Speaking Notes

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

Polytechnics Canada Science and Technology Showcase

Seneca College
Markham, Ontario
November 27, 2009

Check Against Delivery

Thank you and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honour to speak at this fourth annual edition of the Polytechnics Canada Science and Technology Showcase.

Let me take a moment before I begin to congratulate the organizers of this week’s events. The Science and Technology Showcase demonstrates the strength and significance of Canadian polytechnic research.

We have in this room an audience that can attest to the competitive edge such research provides. Simply put, polytechnic research helps Canadian industry run better.

The institutions here today have generated many success stories.

They have achieved excellence in research. They have worked with business to improve the skills of thousands of Canadian workers and the effectiveness of their companies.

And, through events such as this showcase, Polytechnics Canada has raised the profile of its member institutions and made decision makers aware of their views and ideas. So, any way you look at it, there is a great deal going on in polytechnic research.

I want to talk about a subject that interests us all — innovation.

I’m going to set out the government’s approach to building an innovative economy. We believe this can be done by encouraging the private sector and academia to collaborate in areas of research.

We launched the government’s science and technology (S&T) strategy in 2007. And from the outset we designed it to be a springboard for innovation.

In the last three budgets, our government has invested more than $7 billion to support S&T and to help stimulate economic activity through large-scale investments. The latest Statistics Canada figures show the government now expects S&T spending to reach $10.7 billion in 2009–10.

Our government is investing heavily in S&T to create jobs, strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life of Canadians.

We have also focused on continuing to develop research partnerships involving businesses and academia. The government believes such partnerships are critical to the translation of research into world-class business success.

We created the Business-Led Networks of Centres of Excellence program to fund research in support of private sector innovation. We introduced the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research program to encourage private sector involvement in S&T.

Budget 2009 — Canada’s Economic Action Plan represented one of the largest single investments ever in S&T in Canada — over $5 billion.

Canada’s Economic Action Plan invested heavily in sectors where much research and development (R&D) takes place. We introduced the $2-billion Knowledge Infrastructure Program to improve aging infrastructure at Canadian post-secondary institutions, and we worked quickly to deliver the funding.

Of the Knowledge Infrastructure Program’s total funding, $684 million will support colleges. That, in turn, will leverage $992 million in additional funds.

The Knowledge Infrastructure Program helped fund construction of a new Labrador City campus for Newfoundland and Labrador’s College of the North Atlantic. Funding from the Knowledge Infrastructure Program also contributed to the construction of the new Skills Development and Trades training facility at Vancouver Island’s North Island College.

Through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program, the government has become involved in capital projects large and small across the country. In fact, let me put this program’s impact to you another way.

Today, I am going to announce the latest recipients of funding from the government’s College and Community Innovation Program, which encourages cooperation between academia and business. In just a few minutes, we’re going to recognize nine colleges that will receive funding under the College and Community Innovation Program.

But before we get to that announcement, I want to underline the Knowledge Infrastructure Program’s importance this way — those nine colleges received almost $64 million through this program.

In recent years, our efforts — and in this case I’m referring not only to the government but also to many different sectors — have brought Canada to the top of the list of G7 countries in higher education R&D.

Canada’s leadership in post-secondary endeavours isn’t limited to one ranking. This fall, 11 Canadian universities made the 2009 Times Higher Education list of the 200 best institutions in the world.

Among the 30 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, we have the most highly educated population.

Such findings lead to one inescapable conclusion. If we agree that our future prosperity depends on our capacity to develop innovative products and practices, Canada can do it.

Through the S&T Strategy, we wanted to redefine the way government, business people and the research community came together to drive economic activity through scientific endeavours. As I said earlier, by increasing business investment in R&D, we improve the prospects for Canada’s long-term competitiveness.

The College and Community Innovation Program was only a pilot project since 2004. With the goal of strengthening private sector commitment to R&D, the government made this Program permanent in 2007.

The College and Community Innovation Program supports research collaboration between businesses and colleges, and we saw the tremendous potential of this program to encourage people to work together and develop new ideas and products. To Canadian companies, this Program also means improvements to their bottom lines.

This is why I am pleased to announce today the results of the latest round of College and Community Innovation Program funding. As I said, nine colleges will share a government investment of $20 million.

The projects that will benefit from today’s announcement join 13 others, worth almost $30 million, that were announced earlier this year.

The latest recipients of College and Community Innovation Program funding are:

• Algonquin College, Ottawa, Ontario
• CEGEP of Abitibi-Témiscaminque
• CEGEP of Rimouski, Quebec
• CEGEP of Saint-Jérôme, Quebec
• CEGEP of Trois-Rivières, Quebec
• Fanshawe College, London, Ontario
• Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Seneca College, our hosts today, and
• Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Calgary

Congratulations to all of you and good luck in your endeavours.

Let me tell you a bit about why the College and Community Innovation Program has the potential for dramatic innovation results.

Colleges are institutions with traditionally strong ties to their local communities and to small and medium-sized businesses in particular. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Here at Seneca College, researchers want to look at the feasibility of using more simulation technology in pilot training. Their work is a response to a decline in the number of student trainees and the viability of pilot training schools.

Seneca researchers hope their findings will help revitalize the flight training business.

Then, there is Winnipeg’s Red River College, which wants to establish a sustainable infrastructure technology research group. The group would work with Manitoba’s cluster of emerging sustainable infrastructure companies.

Collaboration between Red River College and other players would have a number of benefits: valuable work experience for co-op students, secondments for faculty and industry professionals, and knowledge transfer to small and medium-sized enterprises.

It sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

So, you see, through the government’s College and Community Innovation Program funding, Seneca, Red River and the seven other colleges and CEGEPs announced today will have the chance to work with local businesses and get their research out into their communities.

I would also like to take the time to congratulate the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) on the official opening of its Ontario regional office in Mississauga. The opening was announced earlier this year and we are now ready to take this initiative to the next level.

NSERC is one of Canada’s largest sources of financial support for public–private R&D partnerships, investing more than $310 million each year to support over 1500 industry–academic R&D partnerships. Such partnerships generate the kind of innovation that leads to business growth, job creation, and a stronger, more resilient economy.

To further promote these partnerships, NSERC has developed a new Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation, with the goal of better connecting businesses of all sizes and in all sectors to the wealth of resources that reside in Canada’s world-class post-secondary research system.

More and better R&D collaboration will accelerate innovation in Canada and contribute to our national prosperity.

The Council is committed to doubling the number of industry–academic partnerships it supports by 2014. The new regional office will work to fulfill the strategy’s vision of building stronger and faster connections between universities, colleges and industry.

This year, the Science, Technology and Innovation Council, a body the government relies on for expert advice on S&T, identified the necessary conditions for healthy innovation. These were a supportive marketplace, engaged citizens, highly skilled people and modern infrastructure.

We, in Canada, have these elements. But there’s one more ingredient for an innovative economy that the Science, Technology and Innovation Council identified — collaboration. When organizations from different sectors work together, the result can be game-changing innovation.

Increasingly, that’s the way the innovation comes about — not through the isolated actions of individual players but through the collaborative efforts of many. Canadians can win at this game. And polytechnic research — the kind we have heard about today and see at this conference — plays a central role.

Thank you.