February 25, 2026
The Empire Club of Canada Presents
Quantum Power and National Security: Canada’s New Strategic Imperative
Chairman: Saurabh Popat, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Moderator
The Honourable Erin O’Toole, President & Managing Director, ADIT North America
Panellists
Lisa Lambert, CEO, Quantum Industry Canada
Lieutenant-General Darcy Molstad, Commander, Canadian Joint Forces Command
Francesco Bova, Rotman School of Management
David Roy-Guay, CEO, SBQuantum
Head Table Guests
Madison Malinczak, Queen’s University Law Student
Jacques McNeil, Kirq Quantum Communication Testbed; Senior Advisor, Numana
Jeffrey Maddox, Nokia Canada
Welcome Address by Saurabh Popat, President, Board of Directors, Empire Club of Canada
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Saurabh Popat, I’m the chair of the board here at the Empire Club of Canada, and your host for today’s event.
To formally begin, I’d like to acknowledge that we are gathering on the Traditional and Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the homelands of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat Peoples. I encourage you all to learn more about the Traditional Territory on which you work and live.
Now, today’s event would not be possible without the generous support of our incredible sponsors. The Empire Club is a nonprofit organization and our sponsors generously support the club, and make these events possible and complimentary for our online viewers to attend. So, please join me in thanking our Lead Sponsor for today, Numana, thank you. Thank you to our VIP Reception Sponsors, Texture Communications and WSP, thank you. And to our Supporting Sponsor, Deloitte. Thank you very much, Deloitte. We also deeply appreciate the ongoing support of our Lead Season Sponsors, Bruce Power, Hydro One, and National Bank Capital Markets, and our VIP Reception Season Sponsors, Ellis Don, McKinsey & Company, the Ontario Road Builders Association, and Waste Connections of Canada, thank you all. And finally, thank you to our Media Partner, the Toronto Star, and our AV Partner, Bespoke Audiovisual.
If you have questions for our speakers, please scan the QR code found on your program, or through the Q&A function, if you’re online.
Now, to begin today’s conversation, this event is the second event in our defence series, which started in the fall with Defence Minister McGuinty, and will end on June the 4th with Lieutenant General Michael Wright, commander of the Canadian Army. When we announced today’s event, we described quantum technologies as moving from concept to capability, becoming foundational to modern defence and economic competitiveness. That shift is actually happening now. From NORAD modernization to NATO’s emerging quantum strategy, allied nations are integrating quantum sensing, secure communications, and advanced computing into their core missions. The Canadian national defence sector is not waiting for quantum to mature somewhere else in the world. It’s helping drive its early adoption right here at home, as a matter of security, and in fact, identifying quantum computing and communications as one of Canada’s key sovereign capabilities, as part of the Defence Industrial Strategy that was just released last week.
As our keynote speaker has said, unlike many technologies that mature in civilian markets before reaching defence, quantum is moving in the opposite direction. Defence will be the earliest adopter, because the mission’s demanded and the advantages are too significant to ignore. The countries that develop and deploy these capabilities will now shape the next era of economic and strategic power. But at the same time, if we do not convert Canada’s quantum strengths and advantage into deployable capability and industrial scale, they will be captured elsewhere, along with the talent, the IP, and economic value that will follow. That is the strategic reality before us, and it’s about readiness, Canadian sovereignty, and Canada’s competitive and strategic advantage.
Today’s timely and critical conversation asks what sovereign quantum capability does Canada require? How can defence validate and scale emerging technologies quickly? And how do we ensure Canada is a credible contributor within the G7 and NATO alliances? We’re very fortunate today to have with us a leader who is helping define that path. Please join me, in welcoming the CEO of Quantum Industry Canada, Lisa Lambert.
Lisa Lambert, CEO, Quantum Industry Canada
Good afternoon. I’m just getting my voice back, so I’m very grateful that there’s some water here. I wanna start off by saying thank you to the Empire Club for convening this room. Defence leaders, investors, industry executives, policy minds, and emerging leaders. This is exactly the right mix for this conversation. But before I begin, I want to acknowledge the men and women in uniform navigating these realities operationally every day. This conversation exists because of what they face.
Just last week, Canada released its first ever Defence Industrial Strategy, or DIS. It’s a marker of how profoundly the strategic environment has shifted. For decades, we treated security and industry as parallel conversations, and we can no longer afford to. The global environment is more contested. Allies are rebuilding capacity. Supply chains are strategic. Advanced technologies now shape both military advantage and economic competitiveness. The Defence Industrial Strategy links sovereignty, security, and industrial capacity in a way Canada has not done before. Within the strategy, quantum sensing, communications, and computing are named with sovereign capabilities. In fact, the word quantum appears 12 times in the document. This is not accidental, it’s a demand signal. And demand signals carry obligations. Quantum will be an early indicator of how this broader shift unfolds, of how Canada translates strategic intent into operational and industrial capacity. What happens in quantum will not determine everything, but it will tell us a great deal.
So today, I want to connect some dots before we turn to the panel, because this moment really deserves a clear understanding. This is not a future discussion. The vulnerabilities are present tense. GPS is being denied in Ukraine, across European airspace. Every platform that depends on satellite navigation for positioning, timing, or targeting carries a known vulnerability today. Encrypted communications are being harvested. Military signals, government exchanges, industrial data, collected now, stored for later decryption. If we do not transition to quantum resilient systems within the procurement window before us, we risk embedding cryptographic vulnerability into platforms designed to operate for decades, and exposing years of sensitive data at the moment adversaries are best positioned to exploit it.
