Québec should concentrate on microelectronics and photonics to strengthen its world competitiveness.
Québec’s know-how industries are at a strategic turning level. On September 17, 2025, PRIMA Québec printed a landmark research titled “Developing Secure Microelectronic and Photonic Value Chains in Quebec”. Led by the SIA/Yole Group consortium, the evaluation highlights the particular niches the place the province can set up itself as a world chief whereas leveraging its crucial mineral and materials sources.
Sponsored by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie (MEIE), the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts (MRNF), the Technum Québec innovation zone, together with the Optonique and Industrie des systèmes électroniques du Québec (ISEQ) centres of excellence, the research represents a major milestone for Québec’s industrial and scientific technique. It supplies an in depth portrait of the Québec and worldwide ecosystems, providing concrete avenues the place companies and establishments can strengthen their competitiveness in an ever-changing world context.
A complete strategic overview
The research supplies an in depth evaluation of your complete microelectronic and photonic worth chain, two sectors that stay important for strategic industries like vitality, aerospace, electrical autos, defence, and life sciences. Greater than 85 minerals and supplies utilized in these sectors had been surveyed and evaluated. Amongst them, 15 had been recognized as both crucial or strategic for Québec’s pursuits.
Every market section was analysed in keeping with 4 standards: technological overview, market prospects, the stakeholders concerned, and Québec’s positioning. Vital minerals had been additionally analysed with regard to their geopolitical context, export restrictions, financial vulnerabilities, in addition to their native potential by way of manufacturing, refining, and recycling. The rigorous methodology was based mostly on a research that features over 150 publications and greater than 20 interviews with industrial and institutional specialists, offering a complete overview of the alternatives and challenges confronted by the province.
Seven themes to information the long run
The evaluation recognized seven key themes to information the province’s industrial and scientific technique. These levers can stimulate innovation and strengthen competitiveness whereas guaranteeing sustainable growth for the sectors concerned.
The primary theme entails crucial mineral sources, whose availability and safety are essential when sustaining native worth chains. Québec enjoys privileged entry to sure strategic minerals; in keeping with the research, this benefit ought to be optimised by way of proactive planning and focused investments.
The second theme focuses on worth chain integration and requires higher collaboration between researchers, producers, and consumer industries in an effort to safe native manufacturing and enhance resilience to world disruptions.
The third theme targets collaborative analysis and growth. Partnerships between universities, analysis centres, and companies can be utilized to speed up innovation whereas offering internationally aggressive options.
The fourth theme centres across the restoration of mining residues, together with the usage of the “city mines” that stem from digital and industrial waste. This strategy belongs to a round economic system imaginative and prescient that may cut back the province’s dependence on imports whereas limiting environmental impacts.
The fifth theme entails industrial upscaling. A number of rising applied sciences in microelectronics and photonics seem promising, however large-scale manufacturing stays a problem. Industrial planning, in addition to investments within the acceptable infrastructures, is crucial when reworking innovation into industrial success.
The sixth theme requires the creation of nationwide and worldwide strategic alliances. In a world context marked by protectionism and the focus of crucial minerals in particular international locations, alliances will help safe sources and broaden Québec’s entry to worldwide markets.
Lastly, the seventh theme entails the event of a tradition that promotes synergy between sectors. Encouraging collaboration between business and science results in a extra resilient and dynamic ecosystem that may reply shortly to adjustments in world markets.
A world context that calls for motion
In accordance with the report, the present worldwide context requires a brand new perspective relating to provide chains and industrial methods. Rising protectionism and the management of crucial minerals and supplies by sure international locations pose vital dangers to strategic industries, however additionally they present enterprise alternatives for areas that may safe and combine their manufacturing capabilities on the native stage.
On this context, microelectronics and photonics can play a central function in lots of industrial sectors. Digital and energy-related applied sciences depend on particular supplies and complicated processes that require scientific experience, industrial innovation, and vertical integration. Québec is house to those property, with its modern industrial material, recognised experience, and privileged entry to sure strategic sources.
A technique to stimulate innovation and create enterprise alternatives
“Québec has every little thing it must play a major function within the world vitality and digital transition,” says Marie-Pierre Ippersiel, President and CEO at PRIMA Québec. “By highlighting the potential behind our microelectronic and photonic sectors, together with our strategic minerals and supplies, the research identifies niches that may stimulate innovation, create enterprise alternatives, and place our firms and researchers as leaders on the worldwide stage.”
This imaginative and prescient depends upon collaboration between the economic and scientific stakeholders concerned, in addition to our potential to safe sources and promote native improvements. Right here, the report factors to ‘Ambition 2035,’ a concrete roadmap that may assist Québec consolidate its place in world markets whereas growing sustainable and aggressive options.
PRIMA Québec, a catalyst for collaborative innovation
PRIMA Québec performs a central function in facilitating and supporting the superior supplies ecosystem. By selling collaborative innovation, the organisation brings collectively researchers, companies, and public companions in an effort to stimulate Québec’s financial growth. By way of authorities and personal sector help, PRIMA Québec has develop into a driving drive behind strategic alliances, technological experimentation, and the dissemination of experience.
Not solely does this strategy assist Québec firms strengthen their competitiveness, nevertheless it additionally permits them to play an energetic function in world technological transformations. The evolving microelectronics and photonics sector supplies fertile floor for innovation, worth creation, and the consolidation of a round economic system that leverages native sources whereas minimising environmental impacts.
Strengthening our world positioning
The research highlights Québec’s potential to develop into a frontrunner in rising microelectronics and photonics applied sciences. By mobilising native sources, expertise, and infrastructures, the province can additional safe and combine its worth chains whereas assembly the worldwide want for strategic applied sciences.
The event of crucial minerals, collaborative R&D investments, and the strengthening of strategic alliances stay important when reworking technological potential into financial success. Private and non-private stakeholders should subsequently seize these alternatives to stimulate innovation whereas strengthening Québec’s function on the worldwide stage.
By combining scientific experience, industrial innovation, and accountable provide methods, Québec will place itself as a mannequin of sustainable and aggressive technological growth that may reply to world challenges whereas selling native prosperity.
Please observe, this text may even seem within the twenty fifth version of our quarterly publication.
