Canada must prioritize its commitment to supporting scientific advances, or risk permanent damage to our productivity, national security and our way of life. Many peer nations have federal science policies, and they appear better prepared than Canada for an uncertain future.

The announcement in Budget 2024 that the Government of Canada will appoint an advisory council on science and innovation is an encouraging step in the right direction. To be composed of leaders from academia, industry and non-profits, this group will be responsible for developing a national strategy on science and innovation. I welcome this move and eagerly await the council’s creation. Its first task should be to develop an overarching science policy.

A federal policy on science goes beyond a stack of guidelines and rules. It’s even more than a declaration that as a country, we place a high importance on the value of research, discovery and innovation and we don’t rely on industry to do most of it. It is not only a government commitment to plan for advanced artificial intelligence, to support our aging population, to fund solutions to save our planet from irreversible climate change or to protect our critical infrastructure from cyberattack. A federal science policy is an investment in continuing to be one of the most prosperous nations in the G7 and one of the best places in the world to live.

The most recent federal budget included notable investment in Canada’s research ecosystem. We still have a long way to go. A look at the portion of GDP Canada has spent on R&D this century compared to other OECD countries paints a sobering, and frankly shameful, picture. In 2002, Canada spent somewhat less than the average of the OECD. Now, we spend even fewer dollars than two decades ago, while the OECD average is going up. Canada is going in the wrong direction. The U.S. and the U.K. increased the percentage of their GDP they spent on R&D, with the U.K.’s trajectory rising sharply in 2013 after staying about the same for the previous decade. It’s as if the U.K. had an epiphany. Canada is overdue for its own.

Recently I presented to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, making the case for a federal science policy. Science transcends politics. By its very nature, science has a lengthy time horizon and does not fit into the relatively short terms of sitting governments and elected officials, and even less so within the reporting periods of industry’s quarterly or annual reports. Our leaders should acknowledge and endorse what so many of their peers have already learned about the crucial function that scientific inquiry and discovery serves in strong economies, national security, productivity and public health.

The U.S.-based Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) sprang from a desire to lead technological advances, not just witness them, or worse, be victimized by them. Its purpose is to identify and fund advances in basic and applied research with national security and the superiority of its military top of mind. Its budget for 2024 was more than $4 billion. More than a decade ago, DARPA was an early supporter of vaccine research at Moderna. You know how that turned out. Canada had to wait for COVID vaccines until other countries with the technology served their citizens first. We had not provided enough support for our own biotech research. There is no reason why Canada could not have a similar agency here where spending for defence has benefits beyond our imagination. We have come under fire from our NATO partners for spending less than the recommended 20 per cent of military spending on R&D. We need the courage and foresight to invest in our future.

South Korea spends almost 5 per cent of its GDP on R&D. That country’s trend of GDP spending on R&D increased every year but two between 2002 and 2022. It has an intertwined system of support for research with government, academia and industry all equal players and with proportionate benefits from their participation. When I visited Seoul National University more than a decade ago, I saw a colleague’s optics lab in the multi-storey Samsung building on campus. Samsung started as a grocery store before the government invested funds and provided tax incentives to the company to begin research in technology.

Canada should follow best practices from other countries and encourage government, industry and academia in Canada to work together and allow all three to benefit from the research. While there is generous financial support from the government, notably in quantum and AI, it needs to find a way to draw on industry dollars. Denmark has tax laws requiring companies owned by foundations to conduct research. I gave a public lecture at the University of Copenhagen right after the Novo Nordisk Foundation had just announced a quantum computing program with about $200 million in funding. Denmark has just a quarter of Canada’s GDP, yet last year it generated the equivalent of $68,000 GDP per capita compared to Canada’s $55,000.

The OECD produced the Frascati Manual so that countries can determine R&D spending in the same manner. It classifies research into the categories of basic research, applied research and experimental development. A Canadian science policy must value all three.

Experimental developments lead directly to new products and services, but development cannot continue to happen without new ideas coming from the basic research and on through applied research. There are numerous noteworthy applications to come from pure science. We would not have the GPS systems that we all rely on today — research also supported by DARPA — if we did not have Einstein’s equation for general relativity, for instance. The World Wide Web was created so the numerous users of the CERN particle accelerator could be in constant communication despite being all around the world. It was more than 40 years after Einstein’s equations for the laser that we had a working laser. It was 25 years later that I developed chirped pulse amplification as a PhD student. And it was years later that the invention intended to tell us how high-intensity light interacts with matter led to the development of laser eye surgery. As a society, we mustn’t judge science by its immediate impact, or fund it based on its possible future applications. Ask instead whether the proposed research has the chance to discover something new about ourselves, the world or the universe. Let these new discoveries evolve into new applications and devices.

The announced advisory council on science and innovation should be apolitical and remain in place regardless of the party in power. It should be a protected institution that guides us as a nation. U.S. president Joe Biden has a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology made up of 30 of that country’s top researchers. One of the key questions the president asked them to answer is how to ensure the long-term health of science and technology in that country. This question is important for Canada as well.

While increased investment in innovation and research is a positive development, a national policy on science would help ensure continued, sustained funding and support for scientific discovery in Canada. A country that invests in scientific innovation over the long term is more likely to retain its best and brightest talent, supporting the development of their ideas for the betterment of Canadian society. Canada would be in the position to help the world, too, instead of waiting for other countries to help us. Defence partnerships are more desirable with a country that invests heavily in technological advances, especially if such commitment to advancement in science is ingrained in our way of life and guaranteed for future generations.

Canada needs a scientific policy that drives new research from fundamental to product development. We need a science policy that has science helping to find solutions to societal problems and threats, and a policy that understands we need to be doing science today from pure science through to development so that we are ready in the future to find new solutions to new problems.

The advisory council on science and innovation will have its work cut out for it. It had better get started.