Stealth is eroding. Quantum sensors detect magnetic, gravitational, and electromagnetic signatures at sensitivities no conventional instrument can approach today, passively, and without emitting a signal. Not just submarines, but aircraft and satellites. This means that the whole logic of hide and operate is under pressure. And the speed of decision-making now defines advantage. The side that confuse information from hundreds of sensors across multiple domains and act before the adversary can respond holds the edge. This isn’t a technological abstraction. It’s the operational reality our allies are designing around right now, and we must, too. These are the conditions, not predictions.
When people hear about quantum, they often think something distant. That picture, frankly, is outdated and increasingly a liability. Quantum is a portfolio of distinct technologies on different timelines. Some are already deployable. Quantum sensing, resilient positioning, navigation and timing, secure communications, and post-quantum cryptography. They are being integrated into defence and critical infrastructure systems today. Quantum computing sits on a longer curve. Early systems and approaches deliver niche value today and fault-tolerant systems are further out, but they’re progressing rapidly. They will mature with the service life of platforms Canada is procuring right now, and their development is actively being accelerated through significant public, private, and defence investment globally, including through DARPA, and through the recently announced Canadian Quantum Champions Program.
Different technologies, different timelines, one portfolio. And quantum is inherently dual-use. Many capabilities will be adopted first in defence, because the missions demand it, but the value creation will extend across the entire economy. Aerospace, energy, advanced manufacturing, finance, logistics, health, and digital infrastructure. The same systems that secure us will strengthen productivity and competitiveness. To make it concrete, SBQuantum, whose founder you will hear from on the panel, can build a reference map of the Earth’s magnetic field, which can be used to navigate in contested environments and to detect anomalies by ferromagnetic objects, like submarines, beneath the surface. That same capability can be used for mineral exploration surveys, strengthening Canada’s critical mineral strategy and resource development. That is not a future capability. It’s being built now by a Canadian company.
So, let’s scale that out. Canada is modernizing continental defence through NORAD, from Arctic over-the-horizon radar to space-based surveillance, and next-generation command systems. These architectures will integrate satellites, terrestrial sensors, air and maritime platforms, secure communications, and decision networks into a unified operational picture. The capability demands are clear. Ultra-precise timing for distributed radar systems, such as over-the-horizon radar, resilient positioning when satellite signals are denied, trusted communications across contested networks, detection capabilities that extend beyond conventional limits, and the ability to fuse streams of vast data under pressure. Quantum will not sit on the margins of these platforms. It will sit inside of them as critical subsystems, quantum clocks that synchronize radar arrays and enable coherent detection across thousands of kilometers, quantum sensors embedded into ISR platforms, quantum-secure communications hardwired into command and control networks. These subsystems will define those platforms—or these subsystems will define whether those platforms are merely modern or operationally sovereign.
The urgency is not abstract. These systems are being designed right now, and many of them right here in Canada. Military planners reduce advantage to a simple cycle they call the OODA loop, observe, orient, decide, and act. Quantum affects every step of that loop. It changes what you can see, it protects how you interpret, it accelerates how you decide, and it secures how you act. Platforms that integrate these capabilities compress their own decision cycle and impose friction on their adversaries. Our allies understand this, and so do our adversaries.
Now, what’s Canada’s position on this? Canada’s standing as a global leader in quantum is the result of long-term commitment. We recognized the quantum opportunity early, we invested early, we commercialized early. Today, Canada has world-class research institutions and exceptional quantum talent. We are home to the second highest number of quantum companies globally, second only to the US, and highest when you look at it in terms of companies per capita. Canada has built one of the world’s most complete quantum ecosystems, spanning sensing, communications, computing, and the enabling technologies that underpin them. This is structural, and the economic opportunity before us is material. Canada’s national quantum strategy cites an analysis estimating quantum could contribute more than 3% of Canadian GDP by 2045. That’s comparable to the aerospace sector today. Globally, estimates project that quantum can create up to $1 to $2 trillion in value creation by 2035. That value is going to be captured somewhere. Canada has a choice about how much it will capture here.
But there is also an honest tension. Canada has a pattern. We generate the foundational science, we train exceptional talent, we launch globally competitive firms, and then industrial scale, procurement, validation, IP, talent, and long-term value migrate elsewhere. That pattern is not inevitable, but it has been reliable, and I’m truly convinced that this time, with quantum, it can be different. For the first time, key conditions are aligned, and that’s because key stakeholders and everyone in this room has been aligned, as well. We have a mature research base, we have top talent, we have a very dynamic industrial ecosystem. There is clear operational need. We’ve got our new Defence Industrial Strategy that names quantum as sovereign. We have a procurement cycle large enough to anchor industrial capability and capacity. We have a trade diversification strategy to export this to other markets, and we have an economic opportunity large enough to justify sustained investment.
Previous generations of frontier technology did not have all of that aligned, and now we do. So, the task before us is not just commercialization, it’s industrialization, it’s building out the manufacturing depth, it’s the supply chain integration, it’s a domestic customer willing to go first, and take a bit more risk than we typically do as Canadians. So, what does disciplined execution look like? It’s three things, concurrently. First, it’s the sustained engagement between the Canadian Armed Forces, government partners, and Canada’s quantum sector, not episodic consultation, continuous interaction, requirements defined together, pilot deployments, iterative validation. What does quantum ready mean for a patrol vessel, for Arctic ISR, for command and control and contested networks, for signals intelligence and spectrum dominance? These answers must be shaped early, and they must be shaped together, not later discovered at an RFP stage.
