question that led us to this is whether we could make graphite from coal,” Drabold said. “This paper does not fully answer that question, but it shows that carbon has an overwhelming tendency to layer — like graphite, but with many ‘defects’ such as pentagons and heptagons (five- and seven-member rings of carbon atoms), which fit quite naturally into the network. We present evidence that amorphous graphite exists, and we describe its process of formation. It has been suspected from experiments that graphitization occurs near 3,000K, but the details of the formation process and nature of disorder in the planes was unknown,” he added.

The Ohio University researchers’ work is also a prediction of a new phase of carbon.

“Until we did this, it was not at all obvious that layers of amorphous graphene (the planes including pentagons and heptagons) would stick together in a layered structure. I find that quite surprising, and it is likely that experimentalists will go hunting for this stuff now that its existence is predicted,” Drabold said. “Carbon is the miracle element — you can make life, diamond, graphite, Bucky Balls, nanotubes, graphene, [emphasis mine] and now this. There is a lot of interesting basic physics in this, too — for example how and why the planes bind, this by itself is quite surprising for technical reasons.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Ab Initio Simulation of Amorphous Graphite by R. Thapa, C. Ugwumadu, K. Nepal, J. Trembly, and D. A. Drabold. Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 236402 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.236402 Published 10 June 2022 © 2022 American Physical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

There is an earlier version of the paper which is open access at ArXiv (hosted by Cornell University),

[Submitted on 22 Feb 2022 (v1), last revised 23 Apr 2022 (this version, v2)]

Ab initio simulation of amorphous graphite by Rajendra Thapa, Chinonso Ugwumadu, Kishor Nepal, Jason Trembly, David Drabold

About graphite and Canadian mines

A July 25, 2011 posting marks the earliest appearance of graphite on this blog. Titled, “Canadians as hewers of graphite?” It featured Northern Graphite Corporation, which today (June 21, 2022) is the largest North American graphite producer according to the company’s homepage,

  • Only North American producer
  • Will be 3rd largest non-Chinese producer
  • Two large development projects
  • All projects:
    • In politically stable countries
    • Have “battery quality” graphite
    • Close to infrastructure

There’s also this from the company’s homepage,

Northern owns the Lac des Iles (LDI) mine in Quebec, the only significant graphite producer in North America. Northern plans to increase production and extend the mine life.

Northern is currently upgrading its Okorusu processing plant in Namibia. It will be back on line in 1H 2023 and make Northern the third largest non Chinese graphite producer.

Northern plans to develop its advanced stage Bissett Creek project in Ontario which has a full Feasibility Study. It has been rated as the highest margin graphite deposit in the world.

The Okanjande deposit in Namibia has a very large measured and indicated resource. Northern intends to study building a 150,000tpa plant to supply battery markets in Europe.

I notice the involvement in Namibia. I hope this is a ‘good’ mining company. Canadian mining companies have been known to breach human rights and environmental regulations when operating internationally. There’s a recent tragedy described in this June 20, 2020 news article on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news site (Note: A link has been removed),

Trevali Mining Corp. says it has recovered the bodies of the final two of eight workers killed after its Perkoa Mine in Burkina Faso flooded following heavy rainfall on Apr. 16 [2022].

The bodies of the other six workers were recovered by search teams late last month.

…

The Vancouver-based zinc miner says it is working alongside Burkinabe authorities to coordinate the dewatering and rehabilitation of the mine.

The flooding event is under investigation by the company and government authorities.

MiningWatch Canada, an Ottawa-based industry watchdog, has questioned how well the company was prepared for disaster and criticized the federal government’s lack of regulations on how Canadian mining companies operate internationally. [emphasis mine]

They say tighter rules are necessary for companies operating abroad. 

…

A May 10, 2022 article by Amanda Follett Hosgood about the disaster for The Tyee provides more details and asks some very pertinent and uncomfortable questions. (Yes, The Tyee is a very ‘left wing’ journalistic effort and they have a point where Canadian mining companies are concerned.)

