Canada Losing It's Sci-Tech Advantage?

For a nation that had punched well above its weight in the sci-tech sector, the Science, Technology and Innovation Council's latest report isn't good news.

But Canada can just count on its booming natural resources sector...forever?

Highlights from Wells' column and the STIC Report that suggest Canada may be losing its sci-tech edge:

• If it manages to push Canada up 7 spots in international rankings of research intensity, the country will be back where it was, compared to peer countries, on the day Stephen Harper became prime minister.
• "So Canada has more scientists than ever, and each is able to do less science than she would have been able to do a decade ago."
• "The ability to deploy our talent to best advantage—to maximize the impact of people’s knowledge and skills in our labour force and our society—is equally important...in the services sector, Canada’s performance is mediocre when compared to other OECD countries. In manufacturing, the picture is dismal—the HRST share of the manufacturing labour force is among the lowest in the OECD." (STIC Report, Chapter 7) 
• "At the beginning of this century, Canadian business R&D funding stood at 1.05 percent of GDP, and it has fallen fairly steadily to 0.81 percent in 2011." (STIC Report, Chapter 3)

From Paul Wells' praiseworthy column in Maclean's:

The good news is that on pure science, Canada continues to perform better than most other countries. “With a share of only 0.5 percent of global population, Canada accounted for 4.4 percent of the world’s natural sciences and engineering publications in 2010. This positions Canada eighth after countries with significantly larger populations: the U.S., China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy.”

The bad news is that Canada is letting its science advantage fritter away, as if that could somehow help its private-sector R&D gap close. In 2007 Canada continued to rank first among G7 countries in HERD, or R&D expenditure in the higher-education sector. But as I have argued elsewhere, it’s increasingly useful to consider the G7 as an international losers’ club. It’s the U.S., Japan and Old Europe. When you throw Canada into the larger pool of 41 countries STIC looks at — countries with a bit of mojo, like Brazil, India, China, Poland, Israel and Sweden — Canada has fallen from third in 2006, to 4th in 2008 — to 9th in 2011. “With their significant investments in research and higher education,” this panel writes, “other countries are catching up and overtaking Canada.”

Between 2006 and 2010, the annual number of science PhD graduates in Canada grew by nearly half — a lagging reflection, I suspect, of the formidable growth in science capacity in Canada between 1997 and 2002. A generation of students came of age at a time when Canada was developing an international reputation as a relative science oasis. They had their university careers and came onto the job market. But it’s a shaky market now. This larger cohort of scientists is searching for stagnant or declining grant budgets. Success rates for research grant applications are falling. So Canada has more scientists than ever, and each is able to do less science than she would have been able to do a decade ago.

It’s a peculiar situation. The government has known, since its first year in office, that the private sector is not doing enough applied research. Its response has been to put the brakes on pure research in universities. The result has been that the weakness has continued to aggravate, while the strength has been put in danger. At Davos more than a year ago, Harper said his government would “continue to make the key investments in science and technology necessary to sustain a modern competitive economy.” It’s not clear what he meant by “continue.” It is true that recent changes at the National Research Council are designed to bolster, or accompany, or synergize with, or somehow prop up private-sector applied research. I can only wish the NRC luck. If it manages to push Canada up 7 spots in international rankings of research intensity, the country will be back where it was, compared to peer countries, on the day Stephen Harper became prime minister.