Reinforcing Canada’s culture of innovation and discovery

In the aftermath of the Government of Canada’s fall budget release, there is widespread and understandable anxiety from coast to coast to coast about how – and indeed, whether – the budget will meet the moment in reinforcing the levees of Canada’s culture of innovation and discovery in a highly uncertain time. Norms are being challenged. In multiple corners of the planet, the rule of law appears to be in decline – in some corners it appears optional. The very idea of “fact” is being questioned. These dynamics contribute to our unease.

The budget contains laudable measures to attract top talent to Canada. Excellent. Cutting-edge biomedical research will increase population health; top-shelf quantum and engineering talent will accelerate the industries of the future; enhancing our understanding of the past and present are ingredients of future prosperity and societal health. We must identify talent wherever it resides, incentivize the world’s best minds to install their enterprises in our country, and rapidly accelerate efforts to scale and spread Canadian-sourced innovation. 

At the same time, we urgently need to better understand what makes a knowledge ecosystem work. How will we maintain and strengthen Canadian sovereignty in a world where access to our own data is mitigated by systems that can keep the data of Canadians stored and administered in other countries? How will we moderate the capacity of AI to prevent disruption to our understanding of history, contemporary events and of each other, and instead make it work for Canadians? In the face of dramatic reductions in the international networks that result in science as fundamental as predicting the weather and monitoring the salination of the oceans, how are we to chart a course toward strengthening the resilience of our natural environment while championing Canada’s strategic assets in resource discovery and extraction? How will we build trust and combat misinformation?

The moment calls for a countrywide effort led by Canadians, in partnership with colleagues in the United States and around the world, to understand the dynamics of knowledge systems. The term is abstract. At its foundational level, a knowledge system is a web of interconnected relationships – scientific, infrastructural, informational – that enable new kinds of knowledge to emerge, be shared and then used to advance societal progress.

Knowledge systems are in jeopardy here and around the globe. 

In response to this, we have been invited to lead a Task Force of the Royal Society of Canada on knowledge system resilience. The task at hand is to identify the causes of current jeopardy by assembling multidisciplinary and multigenerational teams of researchers. More important yet is to identify the opportunities for Canadian science, knowledge and innovation at this moment in history, and to provide guideposts to good policy and productive avenues for nation-building investment.  

The path to a better future is in reminding one another – as individuals, as communities, as fields of research, as institutions – of our interdependence, and, in identifying and strengthening those acknowledged commonalities, strengthen the whole. 

Ours will be one effort, involving many; there ought to be more. Should you have a vocation toward research and evidence-informed policy, we encourage you to consider joining one of these initiatives, whether alongside us or in many other laudable efforts across Canada.

A budget that brings fresh ideas and talent to Canada strengthens our collective capabilities. And yet the moment requires more than that. The opportunity is two-fold. First, the research community in Canada can work to understand its interconnectivity at a deepened level. Second, and crucially, we need to confidently reach out to colleagues around the world, and across sectors of society to demonstrate the uniqueness of Canadian culture, vision, research, and innovation. In a time of global vacillation, we need to be bold.