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There’s a disconnect between Canada’s capacity to innovate and our capacity to commercialize those innovations — or so the story goes.

It’s been repeated so often it’s become a mantra in certain circles, and it was hauled out again recently in an opinion piece that wondered how we can get Canada’s health research “out of the lab and into the market.” Their solutions are always the same: reject investments in purely academic research in favour of market-driven research.

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The thing is, that mantra is built on a myth.

Fortunately, in its 2016 federal budget, the government recognized that many high-profile Canadian innovations in health care were discovered by academic — not industrial — researchers.

The budget takes much-needed action to reinvigorate Canada’s research and science base by investing in post-secondary research facilities and in basic discovery research funded through the granting councils.