Dr John de la Mothe

Where did Canada’s innovation strategy go? And will it come back?

By Dr John de la Mothe

Traditionally, innovation policies change over time and differ across nations. Some are mission-oriented, as they were in Japan during the 1980s and 1990s. Other countries, like the US, have the scale and scope to cover the full range — from basic research to mission-oriented. Most advanced (but smaller economy) nations adopt a series of strategies and instruments based on who their partners are, where they see their nation in the medium-term, and how they are going to get there.

Commercialization and competitiveness often animate the strategies and debates ensue. For example, those of a conservative ilk were thought to be very laissez-faire, private sector oriented, while those that were liberal were more strategic and government-involved. There is always a lot of grey in such stylizations, but what does Canada have now? Recent times suggest that we’ve abandoned more than two decades of work.

We’ve just experienced an election campaign in which none of the parties mentioned science, technology or innovation. It was a campaign in which the Liberals apparently abandoned 11 years of great (though not always perfect) work on the New Economy. Now we have a new Cabinet in which so many compromises were made that cities and communities, the environment and children (all good things, don’t misunderstand) replaced innovation-led economic growth from which all the others flow. It looks like we’re trying to adopt the pose of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, completely re-defining the ‘Left’ and possibly rushing to the back of the G7 pack.

INNOVATION IS CRITICAL TO OUR FUTURE

Innovation is about exuberant growth, not cautious growth. A policy of inattention will only result in performance decline. A policy of inattention will only lower our performance in the future. Science-based and technology-led innovations transform the economy. They bring high valued-added jobs, wages, and international competitiveness. They deliver economic strength, but also improved and preserved ecologies, strong trade and investment, high and diversified skills, improved health as well as community benefits. The next big innovative breakthroughs, which we must pursue vigourously, will assuredly come from biotech (we’re good at that), energy (we’re good at that too), telecom (we’re super at space-binding technologies, and now Nortel has a $200 million deal with AT&T), nanotechnologies (we’re broadly unproven in this area), and space (well,…. satellite know-how and robotics…. OK.). But our government must be intelligently and aggressively engaged. Our policy cannot simply be one of renewing research council funding. The Councils, as well as the National Research Council (NRC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), must be let loose and funded fully and aggressively, not stifled.

Our Canadian future NEEDS innovation — leadership, infrastructure, aggressive financial services, research and highly educated people. So we need a heavy investment in higher education and research (including the social sciences). We need to push and attract the private sector. We also need a strategy. We cannot simply rely on existing programs or allow them to rust and become moribund because of a lack of vision and strategy. But we have apparently thrown our carefully crafted strategy out of central government. (I hope this is wrong).

Cities are terribly important. They host 85% of our population and almost all of our research and innovation. But focusing on cities as a policy thrust, instead of research, knowledge and innovation, is looking at the issue the wrong way around. Innovative institutions are the key. Children are to be protected with every fibre of vigour that we can muster. But they don’t innovate. We protect them, and our health, by innovating. And the environment needs stalwart custodianship, but we can only do this through strong research, innovation and clear vision.

Between 1984 and 1986, we seemed to understand this. Our federal government started shaking things up. We had a long history of creating new ideas, but we sold our ideas and didn’t do too well getting them to markets. I cannot even begin to imagine our Canada without the NRC, our universities and American anti-trust law (which ultimately gave us Northern Electric and eventually Nortel).

In time, our feds gave us matching grants to involve industry in R&D, we got InnovAction to broaden the community involvement in S&T. By the late ‘80s, Canada finally matched the OECD average for Business Enterprise R&D. In 1988, Canada hosted a major conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake on ‘innovation systems’, a new endogenous growth approach. And in 1989 we hosted the final conference of the OECD Technology-Economy Program (led by the ADM of Investment Canada and senior officials at what is now Industry Canada).

As a result, in 1993, the Liberal ‘Red Book’ was replete with economic policy based on innovation and innovation systems. Numerous documents and initiatives ensued, from Building a More Innovative Economy to the CFI and the ‘Initiative on the New Economy’ at SSHRC.

We are in a global economy, and our competitors — from Ireland and Denmark to Australia and Scotland and South Korea — all have a plan. We don’t. We’ve turfed the position of Secretary of State for Science. Rumors abound that a number of senior Prime Minister’s Office analysts with experience from the OECD and the private sector are leaving. The new minister for industry has a doctorate in economics, but he is a neo-classical economist with little understanding of the importance of technological change. He made this clear on July 23rd that he wants to re-orient Industry Canada away from high-tech and towards resources and manufacturing. This would be a terrible mistake since traditional sectors rely on new knowledge.

Will the long proposed independent Canadian Academy of Science ever take flight? And what is to become of the recently appointed national science advisor in the Privy Council Office? Will we have a real strategy or are we entering into a period of tom-foolery? These questions are not frivolous. We can only hope that the answers don’t lie in compromise, and that they might be answered in the Speech from the Throne, scheduled for October 5th.

Dr John de la Mothe is the Canada Research Chair in Innovation at the School of Management, the University of Ottawa.