Information and communications technologies (ICT) — writ large — remain the most potent tools in the arsenal of any country seeking to improve its global competitive standing. As platform technologies that cut across virtually every research discipline, the health of a nation’s ICT both in terms of development and deployment, are essential and must be afforded priority status in any national or provincial S&T policy.

As the population ages, Canadian neuroscience research is quickly moving up the priority ranking with significant new funding to confront the impending surge in brain-related diseases. Federal and provincial schemes to advance the research field and associated technologies come after years of foot-dragging, and not a moment too soon.

The aggregate data on Canada’s innovation performance may be cause for concern, but that isn’t stopping individual universities and companies from leveraging the excellent talent and research being generated in this country.

They came from the opposite ends of the debate but were united in their contention that Canada desperately needs an industrial innovation policy. At the recent RE$EARCH MONEY Conference, Drs Adam Chowaniec and Richard Hawkins faced off on the merits of whether future science, technology and innovation policy should focus on the needs of start-up companies.

Will high tech innovation be the saviour of North America’s inner cities? A new study by urban theorist Dr Richard Florida contends that it is, at least in the US. The Univ of Toronto-based researcher tracked the recent flow of US venture capital and found that more is going into the core of major city regions than the suburbs, where high-tech research parks have traditionally gravitated towards.

Nortel Networks Corp is back in the news. An ambitious study by researchers at the Univ of Ottawa has raised Canada’s greatest high-tech success story — and failure — from the dead to determine what lessons can be learned from one of the greatest corporate collapses in the nation’s history.

The Jenkins report looms large over the federal government’s investment decisions in R&D and innovation and to date the results are decidedly mixed. With a stay-the-course Budget likely to make little difference in enhancing the outcomes in private sector R&D that Canada desperately needs to compete, all eyes are on money already invested in the system.

This year’s Budget was not preceded with much expectation. With the government gearing up for an election in 2015, the Finance minister’s economic blueprint for the next fiscal year was expected to be relatively bereft of any significant spending increases.

Talk about pressure. As the federal government considers submissions to the updating of its S&T Strategy, critics of its seven-year track record and innovation are coming out of the woodwork. Whether they’re partisan attacks from the opposition or expressions of frustration by government and academic scientists, environmentalists or industry associations, the criticism has been withering, unrelenting.

What’s in a name or turn of phrase? Quite a lot if you’re the Conservative Party of Canada. In recent official documents and party fundraising literature, variations on the phase Seizing the Moment have begun sprouting up like veritable mushrooms.