Industry Canada’s forthcoming update of the 2007 S&T Strategy provides an ideal opportunity to address the policies underlying the nation’s anemic innovation performance. A foresight report released for limited circulation last year suggests there’s much work to do.

Industry Canada and its agencies are moving the innovation yardsticks with initiatives that could have a significant positive impact on Canada’s competitiveness and productivity. Two initiatives were announced in recent days, responding to government-appointed expert panels calling for better support of innovative small businesses and the space sector.

Industry Canada and its agencies are moving the innovation yardsticks with initiatives that could have a significant positive impact on Canada’s competitiveness and productivity. Two initiatives were announced in recent days, responding to government-appointed expert panels calling for better support of innovative small businesses and the space sector.

Initial details on the pending update to the 2007 federal S&T Strategy suggest that, rather than a substantive shift in current policy, the new framework will be more modest in scope (see page 3). Much will have changed in the seven years between the original strategy and the 2014 unveiling of the new document and we can expect those shifts in the domestic and international innovation ecosystem to be addressed.

Canada’s corporate R&D leaders had a good year in 2012, despite the lingering impact of the economic downturn and charges of cash hoarding. According to the latest data from Research Infosource, the Top 100 firms ramped up their spending by 12.

Compare and contrast the processes for the just-released Quebec Research and Innovation Strategy with the recently announced updating of the federal Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy. You’d be hard pressed to find a more glaring example of bottom-up versus top-down planning.

Quebec’s high-profile weighting of research and innovation in its new $2-billion jobs strategy is yet another example of the province’s enlightened policy environment. is an aggressive, holistic approach for tackling persistent problems in the provincial economy that include high debt levels, sagging productivity and an unemployment level above the national average.

The difficulties companies face when trying to access and utilize academic research is seen as one of the central weaknesses in the Canadian innovation system. Hopefully that is beginning to change with a handful of new strategies being adopted by research institutions emerging across the country.

A reasonable case can be made that Canada’s economic fundamentals are sound and bode well for future prosperity. Yet an equally sold argument can be formulated showing that weak innovation and productivity stemming (in part) from anemic industrial R&D (IR&D) are a recipe for economic stagnation.

Is Canada fully aware of the importance of embracing advanced manufacturing (AM)? Growing anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s not.

As the world’s developed economies seek ways to retain their brain power and economic muscle, AM is increasingly being viewed as a key driver in developing advanced economies in the face of increasing competition from emerging nations.

Is Canada fully aware of the importance of embracing advanced manufacturing (AM)? Growing anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s not.

As the world’s developed economies seek ways to retain their brain power and economic muscle, AM is increasingly being viewed as a key driver in developing advanced economies in the face of increasing competition from emerging nations.

While it’s premature to judge the wisdom of the government’s S&T-related Cabinet appointments, the selection of MP Greg Rickford as the new junior minister of state for science and technology will likely do little to raise the profile of research and innovation.