Second, procurement tempo aligned with technology maturity. Canada’s quantum firms are high-performing SMEs, they are time-sensitive. A capability validated in 2026 must have a pathway to a contract in 2027 or sooner, not 2031 or later. Speed of contract is not administrative detail, it is industrial strategy. First, customer validation unlocks private capital, it attracts follow on investment, and it anchors firms domestically. And third, we need deliberate defence pull. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, they’re not waiting for quantum to arrive fully formed, they’re actively accelerating it through targeted procurement, mission driven pilots, and strategic investment.
Demand builds industries, and Canada has the sector and the strategic rationale. The pull must follow, and it must happen now. Quantum is an early indicator for the broader Defence Industrial Strategy. If the build partner buy framework works anywhere, it should work with quantum. The capability is named, the firms exist, some technologies are deployable now, others are advancing quickly and must be integrated at the design stage, and the strategic case is clear. If we cannot translate that into procurement pathways and scale validation, the structural issue, quite frankly, extends far beyond quantum, and is something else that we need to address with urgency.
Canada helped build the quantum era. The Defence Industrial Strategy gives us a framework to align security, sovereignty and industry more deliberately than ever before. But it sits within a larger shift. That shift is this. Canada is moving from assuming security to engineering it, from observing industrial opportunity to building it, from inventing technologies to anchoring them. Quantum happens to sit at the intersection of all of that. From seabed to space, the platforms and policies being designed today will define Canada’s security and economic position for decades to come. Whether they embed Canadian capability will shape our operational sovereignty and our prosperity. The Defence Industrial Strategy is just one instrument. Continental defence modernization, allied alignment, capital formation, and procurement reform are all others, and these need to work together. The question before us right now is whether we use this moment coherently, and at tempo, to build lasting industrial strength and operational advantage. In quantum, we have the foundation, we have the companies, and we have the opportunity. The work now is alignment and execution through, not perfection, but progress, and that is a larger task that’s before us. Thank you.
Saurabh Popat
Wow, incredible challenges we have before us, but I look forward to unpacking some of these challenges on the panel today. Thank you, Lisa. You’ve laid out, certainly, the challenge clearly. Quantum leadership will not be decided in the lab. It will be decided by who can scale, secure, and deploy, or build, partner, and buy. We are fortunate to continue this discussion with a panel that reflects exactly that intersection of policy, economics, industry, and operations. Moderating today is the Honourable Erin O’Toole, President and Managing Director of ADIT North America. Erin is a former Royal Canadian Air Force Officer and Federal Leader of the Opposition, who now advises globally on trade, defence, and economic competitiveness.
Joining him is Professor Francesco Bova of the Rotman School of Management. Francesco is Chief Quantum Economist at the Creative Destruction Lab, who focuses on how quantum reshapes markets and competitive advantage. We’re also very—yeah, welcome Francesco. We’re also joined today by David Roy-Guay, Founder and CEO of SBQuantum. David is a physicist and entrepreneur who is taking diamond-based quantum sensing from lab to orbit with a European Space Agency launch scheduled for March 2026. Welcome, David. And finally, we’re very privileged today to have Lieutenant General Darcy Molstad, Commander of the Canadian Joint Forces Command. Lieutenant General Molstad is the inaugural head of Canada’s new Joint Command, integrating land, sea, air, cyber, and space, bringing operational experience and excellence from NORAD and NATO missions from around the world. Please join me, in welcoming our moderator and panel.
The Honourable Erin O’Toole, President & Managing Director, ADIT North America
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being with us. Thank you, Lisa, for kicking off the topic. Incredible when Canada is the second-most important country for the ecosystem of quantum startups and scale-ups. One-third of the global quantum workforce was either educated, trained, or worked in Canada, 1/3. And today, we’ve got a number of investors, innovators, leaders here in quantum, a very highly technical. So, this is a very smart crowd, and a very smart panel. And the only way to show a panel, make them look even smarter, is to have a former politician as a moderator.
Now, given the importance of quantum, they were going to get former Prime Minister Trudeau, but he’s on a yacht with Katy Perry, so you’re stuck with the runner-up from the election with him a few years ago. But I’m very, very excited to talk about this. Because as Lisa said, this is no longer a concept on the horizon that when Lazaridis donated a large portion of his wealth to research, we’ve seen innovations in Sherbrooke, in Toronto, in Vancouver. It is now being operationalized in the defence and security context. Canada is leading, and with the Defence Industrial Strategy last week, quantum as part of digital sovereignty is one of the pillars that the government has identified as key to our sovereign capability as a country.
And going through the rupture—that word Prime Minister Carney is now world famous for uttering at Davos—we need to be more self-reliant, more resilient, and we need to scale our opportunity here much better. So, I can’t think of a better way to start our dialogue about the present by a question from a future leader. So, Madison Malinczak has a question. She’s with us at the head table, but I think her question is coming up in video form, to kick off a great panel here today.
