Innovation Across Borders Conference

Speaking Points

The Honourable Gary Goodyear, PC, MP
Minister of State (Science and Technology)

Toronto, Ontario
February 24, 2011

Check Against Delivery

Thank you very much.

It's a real pleasure to be here. On behalf of Prime Minister Harper and the Government of Canada, I'd like to extend my appreciation to our hosts here at MaRS, as well as all the partners who were involved in organizing this conference.

Our country has a proud legacy of scientific achievement. From Sir Sandford Fleming, the "Father of Standard Time," to Abraham Gesner, who discovered kerosene; from John Hopps, who invented the pacemaker, to Frederick Banting and Charles Best, who discovered insulin; from Alexander Graham Bell's telephone to Mike Lazaridis's BlackBerry, Canadians have made discoveries and introduced products that have changed the lives of people around the world.

These were important scientific discoveries for Canada. But they were also commercial success stories for our country.

As the Prime Minister and I are fond of saying, science powers commerce.

Indeed our government remains focused on the economy—on strengthening our economic recovery, creating better jobs and building a strong knowledge economy for years to come.

Hard-working Canadian families are able to enjoy a high standard of living not only because generations of scientists and entrepreneurs made new discoveries and innovations, but because they laboured to bring those discoveries into the marketplace, so people in this country could benefit and new made-in-Canada products and services could be sold around the world.

To remain at the forefront of the global economy, we must continue to invest in the people and ideas that will produce tomorrow's breakthroughs.

We also know that today in Canada, we face many challenges. Although our country invests more in higher education research and development (R&D) as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) than other G7 nations, Canada is falling further behind countries like the United States and Great Britain on innovation and productivity, which means that Canadian families will have lower standard of living as a result.

The federal government invests some $7 billion every year to encourage businesses in Canada to carry out R&D. But, by any measure, Canadian companies do not invest enough in R&D and innovation compared to our G7 partners, especially when we look at countries like China and India.

It is time for Canadian businesses to invest more in innovation or, as President Obama's chief science advisor said this week, China is going to eat our lunch.

That's why last October I launched the comprehensive Review of Federal Support to Research and Development and appointed a six-member panel of experts to consult with Canadians on how our government can provide better support for business innovation and deliver better results for Canadians.

That is why conferences like this one are so important. They allow us to share information and experiences on how we can accelerate innovation in our domestic market and markets around the world.

This is certainly a priority for the Government of Canada.

In 2007, Prime Minister Harper launched a comprehensive federal Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy. And since then, we have maintained innovation spending with each successive budget that is yielding results for all of us.

S&T is a key element of Canada's Economic Action Plan, which our government introduced in 2009 in response to the economic downturn. As part of the Plan, colleges and universities will benefit from much-needed upgrades thanks to our $2‑billion Knowledge Infrastructure Program, while National Research Council Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC–IRAP) received a $200-million boost.

I'd like to focus on this program for a moment, as it is one of our government's most successful tools to help small businesses innovate. These enterprises are a critical source of innovation and future growth. In fact, small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) comprise 99.7 percent of all Canadian firms. And firms with fewer than 50 employees account for almost one quarter of our GDP.

Often these smaller firms can benefit from increased financial and professional resources that can move plans forward to commercialize their innovations.

The Industrial Research Assistance Program addresses this challenge by offering not only financial support, but advice through its stable of advisors. Actually, the program offers a full range of support. Often, the greatest value is in the technical expertise that clients receive from their advisors.

This kind of business development assistance is further bolstered by NRC–IRAP's partnership with the Enterprise Europe Network. While it is still its early stages, the goal is to create linkages between Canadian SMEs and their counterparts in member states of the European Union.

Thanks to the Network, and the National Research Council's multiple international linkages, the program has already established agreements with other countries, such as France, China and Spain, in which Canadian companies are collaborating with their international peers.

In fact, I am pleased to announce today the renewal of the agreement between the NRC–IRAP and the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology in Spain for another two years. Nearly 60 R&D projects have been undertaken in Canada under this agreement.

One such example involves Norgen Biotek, an Ontario-based company that is collaborating with a Spanish biotech firm on disease detection kits. Just yesterday, it received more than $817,000 for this work.

And today I am happy to announce that Nucro-Technics, located in Scarborough, will be receiving a contribution of $750,000 for its collaboration with another Spanish-based biotech SME to develop a novel prediction system for drug safety.

These international collaborations, together with our domestic initiatives, are helping our businesses realize their potential as generators of innovation, jobs and prosperity. We continue to seek out new ways of leveraging our investments.

And on that note, I am pleased to announce funding for the Industrial R&D Internship program.

This program provides internships in Canadian firms for up to a thousand graduate students and post-doctoral fellows each year. And it's one of the ways our government is strengthening the connection between scientists, research institutions and industry in order to encourage innovation.

Based on its success since it was launched in 2007, I'm pleased to say today that the Harper Government is providing the Industrial R&D Internship program with an additional $34.4 million over the next five years to continue to build the talent that we need to remain competitive in the global knowledge-based economy.

This funding will be provided to two Networks of Centres of Excellence, which will deliver the internships across the country. MITACS, based in Vancouver, will deliver 850 internships per year through its ACCELERATE program, and AUTO21 in Windsor will deliver 150 internships per year through its CONNECT Canada Initiative.

I know that the interns supported through the Industrial R&D Internship program will gain valuable industry experience, while the companies involved will benefit from the knowledge and talent in Canada's universities.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have in Canada a tremendous depth of knowledge, of skilled scientists and researchers—and that talent pool is only getting deeper because of today's announcements.

I encourage all of you to continue to mine that spirit of innovation over the next two days here in Toronto.

Please accept my best wishes for an informative and productive conference.

Thank you.