Marco Blouin, Director General Science and Partnerships, Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie, Québec government, explains how international collaboration is accelerating Québec’s research, development, and innovation.
Research and innovation has long been at the forefront of Québec’s economic landscape. Over many years, Québec has established a scientific research base of international calibre and has built strong relationships with stakeholders in the research and innovation ecosystem across the globe. Québec is positioning itself as a leader in innovative fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum technologies. In 2024, Canada officially joined the Horizon Europe programme under Pillar II, opening up ample opportunity for Québec to propel its research and development (R&D).
The Innovation Platform spoke to Marco Blouin, Director General Science and Partnerships, Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie, Québec government to discover more about Québec’s research and innovation landscape and find out what the new Horizon Europe partnership could do for the province.
What role can Québec play in the global innovation landscape?
We like to think of ourselves as punching above our weight when it comes to science and innovation globally, especially on the research side. Our overall R&D spending is significantly higher than the Canadian average. In terms of academic publications, between 2010 and 2021, the share of joint publications that involve both a Québec-based researcher and an international partner has grown from 45% to 61% of the total. We maintain two universities in the top 200 of the main international rankings. We also have two university incubators in the top ten of the UBI Global Ranking.
However, because we are relatively small, when it comes to turning this research expertise into innovations, we also need to set some strategic priorities. There are several sectors that are key to our innovation capabilities: aerospace, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum, life sciences, energy transition and electrification, for example. These are sectors in which our research and innovation is recognised internationally, and where we have an industrial base that can support the transfer of our research into commercial products.
We know that this expertise has value to our partners, and we need to push our ambition further to remain attractive collaborators on the global stage.
We aim to leverage some of these key sectors through strategic initiatives. To give you an example, our government supports the development of innovation zones in some of these key areas, and across our province. For now, we have four of them – digital technologies, quantum technologies, energy transition, and aerospace – and there might be more to come. Innovation zones concentrate, within a specific geographic area, our expertise in a particular sector. It brings together researchers, industries, and investors in attractive living environments so that we have a critical mass that allows us to develop our innovation capabilities further in these sectors. Our innovation zones are also meant to serve as a showcase for international partners.
Our geographic position and our identity as a province also have an impact on how we view our contribution to global innovation. I will give you two very different examples to illustrate this.
On technological innovation, because of our location and our networks, we tend to act as a bridge between Europe and North America. For example, in the southern part of the province, close to the US border, we have created our innovation zone on digital technologies, Technum Québec. The zone notably features the Miqro Innovation collaborative center (C2MI) – the largest R&D centre in Canada focusing on the manufacturing of electronic systems, including semiconductors. Our investments in this centre and this zone are part of a broader joint commitment between Canada and the US to develop a cross-border innovation corridor for semiconductors. At the same time, though, this digital technology ecosystem is active in the development of partnerships with European collaborators in the quantum and photonics industry – for example, in the Netherlands. We try to use this bridge-building position between Europe and North America to our advantage.
If I zoom out, we are also very active in terms of science diplomacy. In Québec, we have a dedicated Québec Research Fund, headed by our Chief Scientist, Professor Rémi Quirion. It is an explicit mandate of our Chief Scientist to contribute to the reputation and outreach of our research expertise and excellence abroad. In 2024, Professor Quirion acts as a president of the International Network for Governmental Science Advice (INGSA), which is present in 110 countries. For us, this is a unique opportunity to voice some of our science priorities and concerns globally, such as the responsible use of AI technologies, for example.
How important is international collaboration and support to Québec’s research and development sector?
As I said, given that we are a small nation, we need to rely on international collaborations to grow our research and innovation. If we want our research to have an impact in fields that are of global relevance and interest to solve big societal challenges – such as, energy transition and climate change, digital transformations, medical and biomedical research, just to name a few – it is crucial that we join our efforts and funding capacity with partners outside of Québec.
