A consortium of Canadian quantum technology companies is launching an industry association called  Quantum Industry Canada (QIC), whose 24 founding members represent Canada's most commercial-ready quantum technologies.

"The use of quantum technology in healthcare, pharmaceutical research, resource management, finance, telecommunications and security will be transformative to the global economy in the coming decades,” said Jennifer Elliott, co-chair of Quantum Industry Canada, in a press release. Elliott is the co-founder of QEYnet, a small cybersecurity startup striving to create ”a global, low-cost, microsatellite-enabled quantum key distribution network" The other co-chair is Michele Mosca, president & CEO of evolutionQ, which protects companies from quantum threats.

The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) projects that “Canada will be able to grow an $8.2 billion quantum technology industry by 2030, employing 16,000 people and generating $3.5 billion in returns for the government.” By 2040, the annual revenues could jump to $142 billion, with $55 billion in returns and 229,000 people employed in the industry.

After four decades of investment in quantum computing, Canada excels in quantum science and is already a leader in quantum research and development. A 2017 McKinsey study ranked Canada first in quantum science and per-capita spending on quantum science. Canadian quantum research is cited 70% more often than the world average, according to research cited by the NRC in 2018. The University of British Columbia, the University of Waterloo, and the Université de Sherbrooke are all leaders in quantum research.

Canada has so far invested more than a billion dollars in quantum science. But since 2015, governments around the world have been developing national strategies and accelerating their quantum investment. "The US, EU and China are aggressively funding quantum R&D and seeding technology ecosystems,” Mosca said in a statement. In 2017, China announced it was building a $10-billion, 4-million-square-foot campus for quantum applications. The European Commission recently doubled its budget for high-performance computing to €8 billion over the next eight years. In August, the US government announced a $1-billion push to fund 12 multidisciplinary quantum-AI hubs and retain its current lead in the quantum race. Canada’s quantum investment now represents less than 4% of the total global quantum effort.

Despite our early advantage, Canada has lagged in the development of a quantum strategy. The Quantum Canada initiative, supported by the NRC, CIFAR, and NSERC, is currently working with key quantum stakeholders to develop such a strategy.

On the most rudimentary terms, quantum computing stands to dramatically accelerate innovation, such as by running simulations in much greater numbers and much more quickly than is possible with existing technology. Fields like drug discovery and cybersecurity will be fundamentally disrupted by quantum tech.

Quantum sensing is expected to be one of the first commercial markets to affect the lives of average Canadians, using small, extremely powerful systems in areas like navigation, medical imaging and environmental monitoring. At last year’s CSPC conference in Ottawa, University of Waterloo professor David Cory stated that quantum sensors can increase sensitivity by a factor of ten thousand.

“Quantum mechanics allows you to make huge differences, and it allows you to do that in many fields,” Cory said.

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