Current federal innovation policies unlikely to produce desired long-term outcomes

Foresight suggests serious challenges ahead

A comprehensive foresight exercise on Canadian technology and innovation suggests that failure to embrace innovation and effectively respond to emerging global challenges will reduce the country to a technological backwater with the status of a re-developing nation. The report contends that lack of consensus over what's required to enhance Canada's innovation performance combined with a federal government seemingly uninterested in long-term innovation strategies "are likely to hamper Canada's ability to succeed as a global innovation leader".

Given only limited release last year, the report's findings and insight are based on a two-stage foresight exercise organized by the Foresight Technology Network (FSN) in Ottawa in early 2011 (R$, March 31/11). The event brought together dozens of policy experts to discuss a range of scenarios for Canadian innovation, circa 2027 (Canada's 150th birthday) and 2050.

Those scenarios ranged from Canada using technological innovation to develop a robust economy defined by strong demand for technology, a mobile skilled workforce and healthy exports to a nation in which boom and bust commodity cycles produce an unpredictable economy with little skills investment and weak R&D funding.

The foresight exercise was a calibrated attempt to determine how differing policy options can contribute to, or detract from, Canada becoming more technologically innovative despite its proximity to the US and natural resource wealth.

RE$EARCH MONEY contacted the principal organizers of the foresight exercise for their views on the current trajectory of Canadian innovation. Report author Guy Stanley says that, with the exception of Quebec, current policies suggest Canada is moving towards a society and economy in which technological innovation is relegated to a secondary policy driver with little progress towards becoming a genuine knowledge-based economy.

"It's cheaper to buy rather than build so there are few innovative companies left," says Stanley, an FSN member and associate professor École Polytechnic de Montreal. "Government programs give money away and don't ask people to do anything with it. We have no metrics."

Jack Smith, an FSN member and adjunct professor at the Univ of Ottawa's Telfer School of Business, takes a similar view — Canada's current innovation agenda lacks direction and to date has been unsuccessful in advancing tech-based innovation.

"We have great assets, resources and education but we can't build world-leading companies and sustain them. We give them away or let them fail," says Smith. "We have to be nuanced and move towards finding leverage points where we can make a difference and develop knowledge-based productivity as opposed to labour or capital productivity."

The foresight symposium presented participants with 10 policy choices to stimulate discussion on Canada's chances of overcoming the challenges posed by rapidly developing national and global innovation systems (see chart). A key tool for developing foresight scenarios is backcasting — defining a desirable future and working backwards to identify policies and programs that will connect the future to the present.

Deliberations were by no means cut consensual. There was considerable dissention among participants over what constituted the best policy path for becoming a knowledge-based economy.

"There was no agreement. Canada's political culture may not be up to the task of developing an effective innovation system," says Stanley. "The business world is totally dynamic and is refining the space of action. Whether Canada actually needs a national innovation policy to prosper is not clear."

It's been more than two and a half years since the initial foresight exercise, and while economic conditions have improved, Canada's technological innovation, productivity and competitiveness have either stagnated or declined.

Dr William Cowie, who drafted the original foresight scenarios and conducted subsequent analysis, says the federal government's "current minimalist approach" doesn't elicit optimism for the future.

"At a time when serious thought and discussion and investment are warranted, I see the complete opposite — leave it open to the market and interests in energy and resources sector," says Cowie, an economic geographer, consultant and sessional lecturer at Carleton Univ Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

skills development

Cowie says the foresight exercise can be faulted for being technologically focused — a shortcoming he and Smith are addressing with a new foresight exercise aimed at skills and training development with a paper slated for release in February.

"Technology is wrecking the middle class. We're heading towards a low-wage, educated workforce and bleak job prospects as technology and algorithms take over many job functions," says Cowie. "Combined with commercialization and skills retention challenges, we remain colonial and the danger of the resource curse is a huge problem."

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