Getting back to Northern Graphite, there’s this from their Governance page,

Northern Graphite is committed to conducting its activities in a manner that meets best international industry practices regardless of the country or location of operation.  The Company will operate with the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and ethical behaviour.  It will conduct its business in a manner that meets or exceeds all applicable laws, rules, and regulations and meets its social and moral obligations.  This policy applies to all Board members, officers and other employees, contractors, and other third parties working on behalf of or representing the Company.

…

The company gets more specific, from their Governance page,

  1. …
  2. Taking all reasonable precautions to ensure the health and safety of workers and others affected by the Company’s operations.
  3. Managing and minimizing the environmental impact of the Company’s operations by following best international practices and standards and meeting stakeholder expectations while recognizing that mining will always have some unavoidable impacts on the environment. 
  4. Utilizing practices and technologies that minimize the Company’s water and carbon footprints.
  5. …
  6. Respecting the rights, culture and development of local and Indigenous communities.
  7. …
  8. The elimination of fraud, bribery, and corruption.
  9.  The protection and respect of human rights.
  10. …
  11. Providing an adequate return to shareholders and investors while ensuring that all stakeholders benefit from the extraction of the earth’s resources through fair labour and compensation practices, local hiring and contracting, community support, and the payment of all applicable government taxes and royalties.

There are two other Canadian mining companies (that I know of) in pursuit of graphite, Lomiko Metals (British Columbia) and Focus Graphite (Ontario). All the mines in Canada, whether they are producing or not, are in either Québec or Ontario.

As for the research team in Ohio, congratulations on your very exciting work!

Canada, quantum technology, and a public relations campaign?

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Stephanie Simmons’ October 31, 2022 essay on quantum technology and Canada for The Conversation (h/t Nov.1.22 news item on phys.org) was a bit startling—not due to the content—but for the chosen communications vehicle. It’s the kind of piece i expect to find in the Globe and Mail or the National Post not The Conversation, which aspires to present in depth, accessible academic research and informed news stories (or so I thought). (See The Conversation (website) Wikipedia entry for more.)

Simmons (who is an academic) seems to have ‘written’ a run-of-the-mill public relations piece (with a good and accessible description of quantum encryption and its future importance) about Canada and quantum technology aimed at influencing government policy makers while using some magic words (Note: Links have been removed),

Canada is a world leader in developing quantum technologies and is well-positioned to secure its place in the emerging quantum industry.

Quantum technologies are new and emerging technologies based on the unique properties of quantum mechanics — the science that deals with the physical properties of nature on an atomic and subatomic level.

In the future, we’ll see quantum technology transforming computing, communications, cryptography and much more. They will be incredibly powerful, offering capabilities that reach beyond today’s technologies.

The potential impact of these technologies on the Canadian economy [emphasis mine] will be transformative: the National Research Council of Canada has identified quantum technology as a $142 billion opportunity that could employ 229,000 Canadians by 2040 [emphasis mine].

Canada could gain far-reaching economic and social benefits from the rapidly developing quantum industry, but it must act now to secure them — before someone else [emphasis mine] delivers the first large-scale quantum computer, which will likely be sooner than expected.

…

This is standard stuff, any professional business writer, after a little research, could have pulled the article together. But, it’s Stephanie Simmons whose academic titles (Associate Professor, SFU and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Silicon Quantum Technologies, Simon Fraser University) and position as founder and Chief Quantum Officer of Photonic, Inc. give her comments added weight. (For an academic, this is an unusual writing style [perhaps Simmons had some help?] and it better belongs in the newspapers I’ve previously cited.)

