Canada’s science and tech ecosystem is broken - getting Canadian business to invest in fixing it is the key to future success
John Ruffolo/Vivek Goel: We all know the facts: Canada has been the worst performing advanced economy in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development since 1976
By Vivek Goel & John RuffoloVivek Goel is president and vice-chancellor at University of Waterloo. John Ruffolo is founder and managing partner of Maverix Private Equity.
We all know the facts: Canada has been the worst performing advanced economy in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development since 1976; highly skilled, Canadian-trained tech workers leave the country and head to the US every year in an innovation brain drainwhich has been circling for decades; and the level of funding our scientists and graduate students receive right now in this country to create the IP which feeds our innovation pipeline is embarrassing.
In short, Canada has a science and tech research and innovation ecosystem that is broken. We continue to fall behind other countries in harnessing the power of science and technology to improve productivity. Particularly with the advent of generative AI, if we don’t get this right we will fall even further behind, perhaps with no chance of ever catching up.
There are many things we must do to meet this challenge. A critical intervention would be toincentivize Canadian business to be more involved in investing in Canadian research and talent.
Universities have a role to play in incentivizing business to invest in their talent and research too. Institutions should be working to forge long-term, collaborative relationships with business – not just one one-off partnerships.
