Dr John de la Mothe

Canada needs a strong innovation policy

By John de la Mothe

The civil service and universities are looking like they’re failing Canada. Dr Michael J Mandel, former professor at New York Univ’s Stern School and now senior economist for Business Week, recently noted that “innovation is not simply the tail of the dog, it’s the whole damn poodle”. He’s absolutely right. But while the Canadian civil service — between 1984 and 2004 — seemed to increasingly understand what science, technology and innovation were, they seem to have developed a case of collective amnesia.

And while Canadian researchers in science, engineering and medicine are doing a splendid job, leading the world through places like the Perimeter Institute for Theoretic Physics, the Ottawa Heart Institute and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (there are many more), university administrators and civil servants don’t seem to fully appreciate the phrase ‘innovation’.

Industry is pulling its weight. More than 40% of total business expenditures on R&D come from communications equipment, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and aerospace parts and products. They’re doing their part. But are we doing ours? In 1984, we were behind in BERD/GDP among OECD nations. Today, according to Statistics Canada data and the OECD Main Indicators, government-financed R&D ranks behind Iceland, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Austria, the US and Korea, as well as Australia, the Netherlands and Denmark. But in 1984, Canada was supposedly committed to bringing its share of R&D up to OECD levels. Industry did that. But government didn’t broaden the base.

We have a new Industry minister who, on July 29th, said that he wanted to move policy away from a high technology focus back towards resource-based industries, like forestry and mining. But he seems to have really caught on, giving recent speeches on the importance of innovation that were apparently unscripted by the bureaucracy (much to the ire of some civil servants). Bravo for him. But there is work to do.

When Statscan published a report earlier this year saying that Canada’s productivity (which is terribly important to our growth and standard of living and dependent on innovation and technological change) was absolutely flat (as compared against the US which has averaged 4% productivity growth since the millennium). The Industry minister said that “he’d produce some kind of innovation strategy”. Apparently he knows that the bureaucracy wrote one two years ago but they didn’t roll it out like they were supposed to. Where is it?

After a liberal legacy of getting the knowledge economy centre-stage, the words ‘science, technology and innovation’ are almost now completely absent. Just look at the last Budget. There was money for the research councils, but there were also claw-backs. As several people with serious credibility have said, ‘this Budget seems to have fallen off the cliff’. So the problem is deep.

In March, the ministers for environment and natural resources couldn’t agree on who would do what at the national launch of the Energy-iNet. Instead, the job of responding for the federal government fell to the national science advisor (NSA), a task he was reluctant to assume.

INFIGHTING PERSISTS

This is reminiscent of the days of the so-called innovation strategy that was supposed to be led jointly by the minister for human resource development and the minister for industry. But even they couldn’t pull it off. Two separate papers were released - both vacuous. The federal departments must learn to work together, to collaborate and coordinate without territory always being on their minds. They all work for Canada.

We also need work on advice. We trashed the Science Council and the Economic Council in 1992 (along with the Center for Peace and Security — kind of an interesting topic today don’t you think — because they were too independent. Today, again, Industry Canada is trying to gain control of the new Canadian Academies of Science. Wrong. It should be guided in its establishment by the NSA. The NSA should have more access to the prime minister and to the Industry minister. That office needs to stimulate a discussion on issues of national strategic importance, like energy, environment, education and health.

There is also the disingenuous nature of some — and I say only some — civil servants. For example, Canada was asked to participate in an ‘international collaborative study’ on ‘international collaboration in science and technology’. We declined. The study was completed. Working meetings were held in Paris and Tokyo. But it was the uninterested Canadian bureaucrats who chaired, and multiple representatives attended Nice trips. Zero value to Canadians. Managers must more vigilant.

Now here’s the rub. The breakdowns in governance noted above don’t stop with a minister or a senior official or with a bright and well-intentioned civil servant. It starts with our universities.

I can think of great centres for the study of the management, strategy and policy directly regarding science,technology and innovation. BRIE at Berkeley, BCSIA at Harvard, SPRU at Sussex, PREST and CRIC at Manchester and MERIT at Limburg. Canada has none of this, with the sole exception of the Centre interuniversitaire sur la science et la technologie (CIRST) at the University of Quebec at Montreal with excellent people like Yves Gingras (who occasionally goes to places like the Dibner Centre at MIT when he needs some air).

There are a number of scholars who individually study innovation. The Innovation Systems Research Network is an example. But there are no programs through which graduates can systematically learn about science, technology, innovation, economic and social impacts, management, policies and strategies that can make Canada stronger. Management schools must learn to work with engineering and law and medicine. Social science students and management students need to go inside a lab, not just read The Harvard Business Review. In a lab, they’d learn that the knowledge economy is real, that it’s different and it’s about creativity and discovery. That’s their future. Innovation. Interdependence. Cross-disciplines. Only with people who understand this firmly, will our graduates and our future civil servants find our poodle.

Dr John de la Mothe is the Canada Research Chair of Innovation Strategy at the University of Ottawa and a visiting professor at Yale University in the faculty of engineering and applied science.