“If you have ideas that are going to lead to commercialization opportunities, you should absolutely get seed-stage funding,” said James E. Colliander, a mathematician at the University of Toronto. He acknowledged that funding for applied research was “crucially important” but said he was “not sure that the principal vehicle for funding basic research should be the path to get those dollars.” Mr. Colliander has received several major discovery grants and is also involved in an effort to bring to market a web application for large-scale academic exam assessment.

Beyond the changes in the two councils, some wonder if Canadian industry is prepared to step up its role in research innovation. In Canada’s largely foreign-owned industrial sector, research is often carried out at corporate headquarters abroad, while home-grown businesses lack the appetite or budget.

Some liken the federal strategy to pushing on a string.

The current policy appears to be trying to “push” technology from universities to industry, but what is needed to increase the level of innovation is for industry to get better at investing in new ideas and well-qualified researchers, said Arthur Carty, a former science adviser to the prime minister and a former head of the National Research Council. “Companies have to have innovation in their philosophical strategies, and they don’t have it,” said Mr. Carty, now executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Nanotechnology.

Uncertainty over the response of industry is a common refrain even among those who see merit in the federal strategy.

“Canada has had most of its eggs in the basic-research basket for quite a long time,” said Richard W. Hawkins, Canada research chair in science, technology and innovation policy at the University of Calgary. He has also spent years outside Canada as an adviser to governments and international agencies on innovation policy. “Governments want to invest in science and technology because they think it will lead to growth and innovation,” he said. “Governments all over the world have the same rationale.”

What’s missing in Canada, he said, is a deep understanding about how sectors of the economy could exploit knowledge to diversify and create new industries. “In Canada we know relatively less about our situation than most of our competitor countries,” he said.