This is also true of innovation, if we think of our start-ups in the technology sector. We have a very solid ecosystem in Québec to raise and support them, but our domestic market is too small to allow them to grow. In our current Québec Research and Innovation Investment Strategy – which covers the years 2022-2027 – we have defined a series of actions to accelerate the transition of our most promising start-ups and scale-ups to the international market.
To help us, we are also fortunate to count on a diplomatic network that is rather unique for a provincial entity. We have 34 diplomatic representations in 19 countries across the globe, and about half of them include specialised policy advisors that focus on research and innovation, in key territories and markets such as London, Paris, Munich, Seoul, Los Angeles, etc.
Can you provide an example of a successful project supported by international funding?
One interesting example I can think of is the Horizon 2020-funded ICE_GENESIS project, which focused on advanced simulation means and tools to address icing problems on aircrafts. As I mentioned above, the aerospace industry is central to our economy, and a lot of our industrial R&D takes place in this sector.
The total amount of the project, whose first phase started in 2019, is €21m. In addition to EU funding, many industrial and institutional partners have contributed to this funding, including Bombardier on the Québec side, as well as our government, via our programme for international research collaborations that helped our industrial research consortium CRIAQ to take part in the project. Our financial contribution to the overall project has been rather modest (around €400,000), but it had a fantastic leverage effect that secured the participation in the project of some of our best local experts on the modelling of aircraft aerodynamics – I am thinking of Professor Éric Laurendeau at Polytechnique Montréal, and his team of researchers and students. It also contributed to convincing Bombardier to join this collaborative effort alongside other major industry partners like Airbus and Dassault. Ultimately, the benefits are huge both for our industry, as we develop new modelling tools, and for our research community. On the research side, for example, Professor Laurendeau’s team is developing numerous research exchanges and collaborations with some of the best institutions in this area in Germany (T.U. Braunschweig) and France (ONERA Toulouse), such as joint doctoral theses.
ICE_GENESIS is a great example of the type of international collaboration that we aim to support in the context of Canada’s association to Horizon Europe. We will leverage our research expertise, bring our industry into successful consortia thanks to our intermediary organisations like CRIAQ, whose job it is to create these connections, and tie these projects together with our strategic initiatives like innovation zones.
Why is the new partnership between Canada and Horizon Europe an important development for Québec?
Europe is a very natural partner for our international research and innovation collaborations. If we look at our in-house data, US-based researchers are our main partners in joint academic publications. However, France, the UK and Germany then follow. I already mentioned above why Europe is an important component of our innovation and research and innovation strategy. More broadly, it also reflects the reality of our inward and outward research mobility flows, which predominantly occur with Europe, and which ultimately contribute to the establishment of strong research networks. This also matters for our capacity to compete for talent attraction and retention.
With regards to Horizon Europe more specifically, we know that under the previous programme, Horizon 2020, 30% of the funded projects involving Canadian partners had a participating Québec-based institution. Even before Canada’s association to the programme, we were already well-positioned, even though of course in most cases our participation to Horizon projects was self-funded. Now that association provides us with the possibility or receiving direct funding for our researchers and companies, we want to take advantage of our existing networks and develop new partnerships. It is certainly a major opportunity!
We are particularly interested in the fact that association covers Pillar II of the programme – with a strong focus on collaborative research between the public and private sector – and in six clusters that roughly match the domestic structure of our ecosystem. Years ago, we created what we call our industrial research sector groups, whose mission is to support companies in our strategic sectors by facilitating collaborations with researchers. We have nine of them, on aerospace (CRIAQ – which I mentioned before), aluminium (CQRDA), industrial bioprocesses (CRIBIQ), biopharmaceuticals (CQDM), energy and electric transportation (InnovÉÉ), advanced materials (PRIMA), information and communications technology (PROMPT), medical technologies (MEDTEQ+), and metals transformation (CRITM). Some of them are already well-connected to European partners, but we think that they could greatly benefit from the opportunities of association, and that they will help consolidate our domestic expertise to join Horizon-funded consortia.
Please note, this article will also appear in the 20th edition of our quarterly publication.