Simmons, having stoked a little anxiety with “it [Canada] must act now to secure them [economic and social benefits] — before someone else delivers the first large-scale quantum computer, which will likely be sooner than expected,” gets to her main points, from the October 31, 2022 essay,

To maintain its leadership, Canada needs to move beyond research and development and accelerate a quantum ecosystem that includes a strong talent pipeline, businesses supported by supply chains and governments and industry involvement. There are a few things Canada can do to drive this leadership:

Continue to fund quantum research: … The Canadian government has invested more than $1 billion since 2005 in quantum research and will likely announce a national quantum strategy soon [emphasis mine]. Canada must continue funding quantum research or risk losing its talent base and current competitive advantage. [Note: Canada has announced a national quantum strategy in both the 2021 and 2022 federal budgets See more under the ‘Don’t we already have a national quantum strategy? subhead]

Build our talent pipeline with more open immigration: …

Be our own best customers: Canadian companies are leading the way, but they need support [emphasis mine; by support, does she mean money?]. Quantum Industry Canada boasts of more than 30 member companies. Vancouver is home to the pioneering D-Wave and Photonic Inc., …

As noted in a previous post (July 26, 2022 titled “Quantum Mechanics & Gravity conference [August 15 – 19, 2022] launches Vancouver (Canada)-based Quantum Gravity Institute and more”), all of this enthusiasm tends to come down to money, as in, ‘We will make money which will somehow benefit you but, first, we need more money from you’. As for the exhortation to loosen up immigration, that sounds like an attempt to exacerbate ‘brain drain’, i.e., lure people from other countries to settle in Canada. As a country whose brains were drained in the 1960s, 70s, etc., it should be noted those drives were deeply resented here and I expect that we will become objects of resentment should we resort to the same tactics although I thought we already had.

Same anxieties, same solution

Simmons concludes with a cautionary tale, from the October 31, 2022 essay, Note: Links have been removed,

Canada has an opportunity to break out of its pattern of inventing transformative technology, but not reaping the rewards. This is what happened with the invention of the transistor.

The first transistor patent was actually filed in Canada by Canadian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, 20 years before the Bell Labs demonstration. Canada was also one of the places where Alexander Graham Bell worked to develop and patent the telephone.

Despite this, the transistor was commercialized in the U.S. and led to the country’s US$63 billion semiconductor industry. Bell commercialized the telephone through The Bell Telephone Company, which eventually became AT&T.

Canada is poised to make even greater contributions to quantum technology. Much existing technology has been invented here in Canada — including quantum cryptography, which was co-invented by University of Montreal professor Gilles Brassard. Instead of repeating its past mistakes, Canada should act now to secure the success of the quantum technology industry.

I bought into this narrative too. It’s compelling and generally accepted (in short, it’s a part of Canadian culture) but somebody who’s smarter about business and economics than I am pointed out that Canada has a good standard of living and has had that standard for many years despite decades of worry over our ‘inability’ to commercialize our discoveries. Following on that thought, what’s so bad about our situation? Are we behind because we don’t have a huge semiconductor industry? I don’t know but perhaps we need to question this narrative a little more closely. Where some people see loss, others might see agility, inventiveness, and the ability to keep capitalizing on early stage technology, over and over again.

What I haven’t yet seen discussed as a problem is a Canadian culture that encourages technology entrepreneurs to create startups with the intention of selling them to a big US (or other country) corporation. I’m most familiar with the situation in the province of British Columbia where a 2003 British Columbia Techmap (developed by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers [PWC]) provides a genealogy which stretched from the 1890s to 2003. The number of technology companies acquired by foreign corporations is astonishing. Our technology has been bought—over and over, since the 1890s.

(I believe there were three editions of the British Columbia Techmap: 1997, 2003 and 2012. PWC seems to have discontinued publication and the 2012 online edition is no longer available. For the curious, there’s a June 15, 2012 announcement, which provides a little information about and interesting facts from the 2012 digital edition.)

This ‘startup and sell’ story holds true at the national level as well. We have some large technology companies but none of them compare to these: Huawei (China), Ali Baba (China), Intel (US), Apple (US), Siemens (Germany), Sanofi (France; technically a pharmaceutical but heavily invested in technology), etc.

So, is this “… inventing transformative technology, but not reaping the rewards …” really a problem when Canadians live well? If so, we need to change our entrepreneurial and business culture.

