http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070613/wl_canada_nm/canada_reportcard_col_2;_ylt=At9pCvuZ9uVVp2CN6kxVu5QE1vAI
Canada's socio-economic performance is mediocre and it lags other developed countries when it comes to innovation and the environment, the Conference Board of Canada said in a report card published on Wednesday.
Reasons given in article for lack of innovation:
In innovation, the report said Canada doesn't invest enough in knowledge and not enough students graduate with science and technology degrees. As well, it relies too much on its natural resources and has a shortage of skilled labor.
Not sure I know what the government could do to increase science and technology degrees. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. If there were more innovation in private sector, there would be more demand and higher wages for those types of degrees, hence greater enrollment. But I know a chemist who was earning $30k/year with a BSc. and 5 years experience working with hazardous chemicals, while a teachers starts with over $40K/year and 2 months holidays a year. Who wants to be a chemist?
The part about relying on natural resources makes it sound like Canada uses them like a crutch, where I would argue that free market made that the economic driver of choice. Sure exploration and extraction aren't as glamorous as high tech, but Canada is renowned for its expertise in those areas and should be proud of it. Not to mention there has been plenty of innovation in those fields as well.
2 comments:
This is no doubt an indictment! It highlights the current challenges that we have in building an innovation culture that can spur technology development and firm creation at the frontiers of nano and bio as well as ICT. On some dimensions, "D" is a generous grade, but there are also some good experiments and efforts underway and a track record in some sectors where even a "B" might be more appropriate. The key is to disaggregate a bit more and provide finer assessments by different dimensions of competences required and by region.
Lounsbury
"D" sounds like a fail grade, the fact is that Canada isnt doing that bad, a more empirical approach to the ranking such as the one followed by IMD and WEF gives a clearer picture of the challenges and strengths of the innovation systems in country and overall economy. IMD in 2007 world competitiveness scorecard, ranked canada number 10 in a comparison of 50 countries. Canada is ranked higher than China, UK, france, italy and several other nations and its not too far behind than israel and other immediate contenders. the funding issues are perhaps responsible for the lower ranking than some other nations and challenges remain particularly in several regional economies such as in atlantic provinces but given the recent initiatives by the federal and provincial governments all over canada, things might improve in coming years. we should also remember that investments in innovation and tech comm take their own time to show results. The resources sector if anything is a big plus for canada ( according to an estimate the networth of oil resources is 10 trillion CAD, given the 19% royalty that alberta gets on it it will amount to close to 200 billion CAD in royalties, over a period depending upon how soon the oil reserves are used) so even if 2-3% of these royalties goes to R&D, it might change the innovation scenario in alberta and canada...
Post a Comment