Madison Malinczak, Queen’s University Law Student
Hello everyone, my name is Madison Malinczak, and I’m a third year law student at Queen’s University Faculty of Law. My question for you today is that Prime Minister Carney noted in June, 2026, that roughly 75% of Canada’s defence capital spending flows to the United States. As quantum technologies become foundational to intelligence, cyber defence, and secure communications, how can Canada build sovereign quantum in defence industrial capacity while remaining inoperable within NATO and NORAD? Basically, can quantum investment be the tool that allows Canada to shift from dependency to strategic partnership without sacrificing inoperability? Thank you.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Great question. So, you know, there’s one guy on the stage wearing a uniform. So, I think maybe we start with you, Darcy, and then if anyone wants to follow up on Madison’s question, I think it’s a great way to get started.
Lieutenant-General Darcy Molstad, Commander, Canadian Joint Forces Command
Great, thank you, Mr. O’Toole. It’s an honour and a pleasure for me to join you today with this distinguished panel and all of our friends and colleagues out in the audience today. Really quick story about where we came from and where we can go, from my military experience. When I used to fly the F-18 a long, long time ago, the inertial navigation system drifted at about one-and-a-half nautical miles per hour. When we would do long missions, we would have to do a radar update to our navigation system to be able to deploy a weapon accurately on target. Eight mile drifts across the Atlantic when you would go feet dry in order to reach the land, and then navigate to your airport of opportunity. I used to collect my time hack from the U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock—you probably remember that, Mr. O’Toole. You know, it would be an audio recording that says, “At the tone, the time is 1201 and 05 seconds. Beep,” and then you would hack your watch. Now, we are operating with GPS-aided inertial navigation systems, where the precision is so good, you actually have to move your symbology out of your HUD to actually see where the target is underneath that. Now that being said, it’s almost like it’s a laboratory environment, because now in real conflict you’ve got GPS denial. And that doesn’t happen anymore where you can just simply move your cursor, see the target, and deliver precision weapons. So, it gives you a real world examples of how important these technologies are to the operator and the war fighter.
To Madison’s incredible question, yes, we have an opportunity. The answer is simple. And we have the first ever Defence Industrial Strategy that demonstrates political will from the highest levels of government all the way down to the tactical levels. We reference to Davos. I did not have on my bingo card a year-and-a-half ago, even a year-and-a-half ago, this is how much things are changing, and this is the pace of change. I didn’t have on my bingo card the Prime Minister of Canada quoting Thucydides and Vaclav Havel at a Davos speech, let alone using the word rupture. And so, we are in different times. And so, the opportunity is there, it’s just a matter of us seizing upon it, using things like the Defence Industrial Strategy in order to create the impetus and the momentum behind it, connecting with the end users—military being one of them, we’re not the only one—but connecting with the end users to ensure that we’re doing this together in a collaborative fashion. So a little story and a little bit of….
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
A great real world connection to Madison’s question. David, you’re in the sensing game, Lisa alluded to your work that could detect anomalies subsurface, you’re gonna put former submarine hunters like me from the military out of business, if you can find them using quantum. Talk about her challenge to replace that 75% of our spend going to the US, do you have the ability to generate that business here and then maybe into the Rearm Europe sales into our European NATO allies?
David Roy-Guay, CEO, SBQuantum
Yes, of course, there is an opportunity to elevate the domestic buys for deep tech innovation, emerging innovation like ours. Like, this sensor was designed in Canada, it’s made from a bit elsewhere, like Apple does. How do we make most of the benefits by bringing the developments back in Canada is by engaging with end users. There’s no way around it for a company than better understanding what really needs to be built and to deploy it in realistic environments, gather the feedback and after that once we demonstrate that there’s really a problem to be solved there, and that our technology can do better, then we can go around the supply chain and build the capabilities, and do much more in Canada. So yeah, that’s really what’s important for any company, any startup, it’s starting with the basics, get down to the end users, demonstrate what needs to be built and once you have a big enough market, build it in house.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Build, baby, build. Francesco and Lisa, you guys see the ecosystem, creative destruction lab, you’re running the industry association. Are people getting access to capital, are they gonna try and fill that gap to, to—the Defence Industrial Strategy said 70% of our spend should be on Canadian companies, Canadian IP, not just a wholly owned subsidiary with a Canadian address. Is there capital, is there a response to this call?
Francesco Bova, Rotman School of Management
Yeah. So, I think this is an important point, I think the market for external financing is very important in quantum. And so, you can imagine like other—there’s other deep tech domains where you could imagine like bootstrapping your way to commercialization, you could create a SaaS product, find some customers, become profitable, maybe still challenging to scale, but you couldn’t become profitable, maybe a blockchain application. I think the reality is like, for example, we will not be bootstrapping our way to building a fault-tolerant quantum computer, right? It’ll take massive amounts of external financing. And so, as a result, the market for external capital is very important in quantum, maybe even relative to other domains. And so, liquidity in that market is very important. And so, it’s interesting, clearly there is liquidity, some would argue there’s a frothy market for quantum valuations here over the last year. I think there is a bit of a disparity though between our American venture capital, prospective providers of capital and our Canadian providers of capital, right?
And so maybe, first of all, there’s more competition in the United States for a very nascent technology like quantum, I think there’s maybe, in some cases, maybe more technical sophistication amongst the VC community, so they’re able to de-risk a little bit more easily. Perhaps, the differences in the levels of risk aversion as well, between their Canadian counterparts. And so, I think this is an area where we need to improve as an investment community. It would be great to see more Canadian investors on the cap table of quantum companies just because external financing is so important for these companies relative to other technical domains.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Lisa, anything you would like to add?
