Editorial:
Mark Mann
To thrive, Canada’s many tech-cluster and supercluster initiatives need to focus on liveability and other social issues in the areas where they operate.
New assessment unit at Treasury Board makes good on business innovation program reform
A new unit at the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) is using data from Statistics Canada to better evaluate the performance of business support programs across government.
New program to equip mid-career workers for jobs in the innovation economy
A new national not-for-profit called Palette is developing a training platform to help mid-career workers whose jobs are threatened by automation transition to the jobs of the future.
Halifax-based marine research network launches federally supported crowdfunding model for science
Canada’s first-ever scientific project co-funded by crowdfunding and a federally supported research granting group aims to help a First Nations community in British Columbia harvest shellfish again and safeguard a natural ecosystem.
Case study: Confronting scaleup challenges at an innovative Alberta company
The scaling-up challenges faced by an innovative Alberta company.
Q&A: Hockeystick founder Raymond Luk on fostering scaleup ecosystems in Canada
The inaugural DRIVE conference, to be held February 20-22 in Waterloo, ON, will convene leading thinkers and practitioners from around the world to share best practices and debate strategies for building scaleup ecosystems. We spoke with organizer Raymond Luk about his goals for the conference and how Canada can grow more domestic scaleups.
Opinion Leader:
J. Adam Holbrook and Carol Muñoz Nieves
Vancouver’s digital supercluster needs policies that protect its human capital
Digital industries in Canada operate in ways that are often at odds with other economic activities, owing to a fundamental difference: in the digital sector, the main input is human capital and the main output is intellectual property, whereas for most other Canadian industries the inputs are resources and the outputs are processed raw materials, manufactured goods and conventional services.
Federal departments and agencies have till September to implement data management plan
The timeline is “aggressive but doable” for the federal government to implement changes recommended in a new report.
Draft charter aims to reduce barriers to equity, diversity and inclusion for researchers
The federal government unveiled an eagerly anticipated initiative on Monday to promote equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in Canada’s research community.
Canada’s fastest-scaling private companies linked to cities with tech clusters
Tech clusters and Canadian cities with top tech markets attract the country’s fastest-scaling tech firms, according to research. But Canadian SMEs continue to face challenges scaling up.
Innovation Conversations: Q&A with Molly Shoichet
In an interview with RE$EARCH MONEY, Molly Shoichet discusses her new biotech startup, her experience as Ontario’s chief scientist, and her views on innovation in Canada.
News Bites
News Briefs
New University of Lethbridge hub for innovation and discovery nearly complete
Federal government launches new agency to address digital shifts in job market
The federal government has committed $225 million over four years for a new Future Skills Centre at Ryerson University, plus $75 million annually in subsequent years. The job training agency will be operated by the university alongside the Conference Board of Canada and Blueprint ADE, and will focus on preparing Canadians for changes to the job market as a result of digitization and disruptive technology. The arms-length agency will fund skills-development projects across Canada and partner with provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous governments and for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In the same announcement, the government named 15 members of its Future Skills Council, which will advise the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour on national and regional issues related to emerging in-demand skills and workforce trends. The Council will be co-chaired by Valerie Walker, Executive Director of the Business/ Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) and Dr. Thierry Karsenti, Director of the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante (CRIFPE).
Alberta commits $100M to grow province’s AI sector
ISED launches competition for $30M pilot program to provide IP advice to Canadian SMEs
New biomass research cluster seeks enhance production of clean bioenergy in Canada
New federal program will invest $50M to support competitiveness in Canada’s agricultural sector
Alberta invests $70M in 11 industrial projects to reduce emissions
The Alberta government is investing $70.2 million in 11 private sector industrial projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and operating costs. The funding, from the province’s Climate Leadership Plan, is being provided through Emissions Reduction Alberta’s Industrial Efficiency Challenge, an open call last year to large final emitter industrial facilities in multiple sectors: oil and gas, chemicals and fertilizers, cement and concrete, forestry and agriculture, electricity, and manufacturing. Funding will be distributed on a milestone-by-milestone basis, based on progress reports.
