{"id":1331,"date":"2025-04-14T21:08:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T21:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horoscope-conseil.com\/?p=1331"},"modified":"2025-04-14T21:51:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T21:51:00","slug":"canada-is-lagging-in-innovation-and-thats-a-problem-for-funding-the-programs-we-care-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.horoscope-conseil.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/14\/canada-is-lagging-in-innovation-and-thats-a-problem-for-funding-the-programs-we-care-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada is lagging in innovation, and that\u2019s a problem for funding the programs we care about"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Canadians prepare to vote in another federal election, the country\u2019s economy faces a sobering reality. As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a> (OECD) notes, productivity is stagnating, our innovation performance lags global peers and high-potential startups often fail to scale.<\/p>\n

Despite these warning signs, innovation policy remains largely absent from political discourse. Canadians hear a great deal about how political parties are going to spend money, but little about where the money is going to come from<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This is a critical oversight. Canada\u2019s enduring productivity gap is more than an economic statistic \u2014 it\u2019s why the country is struggling to sustain<\/a> the social programs, such as health care and education, that Canadians value.<\/p>\n

If Canadians want to maintain their standard of living, Canada must close that gap through a more deliberate, strategic approach to innovation.<\/p>\n

Innovation is economic strategy<\/h2>\n

In today\u2019s knowledge-based economy, as business executive and innovator<\/a> Jim Balsillie observes<\/a>, power flows to countries that own digital data and their \u201cvalue-added applications\u201d (like apps or platforms) and intellectual property. <\/p>\n

Countries like the United States<\/a>, China and South Korea<\/a> have embedded innovation into national strategy, investing in sectors like artificial intelligence (AI), clean technology and biotech to drive growth and resilience. Canada, by contrast, has taken a fragmented, reactive approach.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s over-reliance on research and development (R&D) spending and patent counts has failed to translate into commercial success. According to the OECD, Canada ranks among the highest in public R&D investment but among the lowest in innovation outcomes<\/a> such as productivity growth and technology adoption.<\/p>\n

Canada also often conflates research with innovation. While both are vital, innovation is about turning knowledge into use through deployment, adoption, commercialization and scaling. Much of today\u2019s transformative innovation, particularly in AI and software, depends on the transfer of tacit knowledge<\/a> (related to things like user insights, execution experience and expertise in a particular domain) not just codified knowledge (for example, patents, technical drawings and licenses).<\/p>\n

Why innovation policy fails<\/h2>\n

Governments struggle with innovation because it defies conventional policymaking:<\/p>\n