It’s not a new issue and it isn’t very sexy, but brain drain and the efforts of governments and companies to combat it remains a very real challenge for Canada. It was therefore highly informative and encouraging to hear the experience of one Canadian who returned to this country after 20 years in the US and the reasons behind his decision.

You can almost smell it in the air. The use of tax incentives to stimulate private sector R&D spending is about to change as governments re-evaluate their effectiveness and place in the larger suite of incentives linked to innovation and economic growth.

The disturbing downward trend in the high-tech sector hasn’t slowed down the efforts of government to stimulate growth of the knowledge-based economy. Not yet. In the short term at least, there’s no need to connect the two, but if shrinkage in the New Economy sectors continues apace, governments may be tempted to rebuff new initiatives, particularly within their own departments and ministries.

As this week’s lead story demonstrates, the MARS proposal is an illuminating example of a private sector initiative that is striving to build the innovative capacity of the Canadian economy. As governments have been repeating for years now, the private sector has a pivotal role to play in transforming the nation into a competitive player in the global knowledge-based economy.

Will they or won’t they? That seems to be the question of the moment for the predicted June release of the much-anticipated Industry Canada White Paper on innovation. After a long period without any substantive science and technology policy documents, many are hoping that the White Paper will outline the federal government’s plans to push the economy into the 21st Century (see page 4).

Budget or no Budget, the month of March marks the end of the government’s fiscal year and it’s producing some very good news for Canadian science and technology (S&T). Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Networks of Centres of Excellence have all received major cash infusions.

It’s getting more difficult by the day to seriously question the contention that the 21st Century belongs to biotechnology. Judging by the level of activity so far this year, it seems that every sector of society and every level of government is jumping on the biotech band wagon to avoid missing a window of opportunity and losing out to some other jurisdiction.

With the throne speech come and gone many in the S&T community are still in a holding pattern, waiting to see what the next federal moves will be in its strategy to build an innovative economy. Despite an elaborate advisory system and fiscal flexibility, there have been few concrete indications of how the government plans to fulfill the lofty commitments it has made in recent months.

There will be more than a few interested bystanders listening to this week’s Speech From the Throne to hear whether the government will provide any clues about its plans for new science, technology and research initiatives.

The latest numbers on total R&D spending from Statistics Canada forcefully demonstrate the difficulties facing the federal government in meeting its ambitious targets on raising the R&D intensity of the nation.