Don’t we already have a national quantum strategy?

It’s a little puzzling to see Simmons appear to be arguing for a national quantum strategy given this (from my July 26, 2022 posting),

A National Quantum Strategy was first announced in the 2021 Canadian federal budget and reannounced in the 2022 federal budget (see my April 19, 2022 posting for a few more budget details).. Or, you may find this National Quantum Strategy Consultations: What We Heard Report more informative. There’s also a webpage for general information about the National Quantum Strategy.

As evidence of action, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced new grant programmes made possible by the National Quantum Strategy in a March 15, 2022 news release,

Quantum science and innovation are giving rise to promising advances in communications, computing, materials, sensing, health care, navigation and other key areas. The Government of Canada is committed to helping shape the future of quantum technology by supporting Canada’s quantum sector and establishing leadership in this emerging and transformative domain.

Today [March 15, 2022], the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, is announcing an investment of $137.9 million through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grants and Alliance grants. These grants are an important next step in advancing the National Quantum Strategy and will reinforce Canada’s research strengths in quantum science while also helping to develop a talent pipeline to support the growth of a strong quantum community.

…

it gets even more puzzling when you know that Simmons is part of a Canadian Council of Academies (CCA) expert panel (announced in May 2022) to produce a report on Quantum Technologies,

…

Budget 2021 included a National Quantum Strategy [emphasis mine] to amplify Canada’s strength in quantum research, grow quantum-ready technologies, and solidify Canada’s global leadership in this area. A comprehensive exploration of the capabilities and potential vulnerabilities of these technologies will help to inform their future deployment across the society and the economy.

This assessment will examine the impacts, opportunities, and challenges quantum technologies present for industry, governments, and people in Canada. [emphases mine]

The Sponsor:

National Research Council Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [emphasis mine]

…

It’s possible someone else wrote the essay, someone who doesn’t know about the strategy or Simmons’ involvement in a CCA report on how to address the issues highlighted in her October 31, 2022 essay. It’s also possible that Simmons is trying to emphasize the need for a commercialization strategy for quantum technologies.

Given that the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) was asked to produce what looks like a comprehensive national strategy including commercialization, I prefer the second possibility.

*ETA December 29, 2022 1020 hours PT: On a purely speculative note, I just noticed involvement from a US PR agency in this project, from my “Bank of Canada and Multiverse Computing model complex networks & cryptocurrencies with quantum computing” July 25, 2022 posting,

As for the company that produced the news release, HKA Marketing Communications, based in Southern California, they claim this “Specialists in Quantum Tech PR: #1 agency in this space” on their homepage.

Simmons is on the CCA’s Quantum Technologies’ expert panel along with Eric Santor, Advisor to the Governor, Bank of Canada. HKA’s involvement would certainly explain why the writer didn’t know there’s already a National Quantum Strategy and not know about Simmons’ membership in the expert panel. As I noted, this is pure speculation; I have no proof.*

At any rate, there may be another problem, our national quantum dilemma may be due to difficulties within the Canadian quantum community.

A fractious Canadian quantum community

I commented on the competitiveness within the quantum technologies community in my May 4, 2021 posting about the federal 2021 budget, “While the folks in the quantum world are more obviously competitive … ,” i.e., they are strikingly public in comparison to the genomic and artificial intelligence communities. Scroll down to the ‘National Quantum Strategy’ subhead in the May 4, 2021 posting for an example.

It can also be seen in my July 26, 2022 posting about the Vancouver (Canada) launch of the Quantum Gravity Institute where I noted the lack of Canadian physicists (not one from the CCA expert panel, the Perimeter Institute, or TRIUMF; Canada’s particle accelerator centre, or the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo) in the speaker list and the prominent role wealthy men who’ve taken up quantum science as a hobby played in its founding. BTW, it seems two Canadian physicists (in addition to Philip Stamp; all from the University of British Columbia) were added to the speaker list and D-Wave Systems was added to the institute’s/conference’s webpage sponsorship list (scroll down about 70% of the way) after I posted.

