Science, Research and Talent Development for the Turbulent 21st Century

In recent years, global phenomena have rapidly escalated the pressure to innovate across economies and societies, especially in leading countries like Canada. Extreme weather events have increased public demand for sustainability to be pursued as a strategic objective for a low-carbon economy. The pandemic has accelerated the digital pressure on businesses, organizations, and governments to increase productivity and meet the virtual expectations of customers and citizens. These phenomena are exacerbated by the changing nature of globalization. 

Canada’s Need for Economic Productivity and Innovation

It may be an exaggeration to speak of deglobalization, but the pandemic reminded all countries that domestic capacity now underpins national security and the ability to deal with national and global challenges. Jurisdictions around the world may continue to be intertwined within global supply chains but geo-political borders have increasing significance and meaning. 

Now, international strategies for friend-shoring have replaced earlier predictions of a global village with the end of the nation-state. Leading countries must build strong diversified economies to underpin domestic security and economic sovereignty in the turbulent 21^st century. 

These economies must respond to sustainable, digitally enabled, resilient and socially just expectations along with an ability to confront diverse geopolitical tensions at home and abroad.

In this context, there is no place for complacency, self-satisfaction, or out-of-date thinking. Rather, every country must begin with truth-telling about their strengths and weaknesses. In Canada, this begins with a conversation about our economic productivity, access to a labour pool of highly qualified talent and the impetuous to innovate and adopt new technologies.

For Canada, one claim that urgently needs scrutiny is the oft-repeated headline about our “highly-educated workforce.” What are the criteria for making this claim? Have these criteria been updated for the profound changes of the 21^st century?

The Role of Universities in Developing Future-Ready Talent

In countries like Canada, communities increasingly depend on highly-qualified talented people who can lead continuous innovation within all sectors to meet both domestic expectations and global competition. Jobs involving routine operations that can be automated are at greater risk than ever. However, new occupations will also continue to emerge as others are disrupted. Many of these new positions will call for high-level competencies to adopt technologies and perform work that requires sound judgment, awareness of alternative approaches, and critical abilities to deal with complexity and non-standard requirements. 

For this reason, universities have been moving from a “transmission-of-knowledge” pedagogy to an additional and more important focus on helping students acquire enduring competencies that prepare them for foreseeable as well as unforeseeable futures. Campuses have increasingly implemented an active learning model across all programs. In this approach, students are expected to learn established knowledge by undertaking their own efforts to construct knowledge and formulate interpretations based on evidence. The popularity of co-op programs and internships similarly reflects the increased importance of guided experiential learning.

Viewed until recently as dichotomous, teaching and research are now seen as separate articulations of the same process. More than training for specific and often evolving occupations, today’s students need robust education to acquire higher-level and enduring competencies that help prepare them for known and unknown future careers. 

Just as the first industrial revolution set the stage for mass elementary schooling during the mid-nineteenth century, successive economic and social transformations made secondary and then post-secondary schooling a norm in leading countries during the twentieth century. This trajectory of increasing formal education explains today’s expanding graduate programs as all sectors respond to changing market forces and work settings. The ability to think and work like a “researcher” is a prime characteristic of the talent now increasingly sought by employers as the epicentre of the economy moves to virtual space.

Research and Innovation: Canada’s Path to Competitiveness

In an era defined by rapid technological change, heightened international competition, and mounting societal uncertainty, research performs a fundamental role in asserting national economic and technological sovereignty. Leading countries recognize that a thriving research and innovation ecosystem is a vital national asset, essential for driving economic productivity, maintaining competitiveness, and addressing complex societal challenges like pandemic preparedness, national defence and decarbonization. Supporting a successful research and innovation ecosystem is crucial to supporting quality of life and enhancing social cohesion and resiliency. Such research must include all fields across the natural sciences and engineering, the social sciences and humanities, and the health sciences.

After all, disruptive technologies require not just the technological skills to adapt and apply these technologies, but deep-rooted understandings of human thought and behaviour to comprehend the potential ramifications for society and modern economies. Similarly, personal and societal health depends upon the latest research findings that include the complex interactions of mind and body as well as between individuals, groups and the non-human environment.

The OECD has recently highlighted the urgent need for ambitious science, technology, and innovation policies to address the current global turbulence and instability. They proposed a “Transformative Agenda” focused on coordinated research policies and sustained investment, which emphasize the role of talent cultivation, scientific and scholarly advancement, and technological innovation in driving economic resilience and prosperity.

