Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada's Advantage—2007

Chapter 5: People Advantage — Growing Canada's Base of Knowledge Workers

Talented, skilled, creative people are the most critical element of a successful national economy. It is through the talent of Canadians in their capacity as researchers, scientists, teachers, managers, and investors that we bring innovations to life. Our environment must give them the freedom and the motivation to investigate and innovate.

Canadians' S&T achievements have been and will continue to be important, making our families and communities better places within which to live, work, and learn.

The Government of Canada understands the far-reaching implications of science and technology discoveries and applications, and the endless possibilities they provide: more educational and professional opportunities, more prosperous living for individuals and families, and healthier communities.

The following policies and initiatives, outlined in Advantage Canada, will help Canada keep its best and brightest, attract talent from around the world, and enhance the quality of our existing workforce by:

• Making personal income taxes more competitive.
• Working with the provinces and territories to modernize labour market programming.
• Aligning immigration policies to our needs.
• Ensuring immigrants are able to contribute to their full potential.
• Attracting more foreign students and making it easier for them to stay in Canada.
• Increasing labour market flexibility and efficiency, and reducing barriers to mobility.
• Modernizing supports to learners and making post-secondary education more accessible.

Compared with other countries with which we are competing for jobs, talent, and investment, Canada's personal tax rates remain high. The measures introduced by the government — through Budget 2006, the Tax Fairness Plan, and Budget 2007 — will provide almost $38 billion in tax relief for individuals over 2006–07 to 2008–09. In addition to reducing the overall tax burden, a number of these measures will also support greater labour market participation (e.g., the Canada Employment Credit, the Working Income Tax Benefit, and allowing phased retirement for older, more experienced workers). Advantage Canada committed the government to continue to reduce personal income taxes to attract and retain highly skilled workers, increase the incentives for Canadians to succeed here in Canada, encourage all workers to invest in education and training, and encourage firms that employ highly skilled workers to invest in Canada.

In certain regions of the country, the economy is growing so quickly that employers are having difficulty finding enough workers to meet needs in key occupations. At the same time, skilled workers are dwindling in key occupations, particularly the skilled trades, as many are approaching retirement and there are not enough younger skilled workers to take their places. Increasing the labour market participation of under-represented Canadians, better aligning immigration policies to our labour market needs and initiatives such as the modernization of labour market programs will help increase labour supply. Skilled individuals from around the world have the knowledge and experience to complement Canada's homegrown talents.

Improved labour market information and foreign credential recognition, and reduced barriers to mobility, will enhance labour market efficiency. Providing good labour market information will help workers locate suitable jobs and employers find the people they need. Reducing barriers to labour mobility and improving credential recognition will help employers in need of skilled labour find the skills and workers they need more quickly and effectively. It will also improve the job matching process.

Post-secondary institutions are critical in providing Canadians with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the labour market. Colleges and universities have an important role to play in responding to the changing skills requirements of the labour market and supporting the needs of youth and adult learners. As we build a sustainable national competitive advantage for Canada based on S&T, it will be important to invest in the education and skills development of Canadians at all levels of higher education and throughout their lives. The federal government will work in partnership with provincial and territorial governments, who have responsibility for education.

To support these efforts, the Government of Canada is committed to:

• Enhancing opportunities for S&T graduates.
• Increasing the supply of highly qualified and globally connected S&T graduates that businesses and other organizations need to succeed in today's economy.
• Getting Canadians excited about science and technology.

5.1 Enhancing Opportunities for Science and Technology Graduates

To compete and win through new technologies and innovative solutions, Canadian businesses need to invest in S&T and hire more talented science and technology graduates. The policy directions laid out in Chapter 3 will help to increase the private sector's demand for S&T workers.

To complement marketplace framework policy initiatives, the federal government can create additional opportunities for skilled graduates by linking them with businesses that can make use of their talents. The government can do so by supporting internship programs that expose students to research opportunities and careers in the private sector. These programs also stimulate business interest in S&T by demonstrating the benefits from hiring highly qualified people.

For example, the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) Network of Centres of Excellence enables graduate students and post-doctoral candidates to participate in applied research projects with businesses. This initiative aligns student research interests with business needs and creates a new receptor capacity in business for the results of mathematics research. Other internship initiatives supported by the federal government include NSERC's Industrial R&D Fellowships, which place graduates in firms to conduct research, and the Intellectual Property Mobilization Program, which trains next-generation technology transfer experts.

These programs have been successful in increasing private-sector investment in research and researchers, and providing valuable training to our students in business settings. Advantage Canada identifies the need to expose more students to private-sector research challenges through internships and targeted collaborative research.

5.2 Increasing the Supply of Highly Qualified and Globally Connected Science and Technology Graduates

To succeed in a global economy that is increasingly driven by knowledge and innovation, Canada will need to increase the participation of Canadians and immigrants in the workforce, and improve the skills and knowledge of Canadians through quality education and skills development. This includes increasing the number of highly qualified graduates in our labour force.

More individuals with graduate degrees in sciences and engineering will be needed to replace retiring workers, and meet stronger demand for S&T skills from the private sector, universities, colleges, and governments. To meet this challenge, the government will work not only to increase the number of workers with advanced education, but also to ensure that they possess the necessary skills and experience to make a difference in a changing world.

