Organization: Government of Canada

The Short Report – April 14, 2021: Alberta invests in vaccine R&D, Ottawa brings wireless tech to mining industry, CIB shores up Ontario’s energy grid, and more

In this week’s The Short Report, the Government of Alberta contributes $20 million for vaccine R&D, a Canadian Infrastructure Bank invests in Ontario’s energy grid, 5G wireless tech to increase safety and reliability in the mining industry, Palette Skills leads consortium to address talent gaps in a post-COVID economy, and more.

Opinion Leader: Federal funding for energy efficiency must tackle impact on low-income Canadians

The federal government’s upcoming budget needs to address the problem of “energy poverty” as an urgent priority, Kirsten Pulles, Community Organizer for Efficiency Canada, says in an op-ed. This includes funding low-income energy efficiency programs, making meaningful reductions in energy use, and training and hiring lower-income, rural and racialized Canadians to do the energy efficiency upgrades and outreach work, she says.

The Short Report – March 31, 2021: Canadian government invests $925 million in biomanufacturing, funding for variants research, a new digitalization centre, and more

Ottawa announces major funding to expand Sanofi Pasteur’s Ontario facility for domestic biomanufacturing and vaccine preparedness; there’s new funding support for COVID-19 variants research and a new national network, and Siemens launches its first centre to accelerate the digitalization of energy and infrastructure in Canada.

The Short Report – March 24, 2021: Genome Canada creates data portal to address COVID-19 variants, Suncor invests US$25M in carbon capture tech, a national agriculture network, and more.

Genome Canada launches a SARS-CoV-2 data portal to consolidate variants of concern data in one place, Calgary’s Suncor Energy invests in carbon capture technology to offset GHG emissions, Government of Canada invests $185 million in an agricultural program to share best practices for storing carbon, and more.

Canada needs a targeted industrial strategy to improve innovation performance, experts say

Canada’s continued poor performance in innovation and business productivity is due to a failure to link publicly funded research and innovation programs to an industrial strategy based on the country’s strengths, say innovation experts. Meanwhile, studies by University of Toronto researchers show the federal innovation agenda has negatively impacted funding for basic, investigator-driven research but hasn’t addressed the underlying problem of industrial innovation in Canada.