Ontario spent tens of millions of dollars to establish a quantum computing institute in Waterloo as a world-leading research hub. But industry watchers worry the province could squander its head start after the Ford government let its funding for the institute lapse.

Quantum computing is still an emerging technology, but has attracted enormous attention and eye-popping investment because it has the potential to outstrip the capabilities of today’s fastest supercomputers. Last week, Google announced a major milestone: “quantum supremacy.” Its quantum processor crunched a difficult calculation in just 200 seconds, a task it claimed a regular supercomputer would need 10,000 years to complete.

Ontario invested early and big in this field. The University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing was founded in 2002 with a record-setting philanthropic donation and support from both the federal and provincial governments. It has since attracted some of the world’s top quantum science talent and is often cited for its leading research.

The federal Liberal government recently reinvested in the institute, promising $15 million over three years.

Ontario’s Conservative government, however, allocated no operational funding for the Institute for Quantum Computing for the current fiscal year.

In March, a five-year, $25 million operational funding deal established by the previous provincial Liberal government came to an end, and was not replaced. The institute continues to draw support from federal and industry sources, and a spokesperson says it still receives grants from the province for individual researchers, though the province could not confirm how much.

“It strikes me as a missed opportunity,” says Andrew Fursman, CEO and co-founder of 1QBit, a Vancouver-based quantum computing software company, and a fellow in the Creative Destruction Lab’s quantum incubator program in Toronto.

“Part of the reason why Canada is on the map for quantum computing is because of the investment that was made in IQC so many years ago. ... that was a really impressive bit of foresight on behalf of the people who set up and founded and funded that institute in the early days,” says Fursman.

The British Columbia government just committed $17 million over five years to launch a new Quantum Algorithms Institute at Simon Fraser University. Quebec has a quantum institute too. The Trump administration just promised $1.2 billion (U.S.) for quantum research, and China is spending $400 million on a national quantum lab.

“The worse case scenario is that some of the interest starts to shift from Ontario to other regions, because of the change or perceived change in support from the government in this area,” says Fursman.

“There was such an early and prescient investment in Ontario. So it’s really sort of theirs to lose.”

A spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade said “Our priority is to balance the need to help Ontario job creators with our overarching goal of respecting taxpayers’ money.”

“The government continues to work with and support the tech sector — because when our job creators thrive, our communities thrive.”

In May, the Star reported that the Ford government cut $20 million from the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and $4 million annually from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), which supports a hub of AI-focused computer scientists. The premier was booed at a major tech conference soon after.

The Star also reported that the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine was told its provincial funding would not be renewed when it runs out in 2020. The institute’s mission is to translate stem cell advances achieved in the laboratory into functional clinical therapies.

“When a pattern of defunding research emerges — or even a perception of defunding — it can be hard to market the province to leading researchers and businesses,” says Daniel Munro, a senior fellow in the innovation policy lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Decisions like this are easier to accept if the government provides a clear rationale, Munro adds, but that has so far been unclear. In fact, the stem cell institute was in the midst of a government-mandated external review when its funding was cut, which ultimately concluded “strongly in favour of a funding renewal,” according to a spokesperson.

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The Institute for Quantum Computing was founded in 2002 with a $100 million donation from BlackBerry Ltd. founder Mike Lazaridis. The governments of Ontario and Canada have both been major funding partners: federal agencies contributed more than $115 million between the institute’s inception and 2014, and the province kicked in nearly $75 million over that same period.

“Governments play an important role in building fundamental research, and helping train the people who take the fundamental research and commercialize it,” says Avi Goldfarb, chief data scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab and a professor at the Rotman School of Management.

Though the economic potential of quantum computing is still unknown because it’s still an emerging technology, the Toronto-Waterloo area is a leader in the commercialization of quantum research, and IQC is a key player, Goldfarb added.

“Thanks to the support from the university, our private donors and the government, we’ve been able to build something exceptional here,” says Kevin Resch, executive director of IQC.

“We will continue to work with the Ontario government going foward, and I hope at one point in time we will be able to get funding from them again.”