Lisa Lambert
I think just building on that, that capital piece is such an important part of the sovereignty conversation, as well, and we often overlook that. That when we do get more Canadian investors on those cap tables, it’s a lot easier to keep those companies Canadian and give those catalysts to help them grow in scale here.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Perfect, thanks for getting us started, Madison, with a great question. This next point I’ll put out to all of you to maybe look at. Lisa set the stage that the future is now. In the defence and security context, we’ve heard allusion to sensing application, to communications, to navigation, and particularly, in a GPS-deprived environment. What’s changed in the last few years to allow this theoretical work using quantum to translate into generating purchase orders? As I said this week on CBC Radio, the proof will be in the pudding with the Defence Industrial Strategy, when Canada starts purchasing things. We’ve talked about it, we’re creating agencies, agencies to replace agencies. We need to start showing that we’re gonna buy Canadian. Talk about those areas, navigation, sensing, communications, and where we might be able to play.
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
Yeah, I think Mr. O’Toole’s looking at me on this first one, I’ll start us off. We absolutely need the capabilities, and we need them yesterday. And so, if you ask me, it’s about how fast can we invest in our quantum ecosystem to deliver tangible capabilities to the war fighter in my context, as quickly as possible. Again, thinking about sensing and navigation, you know, if we are gonna do, for example, co-production of uncrewed systems with Ukraine to help supply their armament system, while getting some trade-off and benefit to Canada of producing those for us, what would it, you know, think of a world where those systems would have a miniaturized, ruggedized, quantum-enabled, inertial navigation system that can operate in a completely GPS-denied environment. Think about the value we would add to our alliances, our Canada-US relationship, if we actually had a deployable sensor array of quantum sensors to be able to detect submarines in the approaches to our water and to our landmass.
Right now, we are partnering with our allies and partners on these capabilities, but we need to start leading on them. So, there are numerous use cases in the military context. It’s just a matter of working hard to operationalize them as fast as we possibly can. And part of that is connecting uniforms with all of you. You have probably seen a huge shift in our approach to engagement with industry over the last year-and-a-half, two years. And that’s absolutely required. There was a stigma to it before, I would say. But there is no longer a stigma. We have to engage with you. We have to work together on the problems and challenges, and not think that I can write a statement of requirements that will define what I need in five years from now, because I don’t know what I need in five years from now. I need to tell you what my gaps are, what my challenges are, and we need to work together on those solutions, and work together to operationalize them quickly.
David Roy-Guay
Yeah. This is music to my ears. To all the startups in Canada, in quantum, yeah, we’ve experienced it our own through the IDEAS program, so an innovative, open innovation challenge from DRDC, going through the phases. I think we can take it one step further with more funding, and direct access to end users. Like currently, a big challenge for startups is that we’re stuck with an intermediate, and we cannot get access to the real field deployment. We did that with the exploration in mining industry. We went up in Northern Québec, we went to Nunavut, deployed our tech on drones, and experienced it firsthand, and it shaped significantly what we can achieve. So, we just need to do the same with the folks on the ground.
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
Really quickly, I’m the new command on the block. I’m a new three-star command in the Canadian Armed Forces. So, what that means is every industry is coming to me, because I might be a new opportunity. But I’m also trying to do things differently, and break a bit of glass. I’m trying to stand up a rapid capabilities accelerator, a rapid capabilities unit within my organization that is thinking and doing things differently. I won’t reveal who, but I’m bringing in a very highly reputable subject matter expert on deep tech, and venture capital investment, in order to be my senior executive advisor for innovation. I’m going to work through some high-TRL problems to rapidly pull through prototype experiment and hopefully scale up production, in order to deliver capabilities to the CAF.
The challenge remains, and we’ve talked about this during the roundtable earlier today, is we’re still working through improving our procurement system, our contracting mechanisms. We still cannot operate at the speed that we want to operate on, so we will still have to work to aggressively pursue those rapid contracting arrangements, in order to be able to do this effectively.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
General’s gonna do things differently. So David, we’re gonna have an MOU signing ceremony at the end of the roundtable.
David Roy-Guay
Great.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
There we go, Wendy’s on board with that. I think when most people think of quantum, they think of the risks to data security and our general security, and the post-quantum cryptography world, meaning quantum’s gonna make all of our bank codes, and pins, and all these things irrelevant. As we’re scaling up, are we taking that into consideration? We have some great firms in the room, Evolution Q, ICERA, that are in this post-quantum crypto world. Are we ready for it? Are we going to be able to scale players to provide solutions for all our allies? Francesco, maybe start with you.
Francesco Bova
Yeah. So, clearly, this is a clearer problem, right? There’s a lot of, for example, potential benefits to quantum computing. We may be able to solve problems more, intractable problems more quickly than we could have done with classical hardware. There is, of course, the threat of quantum computing. At some point, once we build a fault-tolerant quantum computer that is sufficiently big, we might be able to break encryption, and so this is a serious problem. And again, the efficacy of different verticals in quantum are improving, in large part, there’s been a huge influx globally of capital, and this was a result. For example, the efficacy in sensing is improving, we’re getting closer to commercialization there.
