Good morning. I am Bob Fedosejevs and my colleague is Kristin Poduska. We're from the Canadian Association of Physicists. We represent physicists across Canada, both academic and industrial. We're both university professors, just so you know where we're coming from.

What's the nature of disruptive technologies? They're unpredictable far in advance, and then they become somewhat predictable as the research results start to come in. Generally it's the front-line people in the research laboratories who first identify the new technologies that are coming. Some of these, of course, will be totally disruptive and wipe out previous technologies, and some are more additive and add new opportunities to a given field, displacing current ways of doing things.

Time scales are a few decades for them to have a major impact, and then several decades for their lifetime. But I think every technology has a lifetime so we have to be aware that we can't be complacent and just assume that things going on today will continue for eternity. They represent a threat to existing technologies, but they're also an opportunity. I think most of the opportunities for new businesses and new successful enterprises are from initially disruptive technologies.

There are three aspects of strategy to deal with disruptive technology that we would like to highlight. First is that you have to be a leader in developing the technology to begin with, the research development phase, and being aware of what's coming up the pipeline. Second is then to identify these disruptive technologies and have a mechanism to say, “Okay, these are important, these are what we should focus on, and this is how we're going to do it.” Third is the capability to profit from these technologies, implementing strategies that will allow you to take advantage of them and/or mitigate their effect in disrupting current business and technology.

In terms of the first step, we need to maintain a strong program of fundamental research. I think that's critical. One of the major ingredients of that is the discovery grants program of NSERC, which has essentially fallen behind inflation over the last few years and has not kept up with the GDP or the growth of the population of Canada. That's something we need to nurture.

Also, it's broader than that. We should have strong, open research in the National Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, government agencies, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and also the provincial research agencies that have also been shrinking from their fundamental research aspects. As well, within the government itself—departmental researchers—there should be some open and free research in all of the different departments to be aware of what's coming down the pipeline.

One of the missing aspects, and very important I think, is the industrial research laboratories. I think we've seen a shrinkage in them over the last several decades and that means two things. First, they are less aware themselves of what's coming. But second, they do not have the receptor capacity to even integrate new technology that's coming in because they don't have the people who understand how to do it and what impact it would have on them in the five- to 10-year time scale. To me that's a major part; the industrial acceptor capacity is not something we immediately have an answer for.

Another aspect, of course, in the awareness is training the brightest minds possible. The bright people, the highly qualified personnel we train, are the ones who will identify the new things as they're coming, and also come up with the new things. I think it's always been the case that you want to have a very strong, well-educated, leading-edge scientific community, so that means HQP training.

Next then, you need to be able to identify some of these. I think we need a national office of science, an advisory body to maintain awareness and assess the status of science and technology and new disruptive technologies. It would be good to have a think tank that would meet annually, perhaps, to assess the things that are happening, the new developments, and how we could prioritize a response to them. Essentially, then, they would recommend strategies to try to profit from these new technologies.

One of the strategies in the transition of the new ideas from the research to the industry is coordinated programs like the Networks of Centres of Excellence that we had and still have. I was the scientific director of the photonics network, and it was very effective in linking researchers to SMEs and companies, and transferring technology. Once identified you could set up a centre. You would want to coordinate the activity across the country, so that's why we need the Networks of Centres of Excellence and not just small institutional centres.

Perhaps I can highlight just a few of the disruptive technologies that are coming down the pipeline. I think some of them are familiar. Additive manufacturing—a new buzzword—I think is actually very important. It's using new techniques to manufacture things on demand. Climate change mitigation strategies might mean new ways of feeding animals, with new sources of feed and so on. Fusion energy, nanotechnology, coherent control of chemical reactions, and even things that are very forefront, such as the research going on into dark matter and dark energy, may lead to some new techniques and to results that will impact.

In the end, we recommend that we maintain a strong fundamental base through the NSERC discovery grant program; that we maintain strong HQP training and really strengthen it, as it's slipped by 40% over the last five years; and that we have a scientific advisory body for an awareness of what's coming so that we can prepare for it.

With that, I'll conclude. Thank you.

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