Hopefully the quantum science/research community will pull together, in public, at least.

Who is the audience?

Getting back to Simmons’ piece on The Conversation, her essay, especially one that appears to be part of a public relations campaign, can appeal to more than one audience. The trick, as all (script, news, business, public relations, science, etc.) writers will tell you, is to write for one audience. As counter-intuitive as that trick may seem, it works.

Canadian policy makers should already know that the federal government has announced a national quantum strategy in two different budgets. Additionally, affected scientists should already know about the national strategy, such as it is. Clearly, children are not the intended audience. Perhaps it’s intended for a business audience but the specific business case is quite weak and, as I’ve noted here and elsewhere, the ‘failure’ to take advantage of early developments is a well worn science business trope which ignores a Canadian business model focused on developing emerging technology then, selling it.

This leaves a ‘general’ audience as the only one left and that audience doesn’t tend to read The Conversation website. Here’s the description of the publisher from its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis.[1][2] Articles are written by academics and researchers [emphasis mine]under a free Creative Commons license, allowing reuse without modification.[3][2] Its model has been described as explanatory journalism.[4][5][6] [emphasis mine] Except in “exceptional circumstances”, it only publishes articles by “academics employed by, or otherwise formally connected to, accredited institutions, including universities and accredited research bodies”.[7]: 8 

…

Simmons’ piece is not so much explanatory as it is a plea for a policy on a website that newspapers use for free, pre-edited, and proofed content.

I imagine the hope was that a Canadian national newspaper such as the Globe & Mail and/or the National Post would republish it. That hope was realized when the National Post and, unexpectedly, a local paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, both republished it on November 1, 2022.

To sum up, it’s not clear to me what the goal for this piece was. Government policy makers don’t need it, the business case is not sufficiently supported, children are not going to care, and affected scientists are already aware of the situation. (Scientists who will be not affected by a national quantum policy will have their own agendas.) As for a member of the general audience, am I supposed to do something … other than care, that is?

The meaning of a banana

It is an odd piece which may or may not be part of a larger public relations campaign.

As a standalone piece, it reiterates the age old message regarding Canadian technology (“we don’t do a good job of commercializing our technology) to no great avail. As part of a strategy, it seems to be a misfire since we already have a national quantum strategy and Simmons is working on an expert panel that should be delivering the kind of policy she’s requesting.

In the end, all that can be said for certain is that Stephanie Simmons’ October 31, 2022 essay on quantum technology and Canada was published in The Conversation then republished elsewhere.

As Freud may or may not have said, “Sometimes a banana is just a banana.”

Are we spending money on the right research? Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel

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it’s a little surprising that this is not being managed by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) but perhaps their process is not quite nimble enough (from an October 6, 2022 Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada news release),

Government of Canada launches Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System

Members to recommend enhancements to system to position Canadian researchers for success

October 6, 2022 – Ottawa, Ontario

Canada’s success is in large part due to our world-class researchers and their teams who are globally recognized for unleashing bold new ideas, driving technological breakthroughs and addressing complex societal challenges. The Government of Canada recognizes that for Canada to achieve its full potential, support for science and research must evolve as Canadians push beyond what is currently imaginable and continue to find Canadian-made solutions to the world’s toughest problems.

Today [October 6, 2022], the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health, launched the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System. Benefiting from the insights of leaders in the science, research and innovation ecosystem, the panel will provide independent, expert policy advice on the structure, governance and management of the federal system supporting research and talent. This will ensure that Canadian researchers are positioned for even more success now and in the future.

The panel will focus on the relationships among the federal research granting agencies—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—and the relationship between these agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis have shown, addressing the world’s most pressing challenges requires greater collaboration within the Canadian research community, government and industry, as well as with the international community. A cohesive and agile research support system will ensure Canadian researchers can quickly and effectively respond to the questions of today and tomorrow. Optimizing Canada’s research support system will equip researchers to transcend disciplines and borders, seize new opportunities and be responsive to emerging needs and interests to improve Canadians’ health, well-being and prosperity.