Still, it could be a little while before we get to a fault-tolerant quantum computer. Despite the fact that, you know, and this may be off in the horizon, there is still value in thinking about coming up with these quantum-safe solutions from Evolution Q, and Quantum Bridge, and many others. The value in thinking about that today, and this is actually the work of Michaela Mosca, here, our colleague, just sitting a little further down. Because the migration to a quantum-safe ecosystem is gonna take time. We can’t just flip a switch and have a download, and then it’s like it’s all quantum-safe somehow. There is quantum approaches, there is classical approaches, there is software, there’s hardware, there’s gonna, we need new infrastructure, we gotta coordinate with other countries, with other industries. And so, this is a high-value problem to solve today. That’s why it’s valuable that these companies are working on solving this problem today.
The one luxury we maybe have is time, a little bit. Again, my colleague at Waterloo, Roger Melko, often points to like, quantum architecture and says, that’s the work of 12 Nobel laureates there. We still may need some Nobel laureate-level innovation, I think, to get to the fault-tolerant level. And in a way, that kind of extends the path commercialization in a way that’s maybe a good thing, because it helps us to prepare. But we do need to scale, and we do need to start scaling now.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
And are we looking at this in future pathways, General, to make sure that we have secure systems, secure access in this, you know, this quantum world where some of this traditional cryptography is at risk?
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
I think it is absolutely an area that we’re looking into. Is it one that is ready for operational deployment as fast as some other capabilities? I’m not sure. Have to rely on some of our industry experts on that. But clearly, our systems are vulnerable. Our crypto is vulnerable. We need to have that sovereign control of that to be able to have that independence. So, I see the faster, earlier wins, things like the atomic clocks, the inertial navigation systems, those types of technologies, the magnetometry, those are potential solutions that can show our allies and partners that we’re net contributors, and not net consumers of defence and security capabilities. So, we just have an opportunity to lead on something, and so why not seize the opportunity to do it? I recognize that I’m from government, and you’re talking to somebody that has lived through decades of doing it in a very bureaucratic way. But we are all in a moment right now, and we all have to take advantage of that moment. So, there are opportunities for sure.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Do you have a viewpoint for the industry?
Lisa Lambert
Yeah, if I can jump in as well, I think with the post-quantum migration, we’ve known that we’ve had to make this move for quite some time now. The government of Canada, just back in June, released its Post-Quantum Migration Roadmap, which is a really good signal for government putting an actual timeline needed towards that transition. It is an aggressive timeline, as Francesco was saying. This isn’t just a Tuesday patch to do; it’s quite a big amount of work ahead of us. This year, 2026, has actually been declared the International Year of Quantum Security, YQS, as well. So, it’s one that’s just trying to raise awareness of how important this is, because it needs to go so much more than just government and defence over to critical infrastructure, but all our businesses. Because this will impact our entire digital economy, if we’re not making that transition and moving forward. So, these kind of conversations, and actually seeing this move into the C-suite, and I think this is at the point right now where it needs to be a board-level conversation looking at that cyber resilience, and post-quantum migration timelines, and mapping that out. We have incredible companies here in Canada for this, as well, that can be trusted partners. And again, looking from that, these are your most sensitive systems. And wanting to be able to trust in that supply chain, trust who’s building it out, Canadian companies can be good partners for that.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
We can be leaders. Reminder, there’s the ability for you to ask a question through the QR code, if you want. I have the iPad, and I’ll be calling on a few of those, in a little bit. Next question, I’m gonna lead off with David, because you’re one of these trailblazers that has gone from R&D developing expertise to you were talking to Ottawa this week about procurement, you were telling me. So, for other SME quantum Canadian firms that are worried about the complexity of procurement, especially defence procurement in Canada, what practical advice do you have from your learnings about commercializing your quantum technology, and turning it from research into product, and selling it? What can you say to other SMEs that are at the same pivot point?
David Roy-Guay
Oh, that’s a great question. Where to start. So, I guess start small, start simple, and really find the value point that you’re creating. So, for instance, like our metameter can be used across 25 verticals. But for some of them, they use classical metameters, and they have been for decades, and they work fine. So, you really have to dig down pretty deep to find your specific value point, and really focus all your developments on this. Don’t focus for perfection. A lot of people in quantum science are coming from physics, or like a, very like grad studies, engineering type of studies, and they chase perfection. But that’s gonna make the difference for the end users. So, really start small, and increment, cultivate your agility as you start, so that you can deliver quicker than even the biggest companies all around the world. Like, we’re still 21 employees based in Sherbrooke, and we’re playing against Lockheed Martin, Bosch Quantum Sensing. So yeah, you can achieve lots, if you focus on the right points.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Okay. Well done. Any CDL advice on that, Francesco, on going commercial?
Francesco Bova
Yeah. So I mean, you know, I think especially in quantum, we had a very robust discussion this morning. I think raising capital in quantum is maybe a little bit different than raising capital for other domains. You know, in the VC community, you might be looking at, like for example, like recurring revenue that’s gonna be a bit persistent. You know, much of the domain is still within kind of the R&D phase of the business cycle. And so, I think maybe we have to have some conversations with the prospective providers of capital. I do think there are innovative ways, though, to kind of engage with the ecosystem, and this is cost-efficient ways for the government. I think the government could maybe play a bit of a matchmaking role, not just with itself, but with enterprise in general. And so, I think in France, they’ve got a policy called “Je Choisis le French Tech.” So there’s a little English, little French in there. This is from the French government, you know? But it’s fascinating, they play a matchmaking role, and so this is with the startup ecosystem in general, okay? So they’ll find large, you know, kind of enterprise corporations, large French customers, they will link them with startups, and then use a little bit of soft power to try to get them to allocate some of their procurement budget to do paid pilots with these startups, okay?
