In its budget speech of February 1992 the federal governrrient announced its decision to disband the Science Council of Canada. This report was in production at the time of the announcement.
Reaching for Tomorrow: Science and Technology Policy in Canada 1991 was conceived to be the first in a series of annual reports in which the Science Council would review and interpret Canada’s science and technology policies and activities, thereby contributing to the development of a coherent national science and technology agenda.
Message from the Chairman
Science and Technology Policy in Canada is designed to provide, on an annual basis, an overview and commentary on the integration of science and technology into the fabric of our society and economy. It is offered to those with a strong belief in the future of Canada and in the same spirit that inspired the creation of the Science Council in 1966.
The essence of that spirit was a concern for the welfare of Canadians, coupled with a perception that science and technology had a profoundly important role to play in maintaining and enhancing the quality of life of Canadians. In a speech to the inaugural meeting of the Science Council on 5 July 1966, then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson presented his vision of what was really meant by the Council’s formal mandate. He conveyed a challenge and an opportunity of immense scope.
He spoke of the need for the governments and the people of Canada to receive advice from an autonomous body on the building of constructive links between science and technology, on the one hand, and economic growth, resource development, health, environment, and the infrastructure of the nation, on the other hand. He challenged the Council to tap the wisdom of the pure and applied natural sciences and the social sciences and humanities. He stressed the importance of applying Canada’s scientific talent to global social problems, and of assessing the impact of science and technology on society.
The Science Council of Canada was charged with advising on the shape and dynamics of our national effort in science and technology, the role of that effort in relation to Canada’s aspirations, our adequacy in research and its application, the organizational and social structure in which S&T are embedded, and the policies that guide the functioning and deployment of our S&T capacities.
At the time of this inaugural speech, our collective understanding -both in Canada and abroad -of what is now known as science and technology policy was very limited. Little was known about the social organization of research, the links between science, technology, and innovation, the art of research evaluation, the nature and economics of industrial innovation, the new paradigms of environmental economics, the relationships between technological change and trade, or the underlying causes of technology gaps between nations and differing economic growth rates. Since the mid-1960s researchers and governmental policy analysts worldwide have _wrestled with such questions and have succeeded in laying down a rich body of knowledge to effectively inform political choice and private decision making.
What Time Has Wrought
If the charge to Science Council was challenging in 1966, it is even more so now. The world as a whole and Canada itself have changed profoundly in 26 years. Today’s geopolitical balance of powers has emerged from a science-and technology-based industrial revolution that is inseparably interwoven with the increased movement of goods, services, capital, and people across national boundaries – the phenomenon of globalization. Those nations that cannot deploy science and technology to compete effectively in global markets stagnate or decline.
To that transformed world, with all of its profound implications for Canada, we must add our more recent recognition that our patterns of production, consumption, and waste generation are leading to irreversible environmental change and a mutual interdependence among all nations of the world. This interlocking of the world economy and the environment has profound implications for the shape of our national and international institutions of governance. This in tum has deep implications for those who practise, use, and fund science and technology.
Canadians are awakening to the realities of competition in an innovation-intensive, globalized economy that is indifferent to our domestic commercial and constitutional concerns. We are observing the challenges to our wealth-creating ability by the aggressive new entrants to the world economy, and recognize that more such entrants will follow. We are recognizing that competitiveness is intensifying, just as we are recognizing the vulnerability of the global ecosystem. We know we must respond to these multiple challenges if we are to retain those aspects of Canadian life we value.
How do we achieve this? And what is the role of science and technology? There is no “silver bullet” answer. We are dealing with issues that are infinitely more complex than they were at the time of Science Council’s founding. Institutions and policies that served Canadians well in the past are unable to cope with the nature and pace of the changes. Some of the knowledge base needed to renovate these institutions and policies lies in the S&T policy literature, but there are still many questions to old and emerging problems yet to be answered. However, one thing is certain: we have the essence of the solution in our people. The health of our economy and environment depends more and more on how well we nurture and benefit from the intellectual strength of Canadians -on the way we use our skills and intellectual resources in a flexible and continuously evolving economy.
The institutions and the policies that guide the development and deployment of our intellectual resources are the stuff of a national science and technology agenda. In the following pages, I hope to provide a broad vision of today’s international and domestic S&T climate with a particular focus on competitiveness (the theme of this year’s report). I then suggest directions for a national S&T agenda that will enhance the capacity of Canadians to develop and prosper -the Science Council’s contemporary response to Pearson’s original challenge to the Council.
Canadian Dilemmas
Canada is a relatively prosperous nation with an enviable standard of living and a tradition of outstanding contribution to international diplomacy and development. We now, however, find ourselves in a state of anxiety, and are losing, it seems, a great deal of our economic advantage. Our relative standard of living is starting to suffer accordingly. Some of our social and political institutions have not performed as we had hoped and we are confronted by environmental realities that we failed to anticipate. We appear to be a society searching for a sense of direction and commitment and apparently resigned to the reconstruction of some institutions and major aspects of public policy. After a great deal of analysis, however, a coherent picture of the problems Canada faces is emerging, and thus the general direction of the solutions.
