In June, during the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, a panel of the planet’s most powerful political leaders made quantum computing a global priority. In a joint statement touting the “significant and transformative” benefits of quantum, the heads of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. committed to nine action items to rapidly scale the development of the technology, with promises to promote more public and private investment to accelerate commercialization, upskill more people for careers in the field, and encourage multilateral collaboration. 

In a gathering not lacking in pressing agenda items, the statement was a striking validation of the technology’s potential.

Quantum computing employs the intricate and interconnected tenets of quantum mechanics to solve big, complex problems that traditional computers are either too limited or too slow to handle. It is a fundamentally different way of processing information than the binary approach that currently underpins the world’s tech stack. “Quantum promises two things: It will speed things up, and it will also give you something completely unexpected,” explains Kristin Milchanowski, Chief Artificial Intelligence and Data Officer at BMO. “Classical computers follow a sequence of steps, flipping bits that are either on or off. Quantum computers operate by very different rules, those of quantum mechanics, which let them consider many connected possibilities at once. This opens the door not just to faster results, but to surprising ones, including progress on problems that classical machines have never been able to solve.” Advocates believe this capability can deliver breakthroughs beyond the scope of brains or bits.

Quantum computing is not especially new: Researchers have been pursuing the development of quantum machines and algorithms for decades, and companies like Canada’s D-Wave Quantum have been chipping away at commercialization for nearly as long. But recent advancements suggest the technology is nearly ready to burst out of the lab, quickly and at scale. The foundational science has been validated. Companies and institutions are working to adapt general-purpose prototypes into reliable, useful, and scalable machines. Some experts anticipate that the tipping point at which large, fault-tolerant quantum computers can reliably do what no computational machine has done before (a state known as quantum advantage) could come by the end of 2026, years earlier than even the most bullish predictions. “Industrial use of useful, scaled-up machines is happening a lot sooner than expected,” says Lisa Lambert, CEO of Quantum Industry Canada, a consortium of business stakeholders working to convert the country’s quantum potential into economic advantage. “There truly is a global race underway to develop these machines, and it’s really intensifying right now.”

Many experts believe Canada is well-positioned to lead this race, thanks to an auspicious triad of deep research prowess, strong government support, and promising industrial traction. “With all the advances that have taken place, this could be a made-in-Canada story,” says Barry Sanders, a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, where he is also Vice-president of the Research Office and Scientific Director of the Quantum City initiative. “The question is: How do we ensure that this outsized Canadian strength leads to great achievement?” 

It’s not a rhetorical inquiry: Canada was in a similarly favourable position ahead of the current AI boom, but has yet to fully reap the expected benefits of commercialization, which critics attribute to slow corporate uptake and an exodus of top talent, among other factors. The story can unfold differently with quantum computing, to potentially great economic and societal benefit, according to those active in the space. But in order to meet the moment, Canada has to be ready to leap.

A real opportunity

Here’s an incomplete list of what Canada has going for it on the quantum computing front. The country has produced exceptional quantum researchers, including Gilles Brassard, Richard Cleve, John Watrous, Jay Gambetta, along with Sanders, who has been doing pioneering quantum work for nearly 40 years. Canada is home to world-leading accelerators, including PINQ2 in Montreal (which helps companies reduce the risk of adopting quantum technologies) and the Toronto-headquartered Creative Destruction Lab (whose Quantum Stream attracts ventures from around the world). Plenty of Canadian companies are working to convert quantum’s potential into economic gain, including a high concentration of startups building out the technology (such as Xanadu Quantum Technologies, Photonic, and Nord Quantique) and large enterprises aiming to leverage it (such as BMO, which became the first Canadian bank to join the IBM Quantum Network this past February.) “Canada punches above its weight,” says Sanders. 

Practically, Canada is one of the few nations with both access to existing quantum computers and the capability of building more of them, thanks to the country’s prowess in advanced manufacturing, as well as its proficiency in related fields like AI, cryptography, and photonics. “There is a real opportunity for Canada to lead in the industrialization of quantum computing as we’re building out scaled-up systems,” Lambert says. “We’ve got the foundation across the supply chain to be a real contributor.” And doing so may also help crack one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing globally: The lagging development of useful applications to run on these rapidly evolving machines. “I would love to see Canada grasp the opportunity of using the hardware and software to which we have access to become a leader in algorithmic development,” explains Noelle Ibrahim, IBM’s Technical Client Advisory Executive for Quantum.“And from there, to leapfrog ahead to commercialization and delivering economic value.”

