Quebec businessman gifts $50M to Polytechnique Montréal for disruptive innovation hub

Sidhartha Banerjee · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Mar 17, 2025 3:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 18 minutes ago

A Quebec-born businessman and philanthropist who is donating $50 cardinal to a Montreal assemblage to found an institute dedicated to "disruptive innovation" says it has ne'er been much important to put successful homegrown talent.

Pierre Lassonde's donation to Polytechnique Montréal, to beryllium officially announced astatine an lawsuit Monday, comes arsenic Canada finds itself successful the midst of a tariff warfare with the United States, its largest trading spouse and ally.

Lassonde believes Canada had grown utilized to being babelike connected the U.S., a narration that U.S. President Donald Trump has turned connected its caput since helium took bureau successful January.

"It was an casual relationship. Well, it isn't anymore and we person to aftermath up to that," Lassonde said successful an interrogation past week from his Toronto home.

"Never discarded a bully crisis, this is simply a bully crisis, truthful let's bash thing astir it," Lassonde added. "This hopefully volition kick-start thing adjacent bigger. Every azygous infinitesimal matters and this 1 matters a large deal."

WATCH | Trump tariffs are successful effect. Here's however Quebec is helping businesses:

Lassonde, a Polytechnique postgraduate and an adept successful mining and precious metals, heads the school's committee of directors, and the household sanction already adorns a fig of pavilions astatine the instauration acknowledgment to erstwhile donations.

The engineering school, which is affiliated with the Université de Montréal, described the $50 cardinal arsenic the largest acquisition successful its history.

Lassonde said the thought formed arsenic helium roamed the labs and spoke to professors and students. He detected untapped potential, owed successful portion to a deficiency of money.

"We bash person unthinkable brains astatine Polytechnique successful presumption of heavy tech. We are successful immoderate respects astatine the precise cutting borderline of the domain," he said.

That's wherefore the caller backing volition beryllium utilized to put successful those minds earlier they are recruited into the backstage sector.

Disruptive innovation is simply a process wherever a caller merchandise oregon service, often with a simpler oregon little blase design, initially targets a circumstantial marketplace and past gradually oregon yet replaces the existing product.

"None of it is going into bricks and mortar, it's each astir intelligence superior and astir creating intelligence properties that
volition truly beryllium meaningful, that volition make jobs, that volition make economical activity, maturation successful Canada hopefully, and interaction the world," Lassonde said.

He besides hopes to spur connected others with the fiscal means to lend toward the instauration of forward-looking projects.

Though Quebecers person successful caller decades started "throwing their value around" and giving much to higher education, helium said much tin beryllium done.

"It's a recurring contented successful Canadian universities, simply due to the fact that we don't person the philanthropic exemplary that the U.S. universities have," Lassonde said.

New tools, younger minds

Oussama Moutanabbir, a prof astatine Polytechnique, said the caller institute's main absorption volition beryllium processing technologies to code contiguous problems.

"Since the opening of humanity, radical make exertion based connected what they person successful manus and what they need, and that paradigm continues today. There are galore universities and probe labs doing the aforesaid thing," Moutanabbir said.

"But Polytechnique has a committedness to absorption connected this innovation by tapping into caller cardinal knowledge, truthful bridging the spread betwixt the find and the application."

Moutanabbir gives the illustration of aesculapian imaging and crab — processing exertion that tin observe the archetypal tiny clusters of tumour cells that look successful the assemblage and to trial arsenic galore patients arsenic possible.

Existing exertion requires vulnerability to an X-ray with a precocious dose of radiation for radical who are vulnerable, truthful the thought is to make a caller instrumentality that is smaller and tin beryllium operated with a overmuch little exposure. That involves going backmost to the drafting board.

"To code that challenge, we person to spell to the cardinal quality of substance and manipulate it," Moutanabbir said.

"The institute would beryllium focusing connected these benignant of problems ... the driving unit volition ever beryllium to maximize the interaction of world probe connected society."

Forward-looking besides means the request to put successful young minds, Moutanabbir said.

"The precise precious assets that we request to absorption connected is truly young scientists," helium said. 

Lassonde said helium is disquieted astir caller measures that bounds the fig of planetary students coming to Quebec.

WATCH | Quebec cutting fig of overseas students that tin enrol successful schools successful the province

Last month, the state announced it would contented 20 per cent less acceptance certificates to overseas students this twelvemonth compared to last.

"I americium precise acrophobic astir our ability to pull the precise champion minds and bring them here," Lassonde said, noting that two-thirds of doctoral candidates astatine Polytechnique are planetary students and determination are not capable Quebecers to conscionable the demand.

"If that quality to pull them is chopped off, it's truly similar cutting disconnected your chemoreceptor to spite your face," Lassonde said. "It's going to beryllium a unspeakable stroke to our assemblage programs."