The creation in Estrie of the first two innovation zones in Quebec, announced Thursday by Premier Legault and his Minister of the Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon, is certainly very positive, but it also appears to be fairly opportunistic since innovation zones, several already existed in Quebec.
Posted at 6:30 a.m.
Opportunistic also because the government took advantage of a major investment by the giant IBM in Bromont to proceed with the association of the University of Sherbrooke with existing companies with which it was already collaborating.
We saw on Thursday that we were indeed in an election year. Almost all of the members of the CAQ in Estrie were present, either in Sherbrooke or in Bromont, to take part in the announcement of the creation of two innovation zones, one in quantum sciences in Sherbrooke and the other in intelligent electronic systems in Bromont.
For Premier Legault, it was the realization of a dream he has cherished for 10 years, namely that of reproducing in Quebec the model of prestigious centers of excellence such as those in Silicon Valley or Route 122 in Boston. in the USA. Areas of innovation where companies can benefit from a great synergy between basic and applied research.
The Université de Sherbrooke has developed recognized expertise in the field of quantum physics for 40 years now and the teams of its principal researcher Alexandre Blais will be able to take advantage of the upcoming implementation of a quantum computer by the multinational IBM at its plant. of semiconductors in Bromont.
Which is nothing. Bromont will thus host IBM’s first quantum computer in Canada, a highly sophisticated device that has been installed in only four other countries in the world, namely in Japan, South Korea, Germany and the United States.
This investment of 130 million, more than half funded by Quebec, will allow Quebec companies in the artificial intelligence, health sciences and energy sectors to make significant technological advances, it is hoped.
Quebec estimates that technology companies in the region, including the MiQro Innovation C2MI Collaboration Center, will invest more than $530 million over the next five years in research and development projects. For its part, the government intends to inject 160 million to support them.
This new initiative around the Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator was presented as the creation of the first two innovation zones in Quebec. Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said Thursday that he hoped to announce two other new innovation zones by June, which will also have specific industrial mandates, as you can imagine.
And the clusters?
We cannot be against the articulation of a sectoral strategy and the implementation of a more assumed collaboration between fundamental research and its commercialization.
But the opportunistic aspect of Thursday’s announcement is to present this new technological initiative in Estrie as a Quebec first. As if we were witnessing the advent of the first innovation zone in Quebec.
What about the industrial clusters that have sprung up over the past few decades and that have propelled the Montreal metropolitan area as a world center of excellence in aeronautics, video games, visual effects and animation, life sciences and health technologies?
Prime Minister François Legault said he was delighted Thursday to see that it was finally possible to reconcile basic research and applied research, as the University of Sherbrooke and businesses in the region have clearly demonstrated in the past.
However, all of Montreal’s industrial clusters have also benefited from the collaboration between university researchers and businesses. We need only think of Polytechnique, ETS, HEC Montréal and McGill.
What about Univalor, the university development company dedicated exclusively to commercializing the scientific discoveries of the 2,600 researchers associated with the University of Montreal?
In short, better coordination and greater promotion of innovation are not new phenomena in Quebec. And it is organized almost everywhere in Quebec, whether in the forestry or aluminum smelter sectors, with the development of Elisys technology in particular.
The government is doing well to promote greater cohesion between the various regional players, as it has just done in Sherbrooke and Bromont, by actively participating in these mobilizing projects.
We can now expect it to do the same in the clean technology and transportation electrification sectors, where Quebec has a powerful energy and project catalyst with Hydro-Quebec.