Quotes

“Canada is known for world-class research thanks to the enormous capabilities of our researchers. Canadian researchers transform curiosity into bold new ideas that can significantly enhance Canadians’ lives and well-being. With this advisory panel, our government will ensure our support for their research is just as cutting-edge as Canada’s science and research community.”
– The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

“Our priority is to support Canada’s world-class scientific community so it can respond effectively to the challenges of today and the future. That’s why we are leveraging the expertise and perspectives of a newly formed advisory panel to maximize the impact of research and downstream innovation, which contributes significantly to Canadians’ well-being and prosperity.”
– The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health

Quick facts

The Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System has seven members, including the Chair. The members were selected by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and the Minister of Health. The panel will consult with experts and stakeholders to draw on their diverse experiences, expertise and opinions. 

Since 2016, the Government of Canada has committed more than $14 billion to support research and science across Canada. 

Here’s a list of advisory panel members I’ve assembled from the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System: Member biographies webpage,

  • Frédéric Bouchard (Chair) is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal, where he has been a professor of philosophy of science since 2005.
  • Janet Rossant is a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, the Hospital for Sick Children and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Department of Molecular Genetics.
  • [Gilles Patry] is Professor Emeritus and President Emeritus at the University of Ottawa. Following a distinguished career as a consulting engineer, researcher and university administrator, Gilles Patry is now a consultant and board director [Royal Canadian Mint].
  • Yolande E. Chan joined McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management as Dean and James McGill Professor in 2021. Her research focuses on innovation, knowledge strategy, digital strategy, digital entrepreneurship, and business-IT alignment.
  • Laurel Schafer is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on developing novel organometallic catalysts to carry out difficult transformations in small molecule organic chemistry.
  • Vianne Timmons is the President and Vice-Chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland since 2020. She is a nationally and internationally recognized researcher and advocate in the field of inclusive education.
  • Dr. Baljit Singh is a highly accomplished researcher, … . He began his role as Vice-President Research at the University of Saskatchewan in 2021, after serving as Dean of the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (2016 – 2020), and as Associate Dean of Research at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan (2010 – 2016).

Nobody from the North. Nobody who’s worked there or lived there or researched there. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed a lack of representation for the North.

Canada’s golden triangle (Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa) is well represented and, as is often the case, there’s representation for other regions: one member from the Prairies, one member from the Maritimes or Atlantic provinces, and one member from the West.

The mandate indicates they could have five to eight members. With seven spots filled, they could include one more member, one from the North.

Even if they don’t add an eighth member, I’m not ready to abandon all hope for involvement from the North when there’s this, from the mandate,

Communications and deliverables

In pursuing its mandate, and to strengthen its advice, the panel may engage with experts and stakeholders to expand access [emphasis mine] to diverse experience, expertise and opinion, and enhance members’ understanding of the topics at hand.

To allow for frank and open discussion, internal panel deliberations among members will be closed.

The panel will deliver a final confidential report by December 2022 [emphasis mine] to the Ministers including recommendations and considerations regarding the modernization of the research support system. A summary of the panel’s observations on the state of the federal research support system may be made public once its deliberations have concluded. The Ministers may also choose to seek confidential advice and/or feedback from the panel on other issues related to the research system.

The panel may also be asked to deliver an interim confidential report to the Ministers by November 2022 [emphases mine], which will provide the panel’s preliminary observations up to that point.

it seems odd there’s no mention of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. It’s my understanding that the funding goes directly from the federal government to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), which then distributes the funds. There are other unmentioned science funding agencies, e.g., the National Research Council of Canada and Genome Canada, which (as far as I know) also receive direct funding. It seems that the panel will not be involved in a comprehensive review of Canada’s research support ecosystem.

Plus, I wonder why everything is being kept ‘confidential’. According the government news release, the panel is tasked with finding ways of “optimizing Canada’s research support system.” Do they have security concerns or is this a temporary state of affairs while the government analysts examine the panel’s report?