Polytechnique Montréal receives $50 million gift to create disruptive innovation hub

Pierre Lassonde speaks at an announcement, in Quebec City, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

MONTREAL — A Quebec-born businessman and philanthropist who is donating $50 million to a Montreal university to establish an institute dedicated to “disruptive innovation” says it has never been more important to invest in homegrown talent.

Pierre Lassonde’s donation to Polytechnique Montréal, to be officially announced at an event Monday, comes as Canada finds itself in the midst of a tariff war with the United States, its largest trading partner and ally.

Lassonde believes Canada had grown used to being dependent on the U.S., a relationship that U.S. President Donald Trump has turned on its head since he took office in January.

“It was an easy relationship. Well, it isn’t anymore and we have to wake up to that,” Lassonde said in an interview last week from his Toronto home.

“Never waste a good crisis … this is a good crisis, so let’s do something about it,” Lassonde added. “This hopefully will kick-start something even bigger. Every single moment matters and this one matters a great deal.”

Lassonde, a Polytechnique graduate and an expert in mining and precious metals, heads the school’s board of directors, and the family name already adorns a number of pavilions at the institution thanks to previous donations. The engineering school, which is affiliated with the Université de Montréal, described the $50 million as the largest gift in its history.

• Listen on CJAD 800 Radio: Meet the Quebec entrepreneur who donated $50 million to École Polytechnique

Lassonde said the idea formed as he roamed the labs and spoke to professors and students. He detected untapped potential, due in part to a lack of money. “We do have incredible brains at Polytechnique in terms of deep tech. We are in some respects at the very cutting edge of the domain,” he said. That’s why the new funding will be used to invest in those minds before they are recruited into the private sector.

Disruptive innovation is a process where a new product or service, often with a simpler or less sophisticated design, initially targets a specific market and then gradually or eventually replaces the existing product.

“None of it is going into bricks and mortar, it’s all about intellectual capital and about creating intellectual properties that will really be meaningful, that will create jobs, that will create economic activity, growth in Canada hopefully, and impact the world,” Lassonde said.

He also hopes to spur on others with the financial means to contribute toward the creation of forward-looking projects. Though Quebecers have in recent decades started “throwing their weight around” and giving more to higher education, he said more can be done.

“It’s a recurring issue in Canadian universities, simply because we don’t have the philanthropic model that the U.S. universities have,” Lassonde said.

Oussama Moutanabbir, a professor at Polytechnique, said the new institute’s main focus will be developing technologies to address immediate problems.

“Since the beginning of humanity, people develop technology based on what they have in hand and what they need, and that paradigm continues today. There are many universities and research labs doing the same thing,” Moutanabbir said.

“But Polytechnique has a commitment to focus on this innovation by tapping into new fundamental knowledge, so bridging the gap between the discovery and the application.”

Moutanabbir gives the example of medical imaging and cancer — developing technology that can detect the first small clusters of tumour cells that appear in the body and to test as many patients as possible.

Existing technology requires exposure to an X-ray with a high dose of radiation for people who are vulnerable, so the idea is to create a new tool that is smaller and can be operated with a much lower exposure. That involves going back to the drawing board.

“To address that challenge, we have to go to the fundamental nature of matter and manipulate it,” Moutanabbir said. “The institute would be focusing on these kind of problems … the driving force will always be to maximize the impact of academic research on society.”

Forward-looking also means the need to invest in young minds, Moutanabbir said. “The very precious resource that we need to focus on is really young scientists,” he said.

Lassonde said he is worried about recent measures that limit the number of international students coming to Quebec. Last month, the province announced it would issue 20 per cent fewer acceptance certificates to foreign students this year compared to last.

“I am very concerned about our ability … to attract the very best minds and bring them here,” Lassonde said, noting that two-thirds of doctoral candidates at Polytechnique are international students and there are not enough Quebecers to meet the demand.

“If that ability to attract them is cut off, it’s really like cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Lassonde said. “It’s going to be a terrible blow to our university programs.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 17, 2025.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press