So that’s wonderful, of course, for the startups, for many reasons. Number one, you get a little bit of revenue. That’s good, you get some revenue on the income statement. You get to illustrate the efficacy of your technology in a real-world setting. You pull it out of the lab, and you can benchmark against, for example, what the corporation can do with its classical approaches, as opposed to its quantum approaches, customer discovery, illustrate the value proposition of your technology. And all four of these are key catalysts to being venture-backable, right? And so, like, for example, in France, if they’re looking at growing a domestic supply chain, right, it’s great to have these large companies, but you want to get kind of the input suppliers of services, you know, and other tangible inputs, this is a wonderful matching process. Again, fairly cost-efficient for the government, I don’t think any money is changing hands, and I think also good for the very large corporations, right? In some cases, they can generate innovations above and beyond their old classical approaches. And at worst, I think, in the case of quantum, you get to learn a little bit about the nascent technology from some of, like, you know, the smartest scientific minds that we have in this country. So, I think there are strategies.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
And the DIS wants to create these Canadian champions to fill these needs of sovereign capability. So, in the last couple minutes, I’m gonna just ask each of you for your thoughts. What’s one thing Canada needs to do in the next 12 months to really seize the lead here? What really can we do to accelerate? Start with Lisa, and then go down. What’s the next policy that should come to help quantum?
Lisa Lambert
Well. Flip the policy, and go to execution. We’ve got to move at pace.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Move quickly. Francesco.
Francesco Bova
I think we need more liquidity in the market for capital, either be it from non-dilutive funding, local investors, and BDC, who has always been a great champion of direct investments into quantum, state-level objectives, right? And so, you know, if you’re trying to build an ecosystem, how long should that ecosystem last? Five years, 30 years, 100 years? We’ve got an industry here with also longer timelines. So, there’s a matching there, I think, as well. And so, a little more liquidity in the market for capital.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
BDC has an extra billion for defence, so there’s money there. More than that.
Francesco Bova
And they’ve done a great job.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
What would you like to see beyond an MOU you’re gonna sign later?
David Roy-Guay
Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m looking forward to it. So, I think what Canada needs to focus on is listing three moonshot challenges for defence, and that comes from the end user’s perspective, and make everybody compete for it.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Well, one of your colleagues, General, is gonna go around the moon shortly.
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
Yes, Jeremy.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Jeremy Hansen. Canadian. Great RCF….
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
Great friend of mine. He and I did our primary flying training together in Portage la Prairie.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
So what’s your moonshot, then? What do we need to do?
Lt. Gen. Darcy Molstad
So, I think that all those comments are incredible. What I would just remind everybody is we are in an opportunity of a lifetime right now. Yes, the world is on fire. That is the reality that we’re living in. We have to have our eyes wide open. But we have an opportunity to do some true nation building in every sector, not just quantum. And so, I hope that we’re all gonna be seizing this opportunity. We need moonshots, yes, David, but we also need, how would you call them, molehill shots. Let’s demonstrate some early wins and some quick wins and some successes. Have to have that ambition. One day, I would like our pilots to be able to call the Canadian Master Observatory Master Clock, or have the Canadian Atomic Clock be the standard of the world timing standards. But it’s gonna take time, and a really long-term strategy to get there. We’re gonna need to not be a heat seeker in a room full of candles. We need to have a strategy, and follow it very, very carefully.
And from government—and I recognize we’re not perfect, I’m gonna sound like I’m on my pedestal here—but we have to also delegate to the level of discomfort within government, and if we’re not doing that, then we’re not gonna be able to accomplish what we need to accomplish. But I’m confident with the leadership in this room, and if we work together on a common purpose, we’re gonna get there together.
The Hon. Erin O’Toole
Well said. What a great discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you to our colleagues.
Saurabh Popat
What a great panel discussion. Thank you, Lisa, Erin, Francesco, David, and Lieutenant General Molstad. Thank you so much. I much appreciate it. Can we have another round of applause for our panel? So, today’s discussion, I think, made something clear to all of us. Quantum is no longer a future technology. It is a present strategic capability. Its trajectory will depend on the choices we make about partnership, investment, speed, and sovereignty. So, on behalf of the Empire Club, thank you all again for bringing such depth of insight from policy to economics, industry, and operational command. Thank you, again.
Now, to close our program, we’re pleased to welcome Jacques McNeil, Senior Advisor with Numana, and a key leader behind Kirq, Quebec’s quantum communication testbed. Kirq brings together quantum and classic technologies so that companies, researchers, and institutions can test and validate next-generation, secure communication systems, helping Canada prepare for a quantum safe future. Please join me, in welcoming Jacques to offer our closing remarks, alongside Jeffrey Maddox from Nokia Canada.
Note of Appreciation by Jacques McNeil, Kirq Quantum Communication Testbed; Senior Advisor, Numana
Bonjour. [Remarks in French]. I’m very privileged. I first want to thank the Empire Club of Canada for its board and staff, for hosting us today. Also, thanks to Lisa Lambert, and bravo, I think I’m impressed by the big turnout today. That’s worth a hand. Usually, it’s all the quantum ecosystem talking to the quantum ecosystem. I think now the awareness is spreading, so excellent, thank you. Also, merci, Mr. O’Toole, and today’s panellists, for moving this conversation forward. And special thanks to the defence member of the Canada Armed Force for your service, and your bringing your expertise here. And as we mentioned today, you’ll probably be the first partner to help support the development of the industry.
