Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for the warm welcome. Let me first thank Valydate for hosting us today.
Valydate is an innovative, world-class company, founded in 2010, that specializes in "schematic integrity analysis", a technique that detects and corrects errors in electronic designs early in the hardware design cycle. Many world-leading companies working in the telecommunications, defence, aerospace and medical industries use Valydate's technology to reduce their costs and shorten the time it takes to integrate their products into the market.
Starting with two employees in 2010, the company has grown to include five full-time engineers and one part-time employee. Last February, Valydate won the DesignVision Award in the Design Verification Tools category at DesignCon 2012 in Santa Clara, California. In 2011, the company won a bronze award in the New Business of the Year category at the Ottawa Business Achievement Awards.
Valydate is a perfect example of what our government wants to achieve with our innovation agenda. Innovation is about taking ideas to market and solving problems.
With the help of our hosts today, I want to paint you a picture of how science and technology (S&T) tie into prosperity and of what is possible if we work together to get it right.
How do we create jobs, economic growth and prosperity through S&T? Innovation.
Microsoft, Research In Motion, Apple, Intel, Google and Facebook have changed our society. These are just a few examples of innovation that have had a wide-scale economic impact.
How do you create the next RIM or Apple? Where will the next Bill Gates, Jim Balsillie, Mike Lazaridis or Steve Jobs come from? How do we make sure it happens here in Canada?
These are the questions that our government has been working on. Today, I'd like to let you in on our strategy, the steps we have taken so far and the challenges ahead.
We're not unique in the problems we face. We can sell our solutions to the world—a world that has faced some difficult times over the past few years.
Support of S&T has been a fundamental priority for us since 2006, as exemplified by the introduction of our S&T strategy in 2007.
The S&T strategy is guided by the principle that innovation is driven by collaboration and the commercialization of ideas that emerge from the manufacturing floor or the university laboratory.
The fact is, our strategy and our significant investments have sought to encourage partnerships among the private sector, academia and government.
Partnerships that are turning promising ideas into the groundbreaking products, processes and applications that create jobs and lead to economic growth.
Federal S&T expenditures reached $11.7 billion in 2010–11. We have demonstrated this commitment with every successive Economic Action Plan. These investments are making a difference.
That said, we all know that there is still work to do. There are still challenges ahead and areas where we need to do better.
For the most part, those challenges can be overcome if the public and private sectors fully embrace innovation.
My colleague, Jim Flaherty, will be presenting Economic Action Plan 2012 in a few days, and our commitment to making the key investments in S&T necessary to sustain a modern, competitive economy will be evident.
As I said earlier, S&T are essential to ensuring Canada is competitive around the world and prosperous in the new economy.
The Prime Minister summed it up best: science powers commerce.
That's why our government recently made new investments to support leading-edge research, international collaborations and the creation of world-class research centres in Canada.
You know Facebook was started by a university student who saw a better way of connecting his peers through S&T. Universities are communities where ideas are brought to life and problems find solutions.
To help foster this and ensure that Canada has the best and brightest, we created new scholarships such as the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships and the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships.
But despite these and other investments, we continue to face challenges.
Our private sector participation in research and development (R&D) is still lagging. In fact, a report from the Science, Technology and Innovation Council noted it's actually limiting our overall performance in innovation.
Simply put, when businesses don't invest in R&D, it's harder for them to stay competitive. It's harder for them to grow in the future, which means it's harder for the economy to create new jobs.
Our government asked an expert independent panel to look at the effectiveness of our support for business R&D. This panel was headed by Tom Jenkins of OpenText.
We received the panel's report last October, and while we may not adopt all of its recommendations as prescribed, we do agree with what it perceives to be the key problems.
We will act soon because we are committed to turning ideas and innovations into new marketable, competitive and beneficial products that result in jobs, growth and prosperity.
For example, National Research Council Canada (NRC) is a Canadian icon. Established in 1916, it has had a tremendous history of accomplishment: a Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Gerhard Herzberg, the development of the pacemaker, firebrick, the hearing aid, the meningitis vaccine and CANDU technology.
It also established the Canadian Astronaut Program that led to the Canadian Space Agency. It is home to the Industrial Research Assistance Program and the parent of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
But as NRC approaches its centennial, weaknesses in its operating model are apparent.
For many years, NRC's mandate had been broadened while its resources became more thinly distributed. It began to lose its focus and was being pulled in multiple, sometimes inconsistent, directions.
To some, NRC had become a "loose federation of institutes", a set of facilities across Canada pursuing independent research interests and clients rather than working together as an integrated, high-performance team on high-impact and more customer-driven initiatives.
So, almost two years ago, our government appointed John McDougall as President of NRC to bring his considerable experience, knowledge and professional perspective to bear in reshaping the organization.
Since that time, our government has been taking steps to help refocus NRC on areas where it can make the most effective contributions. And to do so in ways that will significantly improve Canada's innovation performance, reaffirm NRC's reputation and create a stable business model going forward.
The model being developed will be built on proven approaches used by successful global innovation players, carefully adapted to the Canadian reality.
It will be based on hands-on experience with multinational companies, small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies and academia.
We are working to make NRC a world-class organization that is more effective in generating new jobs and growth for Canada through science, technology and innovation. And I think that this is a sure way to sustain and expand Canada's economy and prosperity for all Canadians in the years ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, the ideas and innovations are out there. We need to help bring them to life.
We have world-renowned post-secondary institutions and leading-edge thinkers and researchers. The next Steve Jobs, Mike Lazaridis, Mark Zuckerberg or Jim Balsillie is probably walking on a campus in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Kitchener, Québec or Halifax right now. We need to make sure that he or she has the tools and motivation to prosper here in Canada.
We have the business expertise and leadership that is so essential in taking ideas to the next level. We have the people with the skills, the drive and the desire to ensure we can thrive and grow now and into the future. We have what it takes to build a competitive advantage in the global economy that will result in jobs, growth and prosperity. We just have to be bold!
Economic Action Plan 2012 will help us do that, and I invite you to pay close attention to the presentation that Jim Flaherty will be making later this week. Together we will succeed in bringing minds to market!
Thank you.
