That's the $64,000 question. First of all, you're right, we've been giving Canada a “D” in innovation for probably most of the last decade. In fact, the flip side is, what are we doing on productivity growth where we've opened up a gap, probably about $7,000 per capita lower than the Americans, for the last 25 years?
What do we do about it? First of all, we stop relying on crutches to carry our economy forward. To a great degree, we think Canada didn't innovate because we didn't have to. Until 2003 or 2004, we were able to rely upon a soft dollar as a way to have a kind of price advantage in global markets, particularly in the United States. But with China's rise, with the rise of commodity prices, we've lost that crutch. We're now looking at a fundamental mindset, a change in mindset, both in the private sector and within government, about innovation.
We've created a centre at the Conference Board of Canada called the Centre for Business Innovation, where we're trying to get behind the numbers, not in terms of public policy but in terms of creating an innovation culture within organizations. As you're doing your research, you'll find reports now emerging from the centre talking about what it takes to actually create an innovation culture within an organization or within a country. There's no simple answer; there's clearly no silver bullet. It starts by actually treating innovation as a priority. If you start there and start asking yourself questions about all aspects of public policy, you might begin to discover various answers.