Where does Canada sit in relation to its peers?
Canada ranks 14th and scores a “D” grade. Canada’s lower relative standing shows it is at a disadvantage in producing potential targets for commercialization. With strong capabilities in areas like medical research and information and communications technology, and with high levels of education, Canada should be well poised to succeed in a world that’s increasingly driven by knowledge and innovation. But Canadian industry is not collaborating as well as it could with governments and universities. Canada continues to lag behind the top global performers in business investment in research and development. In 2007, business spending on R&D as a share of GDP was only 1 per cent in Canada. In Japan that share was over twice as high at 2.68 per cent.3 If the science is interesting enough, global companies will move in on it. If Canadian companies don’t improve their collaboration with universities and governments, they’ll be left out in the cold—and most of the benefit from developing Canadi
