R&D Review launched with blue ribbon panel

A high-level group of six business and academic leaders will take one year to come up with a slate of concrete recommendations on how the federal government can better allocate and direct the $7 billion it provides in support of business R&D and innovation.

Announced in the last Budget, the panel will be supported with a well-funded secretariat and conduct its own focused research and "seek submissions from interested parties" before reporting to Dr Gary Goodyear, minister of state for S&T.

The review panel will be chaired by Tom Jenkins, executive chairman and chief strategy officer for Open Text Corp, and will build upon on findings in two reports the government has regularly cited in its discussions on innovation — Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short by the Council of Canadian Academies and State of the Nation 2008 by the Science, Technology and Innovation Council.

The secretariat will be headed by by Iain Stewart, a key architect of the 2007 federal S&T Strategy. He returns to Ottawa from Dalhousie Univ where he was on an interchange to serve as its assistant VP research.

"There is a high level of support in our smorgasbord of programs but we're not doing as well with business R&D as we should. The panel will be focused on the suite of programs offered by government and come up with the ‘how'," says Goodyear. "It won't touch support for basic research or change the balance (between basic research and R&D funding for business) … We want actionable recommendations on how to improve our suite of programs."

Questions have already been raised over the low business representation composition on the panel. Four of the six members emanate from academia or organizations representing academic institutions. The two remaining members represent high tech and financial services, with no input from any of the natural resource-based industries or R&D-intensive sectors that generate the bulk of Canada's economic muscle.

"I'm puzzled by the composition of the panel which has just been appointed," says veteran business journalist David Crane. "For a panel that will review all federal programs that support business R&D for their effectiveness, it includes a university president, two university professors and the head of a nine-member association of colleges. There's no one from manufacturing which is the largest R&D-spending business sector and only one member is really engaged in R&D."

Goodyear says the focus shouldn't be so much on what sectors the panel members are drawn from but their particular areas of expertise.

three areas of focus

The panel, officially titled the Research and Development Expert Review Panel, is tasked with reviewing three types of federal R&D activity:

* tax incentive programs, mainly the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit program;

* Business R&D support programs providing general support (i.e. the Industrial Research Assistance Program) and sector-specific support (i.e. Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative); and,

* Programs supporting business-focused R&D through the granting councils and other departments and agencies (i.e. Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council through its Research Partnerships Programs Directorate).

"The review will not include university and college research," says Goodyear. "It will focus only on federal support to improve business R&D and innovation such as SR&ED, IRAP, our carbon capture and storage program and the automotive innovation fund."

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