Simon Raby is Associate Professor, Entrepreneurship, at Mount Royal University.

I was recently contacted by the U.K.’s Innovation Research Caucus, on behalf of the Economic and Social Research Council, with what seemed like a straightforward task: explain how Canada gathers data and insight to inform research and innovation (R&I) policy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent Davos speech captured the current moment starkly: middle powers must act together because “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

That same logic applies domestically. Without a coherent innovation system – strategy, stewardship and a shared scoreboard – Canada’s “nation-building” ambitions risk becoming expensive activity without durable advantage.

Talking with senior figures from across our system, and revisiting nearly two decades of Canadian assessments, I was left with a more uncomfortable conclusion: Canada is data-rich, but strategy-poor. We are building nation-shaping projects on an R&I foundation we have never properly designed.

On the surface, Canada looks serious about evidence.

Statistics Canada produces high-quality R&D and innovation data. The federal granting councils, Canada Foundation for Innovation, National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program, Mitacs and others hold detailed administrative datasets.

The Council of Canadian Academies has delivered rigorous “State of Science & Technology” and “State of Industrial R&D” assessments.

Independent actors, from the Canadian Science Policy Centre to Higher Education Strategy Associates, add sharp system analysis.

On the infrastructure side, CANARIE, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, and the Canadian Research Data Centre Network provide world-class digital backbones and secure data access that enable cutting-edge, data-intensive research.

If the question is, “Do we have data?”, the answer is yes.

But if the question is, “Do we have a coherent picture of a research and innovation system and how well it works?”, the answer from those closest to it is no.

Data is fragmented across organisations with different mandates. Much of what we capture is still R&D-centric: expenditures, patents, publications. We know far less, in any systematic way, about adoption, diffusion, scale-up, mission-driven innovation, public and social innovation, or the conditions that turn Canadian ideas into jobs, exports and productivity at home.

Multiple experts I spoke with put it bluntly: Canada has an R&D funding system, but not a clearly articulated research and innovation policy.

No single steward, no shared scoreboard

Unlike the UK Research and Innovation’s Research and Innovation architecture, Canada has no unified framework for monitoring and evaluating the performance of its R&I system.

Instead, we have:

• Program-by-program performance regimes driven by Treasury Board’s Policy on Results – heavy on inputs, activities and compliance; light on system learning and impact.
• Episodic system diagnostics, CCA reports, blue-ribbon panels such as those led by David Naylor and Frédéric Bouchard – technically strong, but structurally optional.
• A patchwork of provincial strategies (Quebec stands out positively), agency dashboards, and one-off evaluations.

Everyone measures something. No one owns the whole.

The deeper problem is accountability: when responsibility is diffuse, underperformance carries few consequences, and mediocrity becomes the system’s default equilibrium.

The Bouchard report, commissioned by the federal government itself, could not be clearer: Canada lacks a long-term science, research and innovation strategy and an independent advisory body to track progress against it.

The CCA is constrained from making explicit recommendations. The Science, Technology and Innovation Council, once tasked with benchmarking national performance, was dissolved and never truly replaced.

We are flying without a proper instrument panel, while insisting the plane is fine.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Canada’s research and innovation landscape has always been shaped by deep structural features of our economy and our federation: regional specialization, shared jurisdiction over education and economic development, and long-standing reliance on a small number of resource and branch-plant industries.

Federal and provincial policies, and the mandates of agencies like the granting councils and regional development bodies, have been layered over these realities in an effort to compensate for inherent weaknesses.

But 2025’s geopolitical and economic shocks – from tariffs to rising protectionism – have exposed how incomplete and fragile that patchwork really is.

The Budget 2025 paradox

This might sound academic were it not for the moment we are in. In a world of tariff shocks, economic coercion and renewed industrial policy, innovation capacity is no longer a “nice to have” – it is part of strategic autonomy.

Ottawa has framed Budget 2025 around “nation-building” and “generational investments,” infrastructure, housing, clean energy, productivity, defence, critical minerals and innovation. Billions are being reallocated and justified in the language of long-term competitiveness.