It’s significant today that we are having this conversation now. When the strategic choices Canada makes are crucial. Digital infrastructure, we said a few times today, is a national infrastructure. Cyber security is economic security, and it is its defence. Every organization in this room depends on encryption. It protects payment system, it brings trust to the digital marketplace, it protects patient data, it protects energy grid, it protects telecoms, network, all around us. It protects our sovereignty. Quantum computer, you know, are already a reality, and fault-free version are getting closer every day. As they scale, we are—they will be able to hack our information, hack the encryption we have today. So, we could lose all these secrets in a heartbeat.
But there’s hope. At Numana, we bring together experts to design quantum-safe network solution. We are creating blueprints. Blueprints are sort of like recipes. They’re flexible templates that banks, government, and corporations can customize and implement. And those templates are tested on Kirq, Canada’s only quantum-safe testbed. At Kirq, we customize these templates for you, and put them to test in real-world condition on off-grid telecom networks.
Today, Jeffrey Maddox and the experts of Nokia Canada will say a few words, but we’re pleased to announce together the quantum-safe Blueprint 7. It has successfully passed testing at Kirq. It’s a Canadian sovereign solution to quantum-safe security and it is now in use. We couldn’t not do that without partners. In addition to Nokia team, I would like to recognize in the room, please stand up, there is from Evolution Q, Michele Mosca, CEO. And from Crypto4A, CEO Bruno Couillard, okay, Bruno. So we’ve proven together that next-generation encryption can work with complex network. We can do transition without disruption. So, I’ll repeat this, it’s important. We don’t have to throw everything away. We can do the transition without disruption. It’s a sovereign solution built in Canada, and tested in Canada. The organization that move early will manage that shift on their own terms, and write the playbook that will guide the nation. Kirq is open to everyone. We invite you to reach out to us to move your corporate security forward. Merci beaucoup. Thanks to Texture for helping me be here today, and say these words. And Jeffrey, I’ll turn it over to you.
Note of Appreciation by Jeffrey Maddox, Nokia Canada
Merci. Good afternoon. I’ll just share a few quick remarks, and I think we’ll encapsulate a few of the comments of the panel. And there will be a theme throughout the remarks I make around collaboration between large enterprise and the brilliant Canadian startups, many of whom are here in this room today. By way of introduction, Nokia is a 150-year-old Finnish corporation that is the custodian of not only the Nokia technology and history, but also that of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies.
If you look back at the history books, in 1890, Western Electric built Canada’s first telephone network. Western Electric was then the foundation of what became Lucent and Bell Labs assets that we are now custodians of. Within those assets include the invention of the transistor which started Silicon Valley. Today, Nokia are world leaders in network infrastructure. If you will, the plumbing that connects all of these technologies. The plumbing that will connect the Arctic, the fiberoptics that will sense submarines travelling through these bodies of water.
Our Canadian footprint is the largest telecommunications R&D footprint of any of the companies working in country at the moment. Quite a difference from when I graduated engineering school in Canada, and went to Ottawa to work for Northern Telecom, at the time. We recognize the role we play as that bigger company. We have been operating from that Canada footprint for over 40 years, and we’ve just recently invested what will amount to a billion dollars into the local campus to be our footprint going forward. We are obviously, as a Finnish multinational, we are here to stay.
This Kirq network by Numana strengthens Canada’s sovereignty through trusted partnerships. It validates multi-vendor standards aligned architectures, one of which that we’ve just announced today. And it’s a model of capability built on strength, openness, and partnerships. Nokia is very proud to partner with Numana, equally as proud to partner and play our role within the Canadian market during this, to support this critical collaboration at this very critical moment in time. Thank you.
Concluding Remarks by Saurabh Popat
Thank you again to our panellists, sponsors, and of course, to all of you for joining us. I’d like to—also like to take a moment to recognize the students and young leaders joining us here today. Their presence is made through the charitable arm, the Empire Club Foundation, and the generosity of our donors. This support enables us to invite future leaders, perhaps quantum leaders, to take part in today’s dialogue and to empower them to turn knowledge into leadership that shines in communities, boardrooms, and national conversations shaping Canada’s future.
I also hope that you’ll join us for two upcoming exciting events. On March the 12th, we have the Empire Club will be welcoming the Honourable Steven Crawford for “Building Trust and Competitiveness in Ontario’s AI Economy.” A timely discussion on how Ontario is leading in AI while safeguarding public trust, followed by a fireside chat with CanAXIS board chair, Bob Courteau.
Then on April 24th, we’re very excited to welcome the Honourable Tim Hodgson for “One Year of Nation Building, Looking Back and Moving Forward,” a pivotal conversation on energy, critical minerals, major infrastructure, and the next chapter of Canada’s economic and strategic future. This event will be moderated by the Honourable Lisa Raitt.
Please check out our website for more information, and as always, as a club of record, all Empire Clubs are available to watch and listen to on our website, and the recording of today’s event will be available very shortly. Thank you once again for being a part of this important conversation. This meeting is now adjourned. Thanks.
