Editorial - 15-13

While it’s not official, it seems all but certain that the Innovation White Paper has been split into two so-called agenda documents dealing separately with innovation and skills. The failure of Industry Canada and Human Resources Development Canada to produce a joint work encompassing the economic and social aspects of innovation may seem discouraging, but in the short run it’s good news.

It allows both parts of the process to move beyond the documents to the consultation phase. Industry Canada is planning a series of five summits across Canada dealing with specific aspects of tech- nological innovation. A parallel initiative of industry town hall meetings is being organized by CATA Alliance at the behest of Finance minister Paul Martin to seek private sector input on the innovation agenda. Hopefully, a similar exercise for federal departments and agencies is also in the works.

Release of the agenda papers will also give the S&T community more details on the government’s plans to boost Canada’s R&D output and innovation capacity. Since Martin announced his ambitious R&D goal last fall, his department has provided no specifics on how that objective was formulated and how targets can be attained.

More importantly, release of the two papers will remove the gridlock on many proposals made to government in the areas of commercialization, indirect costs of research and eMPOWR Canada’s research and skills initiative. It looks as though the time for waiting is nearly over. Let’s get on with it and deal with the issues that really matter.