Editorial - 28-19

What to make of the new Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Strategy? Billed as a re-fresh of the 2007 version, the document does a good job of outlining existing programs and past investments. It also updates the vocabulary of STI to include trends, concepts and technology developments that have emerged in the intervening years.

It's important that all players in the innovation ecosystem share a common perspective on STI. But the latest attempt falls somewhere between a high-altitude roadmap and a compendium of acronyms that tumble forth like an upended bowl of alphabet soup. Its claim to be a strategy is far more tenuous.

With the exception of adding advanced manufacturing to its list of priority areas and including agriculture under the heading of environment, contains little new and fails to illustrate where the government plans to take STI in the future. Other than committing to review the youth employment strategy, making federally funded science more open and transparent, promoting open science or strengthening federal research to support policy-making, there's precious little to define a bold new direction for STI or enhance its importance.

As many observers have commented, the new strategy reads more like a pre-election document than one intended to direct, inspire and enable. That's fine as far as it goes, but future policy makers will be challenged to energize the document for the economic and social benefit of Canadians. Ignoring the big challenges facing Canadian innovators in a global environment won't make them go away.