In this regard, the Government of Canada supports scholarship programs to encourage Canadians to pursue advanced education and conduct research, both here and abroad, and to attract top students from around the world. The granting councils, for example, provide internationally competitive financial support to the best Canadian graduate students through Canada Graduate Scholarships. These scholarships are provided to the top 2,000 masters and 2,000 doctoral students each year. The granting councils also manage other scholarship programs, including those that support international research and training collaborations.

Scholarships that encourage Canadian students to study abroad have experienced limited uptake possibly because they do not fully offset the added costs associated with foreign study. Scholarships targeted at foreign students are helping Canada to attract more top foreign talent, but we continue to have a smaller share of the world's international student market than other countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States with similar immigration policies.^{Footnote 24} There are opportunities to strengthen Canada's scholarship initiatives and, consistent with the policy commitment in Advantage Canada, market Canada as a destination of choice for international students.

As a nation, we need to ensure that our scholarships in key areas such as natural, social, and health sciences, engineering, and humanities are internationally competitive. This will help to achieve our goals of training and attracting the world-class students and graduates that Canada's research community and economy need.

In addition to supporting scholarship programs, the Government of Canada will make labour market information more accessible and better tailored to the needs of students. Labour market information represents an important trigger for career decisions by students, including the decision to pursue post-secondary education.

5.3 Getting Canadians Excited About Science and Technology

Many industrialized countries invest in science literacy to encourage young people to become interested in studying science. These programs can play an important role in stimulating a culture of science, technology, and entrepreneurship.

Canada has a number of S&T promotional activities offered through federal and provincial governments, the private sector, and not-for-profit organizations, including museums, science centres, educational institutions, societies, and foundations. At the federal level, 14 departments and agencies sponsor over 70 science promotion initiatives, at a total cost of about $24 million per year.^{Footnote 25}

For example, the Prime Minister's Awards for Teaching Excellence and for Excellence in Early Childhood Education, originally created to recognize science and mathematics teachers in elementary and secondary schools, has since been expanded to include teachers in all disciplines and early childhood educators who develop skills for the knowledge-based economy. The program has honoured over 1,100 teachers and about 100 educators. The Youth Outreach Program of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research provides students with the skills, knowledge, and motivation they need to seek a career in health research. By engaging young people early in lecture series, workshops, demonstrations, competitions and lab mentoring, the program increases their interest in exploring career opportunities in this field.

Many science-promotion initiatives in Canada are small in scale and lack a forum to combine their efforts in order to increase their impact. The government will bring these players together to shape a shared vision, and coordinate and focus our respective efforts. The goal of this initiative is to increase the number of people pursuing education and meaningful careers in S&T in Canada.

Policy Commitments

Canada's federal government will create opportunities for Canadians to acquire skills and use knowledge to create advantages for themselves and the nation by:

• Continuing to reduce personal income tax and make the tax system fairer to ensure that Canada attracts and retains the highly skilled workers necessary to foster innovation and growth. Measures introduced to date by the government through Budget 2006, the Tax Fairness Plan, and Budget 2007 will provide nearly $38 billion in tax relief for individuals over three years. Budget 2007 also delivers on the Tax Back Guarantee — the government's commitment to use the interest savings from national debt reduction to reduce personal income taxes.
• Modernizing labour market programming, working with the provinces to remove barriers to labour mobility, and improving foreign credential recognition and the Temporary Foreign Worker systems to make it easier for employers to get the skills they need to remain competitive. Budget 2007 takes decisive action, with a new labour market training architecture and initiatives to better align the immigration program with the needs of the labour market.
• Improving the quality of education for Canadians by: providing stable and predictable funding to provinces and territories for post-secondary education; working with them to develop shared objectives and enhance public accountability; modernizing Canada's system of student financial assistance; and marketing Canada's post-secondary education system to attract the best foreign students. As announced in Budget 2007, the government will increase the Canada Social Transfer by $800 million per year beginning in 2008-09 (growing at 3 per cent per year thereafter) for provinces and territories to strengthen the quality and competitiveness of the Canadian post-secondary education system, launch a review of the Canada Student Loans Program, and provide $2 million over two years to promote Canada internationally as a destination of choice for post-secondary students.
• Increasing support for research internships to expose more students to the private sector; encourage more firms to hire S&T graduates; and increase the number of graduates with both research and business skills and know-how. As announced in Budget 2007, the government will support up to 1,000 interns per year when fully operational, under a new Industrial R&D Internship program modelled after the MITACS program.
• Increasing support for scholarships, including in science and engineering, to encourage more youth to pursue advanced degrees in Canada; support outstanding Canadian graduate students who wish to study overseas; and attract outstanding graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to Canada. As announced in Budget 2007, the government will invest $35 million over two years, and $27 million per year thereafter, to expand the Canada Graduate Scholarships. When the new scholarships are fully in place, the councils will support an additional 1,000 students per year.
• Fostering a culture that values and rewards ingenuity and entrepreneurship. The government will develop an action plan that will include increasing the number of people pursuing education and careers in S&T, in consultation with other levels of government, universities, colleges, the private sector, and not-for-profit stakeholders.

Footnotes

Footnote 24

Jeffrey Crelinsten, Impact Group, The Federal Government's Role in Promoting a "Knowledge Culture" (September 14, 2006.)

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Footnote 25

Canada attracts 5 per cent of OECD international post-secondary students studying abroad, behind Australia (6 per cent), France (9 per cent), Germany (10 per cent), U.K. (11 per cent), and the U.S. (22 per cent). OECD, Education at a Glance 2006.

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