That economic value is potentially significant, and points to the fulsome scope of what Canada stands to gain from leading the quantum charge. By 2045, the National Research Council of Canada expects quantum to be a $140 billion industry responsible for upwards of 200,000 jobs, ranging from blue-collar technicians to PhD theorists. This boom could spark more innovation: Quantum is the kind of frontier technology capable of yielding countless spinoff developments, a sort of 21st-century spin on the sprawling inventive legacy of the deep R&D done by the early U.S. space program. And a strong Canadian presence in the quantum computing ecosystem could accelerate the discovery of solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the country today, including chronic illness, climate change, and defense.

One important note: While Canada is favourably poised to lead the next quantum computing frontier, it can’t own the space outright. “Quantum computing is too hard and too big a problem for one country to solve, even the U.S.,” says Sanders. “Collaborations, co-investments, co-development, and co-testing are all really important.” Canada has a history of meaningful contributions to large international partnerships that have dramatically advanced technology, he says, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland (to which Canada contributes equipment, expertise, and talent), for example, or the International Space Station (which is permanently affixed with the Canadarm2). “If we can get the political dimension solved, I expect Canada to be an important part of a successful multinational effort to build up quantum computers,” Sanders says. 

Even in the current fraught geopolitical moment, many of Canada’s quantum leaders have built strong relationships with their international counterparts that could power productive collaboration. “Borders are different for industry and technology than they are for governments,” says Lambert, who meets regularly with a consortium of her peers from other nations to trade notes and solve problems, most recently to map out the global value chains surrounding different quantum technologies. “We’ve got to bring everyone to the party to move this forward.”

A collaborative plan

The bigger challenge may lie within Canada’s borders. Many in the Canadian quantum computing space see the pursuit of the technology as a nation-building project. Yet aligning diverse stakeholders with different objectives around expensive, fragile technology that few people understand is easier said than done, especially in a country with a reputation for risk aversion. 

Experts say advancing quantum computing within Canada will require deep collaboration between three key groups of stakeholders: Researchers (to advance the technology and refine discoveries), governments (to develop sound policies that enable rapid development and to fund high-value programs), and industry (to apply innovations to real use cases and to translate that into economic value). In Milchanowski’s view, including the latter group in all discussions going forward will create a “critical bridge” between research and policy, interjecting the needs of the end users who will be most affected by the technology. “Quantum computing is a behemoth,” she says. “We need those voices at the table when the policy is being created and when the budgets are being allocated if we are going to capture the potential.” 

Canada’s ability to emerge as a leader in quantum hinges largely on getting more people more comfortable with the technology, especially those who may soon work with it. Momentum is building on that front, according to Ibrahim, who sees the benefits of developers and researchers working more closely with industry practitioners: “They’re the ones who best understand the bottlenecks in their workflows. They bring a unique perspective that enriches the field,” she says. “If we can focus on more industry outreach as a country, I think that would really set us ahead.” 

This kind of bridge-building is needed within organizations, too. Take the example of BMO: “We’re really excited to be on the cutting edge of quantum and we’re preparing ourselves for what’s next,” Milchanowski says. Her team runs a lab that is currently workshopping potential applications of quantum computing across the bank, from improving risk management to better predicting natural disasters like wildfires. Because BMO is a bank, prudence and patience underpin every aspect of this experimentation: “Ethical use and responsibility is at the forefront of everything we do,” she explains. “So we’re still in research mode. Nothing is leaving the lab yet.” But Milchanowski and her team are working with a broad range of internal stakeholders to ensure that when the moment is right, the bank and its people will be ready. “We are preparing our roadmap for interconnectivity [of quantum and classical computing], because when society reaches quantum advantage in the next year or two, we want to be poised to hit that advantage as well.” 

While Canada’s quantum computing future is, to a degree, as unpredictable as a qubit calculation, experts contend that if leaders in the space continue to increase people’s familiarity with the technology, improve organizational readiness to adopt it, and bolster connections between key players, the country will be able to strike fast when opportunity arrives. “Canada is poised to be a leader in this sector,” Milchanowski says. “We have the energy, we have the infrastructure, and we can get some real economic benefits from leaning in. We just have to work together.”

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