Margaret Thatcher famously said that “the greatest economic benefits of scientific research have always resulted from advances in fundamental knowledge rather than the search for specific applications.” She wasn’t alone in recognizing this, even among conservatives: In the early 2000s Newt Gingrich advocated doubling federal investments in basic scientific research, something which ultimately was achieved under a Republican-led house in 2010.

The Harper Conservatives don’t appear to be cut from the same cloth. Over the last seven years, our federal government has directed funding away from basic science toward industry-led research programs, and clashed publicly with the scientific community on issues ranging from censorship to laboratory closures. In 2014, Industry Canada’s innovation strategy, which was opened to public consultation, promised more of the same approach.

Industry Canada has recognized that — despite an outstanding pool of available Canadian scientists — businesses are not successfully directing that talent toward industrial innovation. This problem and the solutions proposed within the public consultation document are generally the same ones identified seven years ago in the previous science strategy. Considering the government implemented sweeping policy changes over that period, perhaps their approach to innovation just isn’t working.

In the global context, it certainly appears that Canada was better positioned for innovation before the arrival of the Harper government. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports measure a country’s ability to provide a fertile ground for innovation. Canada was in the top ten of most categories in 2001 — and in third place in the overall measure of ‘Growth Competitive Index’. In the past few years we’ve slid out of the top ten and, in specific categories like ‘Quality of Scientific Research Institutions’, have seen a freefall from fourth place in 2008 to 16th in 2013. To make matters worse, last year we were ranked 27th for our ‘Capacity for Innovation’. By international standards, we’re increasingly failing to foster that fertile environment for innovation.

Betting on business as the primary driver of innovation puts the cart before the horse. Many of the great innovations of the 20th and 21st century happened in the pursuit of basic science.

One might blame our science and innovation performance on sluggish federal spending following the economic crisis. When measured as a percentage of the GDP, Canada certainly hasn’t kept pace with many of the other 34 OECD countries since 2007. Still, the billions of dollars in federal R&D funding remains a large investment — so the problem must lie with where we’re spending that money.

Since 2007 the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) has eliminated key supports for basic research, such as the Major Resources Support and Research Tools and Instruments grants, and instead funds business through grants like the Industrial Research Assistance Program. It also spent money on assisting companies in finding graduate students for internships, rather than providing basic scholarships for young scientists to set up research programs. The success rate of the NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowships program plummeted from over 30 per cent in the early 2000s to less than 10 per cent in 2013.

Betting on business as the primary driver of innovation puts the cart before the horse. Many of the great innovations of the 20th and 21st century happened in the pursuit of basic science. Think of nuclear energy, high-field superconductors, the Internet, the structure of DNA and — most recently — the production of graphene. Only in the later stages of development were these discoveries harnessed by industry. While encouraging research and development within existing industries and creating networks between private businesses and public scientific institutes does have great value, it’s less likely to result in great innovations. Which is why China has doubled the number of its universities over the last ten years to develop the creative capacity to spark new industries, rather than add to existing ones.

We need stronger investment in basic science to spur innovation in Canada. Even the modest increases in higher education spending announced in the 2014 federal budget amounted to less over the next two years than what was allocated to direct investment in automotive innovation. The approximately $50 million allocated to the tri-council funding agencies barely covers inflation, and the $1.5 billion in new grants over the next ten years is still ephemeral money (and won’t even be spent this year).

Improve business-led R&D, by all means — but not at the expense of fundamental research in universities and government laboratories. If we don’t lead in basic science, we will continue to slip backwards on innovation.

Dak T. de Kerckhove is a PhD student at the University of Toronto and a fisheries biologist.

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