Article Type: Generic

Core businesses, research themes established

The National Research Council (NRC) isn’t likely to figure prominently in the upcoming federal Budget but that doesn’t mean the organization has stopped planning for the future.

By Debbie Lawes

Canada’s poor commercialization track record, combined with a virtual collapse in venture capital financing, has put the onus on governments and research granting agencies to find news ways to encourage more companies —particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) —to become more innovative through research and development.

Scheduled for completion in Spring

The federal government is moving to stimulate Canada’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector prior to launching its digital economy strategy (DES) in the spring of 2011, with several regulatory and minor funding initiatives.

Researchers funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) have prepared papers compiling relevant knowledge for consideration in the Digital Economy Strategy (DES) strategy when it’s released early next year.

Deloitte & Touche report

The Canadian aerospace industry will require significant increases in public and private R&D if it is to maintain or increase its global market share in the face of increasing competition from established and emerging markets, says a major new report commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC).

Ontario is rolling out a network of 14 Regional Innovation Centres (RICs) as part of a realignment of its innovation support programs in the hopes of advancing company development and attracting scarce investments dollars.

The Ontario government is providing $15 million to seed a public-private initiative to make Ontario one of the top centres for neuroscience research and commercialization in the world. The provincial funding over three years will establish the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) on the recommendation of an elite group of backers that envisions a worldclass centre of brain research with an annual operating budget of $100 million.

By Debbie Lawes

Tens of millions of dollars, a comprehensive strategy and national standards are needed to re-build Canada’s capacity in taxonomy research, which has slipped significantly over the past three decades compared to other countries, concludes a new report commissioned by Canadian Heritage for the Museum of Nature.

The Alberta Centre for Advanced MNT Products (ACAMP) has secured its third investment from Western Economic Diversification (WD) in as many years, helping the fee-for-service organization establish itself as a key commercialization agent in the province’s nascent microelectronics and nanotechnology (MNT) sector.

Radical re-think required

The public cost of supporting biopharmaceutical R&D in Canada far exceeds the value added that companies contribute to the economy due to innovation policies that are “a total failure”, says a new report.