If sovereignty is a country’s ability to withstand pressure, in innovation that means ensuring firms and researchers have the materials, software and data alongside needed ecosystems to develop new products, services, and organizational ideas.
Canada has no realistic chance of supplying all its own inputs and continues to underperform in developing new products and services. To achieve innovation sovereignty, Canada needs to strengthen its innovation ecosystems and build international partnerships with like-minded countries to assure access to all these resources.
Where Canada falls short
Innovation occurs locally through ecosystems consisting of firms, universities, colleges, funders, communities, and governments. The world’s most intense ecosystems – San Jose/San Francisco and Boston/Cambridge in the U.S., Cambridge, U.K., and Ningde, China – are blessed by strong relationships between research institutions and major innovative firms that attract significant venture funding.
Examples of Canadian regional innovation ecosystems include Montreal’s gaming ecosystem, Toronto’s life sciences cluster, Vancouver’s cleantech cluster and Whitehorse’s efforts to build a critical minerals network. These ecosystems, however, lack important pillars: Montreal’s gaming sector only recently saw the creation of a gaming publisher; Toronto’s life sciences sector lacks risk capital; Vancouver’s industries and government programs lack co-ordination; and Whitehorse’s critical minerals network is in its infancy.
Two areas where Canada does well: it has the highest rate of post-secondary education among OECD countries, and its universities and colleges are internationally competitive in producing high-quality scientific results. Yet, Canada remains weak on many other innovation inputs: data, semiconductors, adoption of cutting-edge technology, critical minerals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and other important supplies, as well as talent.
A two-stage strategy
To meet this challenge, Canada should adopt a two-stage strategy: 1) create links between firms and research institutions to deepen its regional innovation ecosystems; and 2) invest in international collaborations with like-minded nations to build data and knowledge resources with guaranteed Canadian access.
Within Canada, governments need to encourage and build connections, as well as fund collaborations between large Canadian firms, local small and medium enterprises, and universities and colleges.
Social capital linking firms and researchers is crucial to overcoming hurdles that can stymie innovation. These connections also expose graduate students – most of whom will not end up as academics – to alternative career paths within firms and, in some cases, igniting their entrepreneurial interest.
Prioritizing open science
The fastest way to build collaborations (and accompanying social capital) is by lowering barriers that have historically slowed down their formation. For example, patents – which divide ownership over nascent ideas – can delay the start of projects by between six months and a year. This is why more universities are contemplating open science policies that put patents on the back burner until later stages of development.
Open science involves sharing research inputs (materials, software, data) and outputs (new ideas and even more data) and not seeking patents, at least at early stages of research. Canada is a global leader in successful open science collaborations, with the University of Toronto’s Structural Genomics Consortium, The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute, and Conscience at the forefront.
Currently, Canadian researchers do not have the resources to share their data, let alone to do so in ways that make it usable for developing products and services. Consider mining and materials science, a strategic field that supports the defence, battery, and aerospace industries.
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Scientists report that they lack a suitable data repository and a common data format. The same study highlights that, in environment and climate change — another area of strategic importance — data is balkanized and subject to idiosyncratic usage rights, undermining use, particularly by artificial intelligence.
By removing barriers to sharing, open science allows Canadian regional innovation ecosystems to scale up faster. Canadian firms participating in these open ecosystems are positioned to transform open outputs into proprietary products and services. Because multiple firms co-design the outputs, they incur no additional costs or delays in using them, unlike their competitors.
Ensuring reliable access
At the same time, most of the data, physical resources, and talent Canada depends on resides outside the country and will continue to do so. As part of innovation sovereignty, Canada must secure reliable access through partnerships with clear guarantees. For physical assets, the federal government already recognizes, through its Defence Industrial Strategy, that Canada needs to continue working with like-minded countries to ensure a supply of critical minerals and to build pharmaceutical stockpiles.
Data, knowledge, and talent are different matters. These cannot be stockpiled, and Canada will never produce enough data and knowledge on its own to power advanced science, let alone the enormous data needs of artificial intelligence. Open science again presents a solution: collaborations with like-minded countries can help ensure reciprocal access to data and knowledge even in the event of a disruption. Because these resources are openly shared, no country can close it down. For data hosted outside the country, Canada can establish mirror sites to ensure uninterrupted access.
Canada’s reliance on foreign-owned intellectual property creates a strategic vulnerability. In 2023-2024, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office granted 90 per cent of Canadian patents to foreigners, with US firms holding nearly half.
In a crisis, a foreign government could cut off access to patented drugs, materials, and essential technology. To mitigate this risk, Canada should implement measures similar to those it adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic that permit firms to access technology when patents would otherwise prevent it.
The bottom line on sovereignty is that Canada needs to prioritize developing shared mechanisms at home, while also building alliances with like-minded countries to advance data and knowledge openly and collaboratively. In this way, Canada will have the ability to withstand pressure from any country, friend or foe alike.
