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The federal government’s mishandling of a proposed HIV manufacturing facility has prompted a Parliamentary committee to recommend that all future competitions be run by arms-length federal research agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) or the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Businesses in Quebec have an overwhelmingly positive impression of the province’s universities and see them as a critical source of talent. Of the 204 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) surveyed in August, 94% commended Quebec universities for their teaching quality and cited internships as the most common means of collaboration over the past three years.

CANARIE Inc is positioning itself as a critical tool for turning around Canada’s flagging information and communications technology (ICT) sector with the introduction of an innovation test bed allowing for companies to trial new products and services essential for improving ICT competitiveness.

Aligned with Digital Economy Strategy

A proposal to align Precarn activities with those of the forthcoming Digital Economy Strategy (DES) is being seen as a last-ditch attempt to save the 23-year-old collaborative R&D program from extinction.

Federal spending on S&T managed to stay slightly ahead of inflation in FY10-11 with a 3.5% increase to $11.7 billion while R&D enjoyed a similar increase (3.3%) to $7.4 billion, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.

Behind every successful innovative company is an R&D strategy to match and Open text Corp is no exception. The Waterloo ON-based developer of enterprise content management (ECM) software has grown into a globally competitive firm poised to capitalize on the explosion in social media and their uptake in the business and government sectors.

A high-level group of six business and academic leaders will take one year to come up with a slate of concrete recommendations on how the federal government can better allocate and direct the $7 billion it provides in support of business R&D and innovation.

Small businesses once again will have a program that offers the opportunity to use the federal government to test and validate innovative new products and services. As announced in Budget 2010, the federal government is launching its pilot $40-million, two-year Canadian Innovation and Commercialization Program (CICP) to purchase and beta test products and services and provide smaller firms with their critical first customer.

A blue-ribbon panel of leaders from industry and academia have released a highly proscriptive action plan for improving Canadian innovation without requiring new public spending or tax cuts. Recognizing there is little appetite among deficit-ridden governments for new spending, the Coalition for Action on Innovation in Canada (CAIC) lists a series of steps that can be taken over the next 12 months to realign existing resources and remove obstacles to innovation.

A fledgling organization devoted to informing elected officials and others on key science issues is hoping that a pilot report on biodiversity will generate sufficient funding to staff and run the operation on a permanent basis.