Yet Canada is making these choices without the very thing such investments demand: a clear, evidence-anchored view of where we can and should lead, how our R&I system is performing over time, and which levers reliably turn public spending into national advantage.

We know the headlines. Our researchers punch above their weight. Our business R&D and productivity performance do not.

The CCA’s Paradox Lost report described this more than a decade ago. Subsequent reports have repeated the diagnosis. So have independent analysts. The trajectory has not meaningfully shifted.

When the same weaknesses are documented, calmly, for 15 to 20 years, the problem is no longer insight. It is governance.

Six questions Canada can’t keep dodging

Engaging with U.K. colleagues only sharpened the contrast. Put plainly: Canada has a disparate collection of innovation programs, not a designed innovation system. If Canada wants to be taken seriously as a global innovation nation, and to get value from Budget 2025’s rhetoric and risk, it needs to confront at least six questions. 

1. What is our R&I system for?
   We lack a durable national strategy that connects research excellence, industrial policy, climate and energy transitions, Indigenous reconciliation, health, security and inclusive growth into a coherent set of missions. Without that, “innovation” remains an empty justification rather than a disciplined choice.
2. Who speaks for the system?
   Any credible answer has to reckon with federal-provincial dynamics: provinces control key policy levers, but without a shared national framework and forum, responsibility for stewarding the system as a whole falls between the cracks. No permanent, independent body is mandated to integrate data from Statistics Canada, the granting councils, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, National Research Council, provinces and others; to assess portfolio-level performance; and to report publicly on how Canada is doing. Bouchard’s recommendation for such an advisory body should not sit on the shelf. 
3. Where is the shared scoreboard?
   We need a small, agreed set of system-level indicators, co-developed with researchers, industry, Indigenous partners and provinces, that track capabilities, connectivity, inclusion, adoption and impact, not just spending and publications. Right now, each organization plays its own game, keeps its own stats, and declares its own victory.
4. How do we move from audit to learning?
   Treasury Board requirements ensure money is tracked. They do not ensure that we understand which combinations of grants, tax incentives, infrastructure, procurement, regulation and place-based initiatives actually work. Canada should invite – and fund –serious “research on research and innovation,” as others are doing, and wire the findings into decision-making.
5. How do we recognize all of innovation?
   Service innovation, digital adoption, organizational change, public sector innovation, social and Indigenous innovation are under-measured yet central to our future. A 21^st century innovation strategy cannot treat these as afterthoughts.
6. Who is accountable for acting on what we already know?
   We have no shortage of credible diagnoses. The accountability gap lies in implementation. Without clear responsibility at the centre, every report is “noted with thanks” and life goes on.

Why this matters now

Canada is not short of talent, ideas, or goodwill. But we are competing in a world where other countries are aligning their R&I systems tightly with national missions – energy transition, health resilience, technological sovereignty – and building robust analytical capacity to steer those systems.

By contrast, we continue to:

• diffuse responsibility across multiple agencies without a strong centre.
• under-utilize excellent data and independent analysis.
• treat “innovation” as a narrative device rather than a managed system.

The risk is simple: we will spend big and still fall behind – on productivity, on clean growth, on technological capability, on providing opportunities for the next generation – because we never did the hard institutional work of deciding what success looks like and how we will know if we are getting there.

The work for the U.K.’s Innovation Research Caucus was meant to help another country think about its analytical capacity. It left me with the conviction that Canada urgently needs to get its own house in order.

If Budget 2025 is truly about building the next generation of Canadian prosperity, then one of the smartest investments we could make is not another program or tax credit, but a credible, independent, enduring backbone for research and innovation governance – strategy, data, evaluation and accountability – equal to the stakes we keep claiming.

Until then, we remain what our own evidence has been telling us for years: a country with world-class researchers, solid statistics, sporadic insight and no real plan – at risk of discovering, too late, that if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

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