Canada is one of the most educated countries only if judged by the twentieth-century criterion of the proportion of the population with completed college and undergraduate programs. However, if viewed from a 21st-century perspective, Canada ranks 28th in the OECD for individuals with advanced degrees. Canada would require an additional 681,000 people with post-graduate achievements to reach the OECD average. 

This gap has profound consequences across the economy. According to Statistics Canada, the number one obstacle to business innovation (2017, 2019, and 2022) was a lack of skills. Similarly, the most prominent challenge faced by enterprises in adopting advanced technologies is the difficulty in recruiting highly skilled staff.

Supporting Research and Innovation in Canada

Canada’s university-based research and innovation ecosystem addresses this talent gap by developing highly talented individuals. Each year, U15 universities educate and support nearly 150,000 graduate students, 60% of the total graduate student population in Canada. They do so with crucial federal government support that is provided in two ways: through direct scholarships and fellowships awarded to the most promising individuals selected in independent expert-assessed competitions; and indirectly through student assistantships in research projects also selected for funding by rigorous independent selection committees. One stunning illustration of the impact of such support is that Canada has become a leading source of global AI talent, home to 3% of the world’s elite AI researchers, ranking 6^th globally. Not surprisingly, talent development is a foundational pillar of the federal government’s AI strategy.

Support for highly-qualified talent was reflected in Budget 2024, which included a $1.8 billion boost to research grant funding provided by the three federal granting agencies, alongside a long overdue increase to the number and value of graduate scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships. Already, the granting agencies support the development of over 75,000 graduate students (30% of total graduate enrollments) and this will only increase thanks to these significant investments. These are important and desperately needed investments that signal a vision for future success, but we must accept that the scale of international ambition keeps increasing.

Canada therefore cannot be complacent about global competition for knowledge and talent. Despite political uncertainty, the United States is making major investments through the CHIPS and Science Act which includes unprecedented research budget increases. Likewise, Japan and the UK have announced substantial investments in their scientific and technological sectors, with Japan pledging $87 billion and the UK’s 2023 science and technology plan aiming to cement the country’s place as a ‘science and technology superpower’ by 2030.

Meanwhile, universities in Canada face significant financial pressures from declining provincial funding and new study permit caps as well as delays in processing international student visas. The impact of such challenges is uneven across Canada, although all universities are scrambling to keep pace even with inflation. Most discouragingly, there are no federal-provincial discussions about the increasing role of science, research and innovation in tomorrow’s economy or a forum for exploring how different jurisdictions might do their part in synergistic ways to leverage the impact of Canada’s leading research universities to meet domestic and international challenges and opportunities.

The potential negative impact of current financial challenges is highlighted by the scale and reach of research universities as hubs for collaboration, facilitating the generation of ideas and transmission of knowledge and solutions across private and public partners. As Canada’s leading research universities, U15 institutions administer grants that include a vast network of other partners; industry, not-for-profits, research institutes, hospitals and other post-secondary institutions. During the 2022-23 fiscal year alone, U15 universities participated in a total of 6,587 federal grants, involving 3,627 organizations across 324 of the 338 federal electoral ridings. 

This widespread participation underscores the essential role of leading research institutions as hubs for promoting research excellence and driving innovation across Canada and beyond. In the 2021/2022 period, U15 universities attracted $783 million in grants and donations from private industry, representing 74% of the total $1.1 billion in industry-sponsored research income to higher education institutions. 

Canada’s Path Forward: Expanding Research and Innovation

Clearly, much more needs to be done to boost research-infused innovation across all sectors but the path forward has been blazed and must now expand to meet growing competitive pressure and rising consumer and citizen expectations. The key enabling component on this path is access to highly qualified talent. Only by dramatically increasing such access will Canada truly have a “highly educated workforce” for the maturing 21^st century.

A concerted federal-provincial, multi-layered approach is now essential to build upon Canada’s current commitment to developing its human capital, its best and brightest, while also advancing knowledge and understanding for enhanced domestic capacity, economic strength, and national security. Canada has the potential, now only partially realized, to thrive in the 21^st century. Robust investments in science, research and innovation do not guarantee a bright future for Canada but nothing else is more promising for the future economy than a thriving research sector.