Follow on from new 20-year plan

Alberta has completed a high-level alignment of industrial priorities and government policy with the release of a new value-added strategy in which S&T, R&D and innovation figure prominently. Led by the Ministry of Economic Development and the Alberta Economic Development Authority (AEDA), Securing Tomorrow’s Prosperity: Sustaining the Alberta Advantage, could set in motion the first innovation-fuelled strategy in a province long associated with raw natural resources and an aversion towards providing public assistance to the private sector.

The latter ideologically driven tenant will likely remain in place as the government emphasizes that the new strategy “does not propose direct funding to individual businesses”. But backers of the innovative use of S&T in the realm of economic development appear to have succeeded in carving out a Made-in-Alberta approach that holds considerable promise and, more importantly, has the support of provincial political leaders.

The strategy confines the public role to that of skills training, infrastructure support, mentoring and industry-driven, pre-competitive research through the Alberta Research Council, other provincial research organizations and an emerging collection of targeted institutes. The government’s new 20-year plan serves as the strategy’s foundation. Released as part of its Budget announcements in March, it envisions Alberta in 2025 as a jurisdiction in which knowledge and technology are dominant economic drivers.

The strategy has a duel focus of enhancing sectors driven by knowledge and science – manufacturing, technology, business services and tourism — and leveraging them to increase the economic potential of Alberta’s powerful resource-based sectors, including energy.

“The aim is to see Alberta’s companies progressively add more value to goods made, grown or extracted here through resources upgrading, reprocessing, manufacturing or adding knowledge in order to adopt and commercialize new products, services and technologies,” the strategy states.

Many initiatives are being contemplated to implement the strategy, and some are already coming on stream. Among those announced or close to fruition is a new Innovation Program, providing $33 million over three years to encourage economic innovation and improve service delivery. The government also plans to increase the provincial presence of Forintek Canada Corp, boost support of TRLab’s Network for Emerging Wireless Technology (NEWT), expand both the Northern and Southern Alberta Institutes of Technology and assist the Canadian Environmental Technology Advancement Corp with its objective of commercializing environmental technologies.

TWO REVIEWS PENDING

The strategy also announces the government’s intention undertake two major reviews. A review of costs relating to major capital projects is already underway in conjunction with AEDA, and a policy review is about to commence to identify “ways to improve access to capital and improve technology adoption and commercialization”.

“The government approach up to now has been a low, broad-based taxation policy and a competitive business environment for profitable companies,” says Victor Doerksen, minister of Innovation and Science. “But for pre-profit companies and companies that are just starting up, this approach doesn’t help. Our focus with this strategy is access to capital and support for innovation.”

Doerksen is noncommittal on whether the strategy’s policy thrusts will be accompanied with new money. The document states that its implementation could include refocusing current expenditures and committing new funds “where there is a clear potential for a return on the investment”. Work in the near term will focus on setting targets and developing benchmarks to track progress.

“Within the resources we have for research, we have said we have three million people and there’s more than seven billion on the planet. We have to use the money we have in priority areas,” he says. “We’ll develop specifics to target government money towards the innovation agenda. South Korea has set a target of five percent spending on innovation and the European Union has set three percent. We’re developing a policy to move to our own target. We haven’t set it yet but three percent is a good barometer.”

Innovation spending is clearly preferred to gauge progress according to gross expenditures on R&Das a percentage of GDP. Alberta’s provincial GDP is hovering around 1%, compared to 1.88% nationally in 2002. One reason is the province’s booming economy, which doubled over the past 10 years.

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