A year ago, Tom Jenkins (chairman and chief strategy officer at Open Text Corp) was asked to lead a committee that was going to investigate how Canada can see better results from the money being spent on innovation in Canada. On Monday, the Jenkins report was released. The report is hopefully a first step in improving our innovation situation.

The Jenkins report proposed that what we need a more targeted and strategic approach to spending the $7 billion a year that it currently spends on R&D outside government labs (approximately $3.5 billion is spent federally on the SRED program each year).

The report offered six recommendations on how the government could get better results, as the fear is that if the programs are not improved upon then there will be further decline in Canadian innovation.

The Six Recommendations

  1. Create an Industrial Research and Innovation Council (IRIC) to streamline the application process and with the purpose of providing the most impact for SMEs
  2. Simplify the SR&ED program by basing the tax credits only on labour costs.
  3. Make business innovation a core focus of government procurement.
  4. Make some changes to the National Research Council (NRC) so that it becomes a set of large-scale sectoral collaborative R&D centres that involves linking businesses and academic communities.
  5. Help innovative firms access other funding where gaps currently exist.
  6. Make the government more accountable when it comes to innovation, and improve coordination and impact when the federal and provincial provinces are working together.