The 11 projects — all first-of-kind demonstrations and deployments — are worth a combined value of $267 million. They include using low-carbon fuels to make cement; recovering heat from a refinery to generate electricity; digital optimization in oil sands production; recovering flue gas energy in a kraft pulp mill; and using a natural gas turbine with battery storage. The projects are expected to reduce GHG emissions by more than 5.2 million tonnes (carbon dioxide equivalent) by 2030.University of Calgary innovation hub receives $8.5M from city’s investment fund
Canadian genomics researchers win $56M in funding from government and businesses
Defence awards contracts worth $46.2M to bolster surveillance in the North
Ottawa invests $6M in Mississauga-based cleantech firm Imtex Membranes
B.C. agriculture projects receive $2.9M from federal-provincial innovation program
Natural Resources Canada announces $4.2 million for renewable energy projects in the North
Quebec AI institute Mila opens giant new facility in Montreal
The Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence (Mila) officially opened its new premises in Montreal, with more than 200 partners and other members of the Quebec artificial intelligence ecosystem in attendance. Mila is tasked with implementing the Quebec government’s Strategy for the Development of Quebec’s Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem. The AI institute will receive $80 million over five years from Quebec’s Ministry of Economy and Innovation, as well as $44 million from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) as one of the three lead partners in the development and implementation of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.
Mila was created as a collaboration between the Université de Montréal and McGill University, with support from HEC Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal. The new 90,000-sq-ft location, situated in Montreal’s Mile-Ex neighbourhood, will house more than 375 Mila members and 125 researchers and experts from partner companies and institutions. The facility also includes corporate labs, start-up spaces, and a technology transfer centre, which will help startups, SMEs and industrial research projects include AI in their innovations. Mila aims to facilitate the conversion of AI research to economic development by concentrating all phases of the innovation process, from student projects through to established companies.
Other important companies in the Montreal AI ecosystem are located in the same building complex, a former textile factory that’s now home to Element AI, Thales, RBC’s Borealis AI, Facebook’s AI lab, and SCALE.AI—the AI supercluster focused on next-gen supply chains—among others.
“Here in Montreal we started research on AI and it has given us a bit of headway, but the rest of the world isn’t waiting. They’re pressing on the gas and investing billions and billions of dollars,” Yoshua Bengio, Mila’s founder and scientific director, told the assembled crowd. “It’s important to think about what we have here and how we build Mila so we can compete in this global environment.”
READ MORE: CIFAR unveils first cohort of AI chairs at Pan-Canadian AI Strategy annual meeting
ISED announces major investments in Siemens and Nokia under the Strategic Innovation Fund
Ottawa invests $15.3M in Alberta advanced solar project
People
Laurentian University names new president and vice-chancellor
NSERC announces new vice president of research grants and scholarships
SCALE.AI names former Yellow Pages Canada head Julien Billot as CEO
The Montreal-based artificial intelligence supercluster SCALE.AI has appointed Julien Billot as its CEO. Billot has extensive experience conducting digital transformations in the telecommunications and media industries, at Orange and Lagardere Active in France, and at Yellow Pages Group, where he served as Media Group CEO for PagesJaunes (2009-2013) and then president and CEO of Yellow Pages Canada (2014-2017). In June 2018, Billot was named CEO of Montreal’s NextAi incubator and Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) accelerator programs, which are associated with the university business school HEC Montréal. He will retain that position as he enters his new role at SCALE.AI: “We see a real coherence between SCALE, NextAi and CDL,” Billot told RE$EARCH MONEY. The startups from NextAi will share space with SCALE.AI at 6650 St Urbain St. in Montreal, the converted textile factory in the Mile-Ex neighbourhood that also houses the Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence (Mila), ElementAI, Thales and other important companies and organizations from the city’s AI ecosystem. Billot graduated from Ecole Polytechnique of Paris and Telecom Paris Tech, and he also holds a post-graduate degree in economics from Paris Dauphine University. SCALE.AI is focused on improving the ability of Canadian businesses to develop, access and adopt AI-powered supply chains. With this appointment, all five superclusters now have a CEO.
READ MORE: Quebec AI institute Mila opens giant new facility in Montreal (Jan 28, 2019)