Canada’s innovation ecosystem continues to face a structural imbalance between strong research
performance and weak commercialization outcomes. The country ranks second among G7 nations
in higher-education R&D (HERD) spending yet remains among the lowest in business expenditure
on R&D (BERD), at roughly half the OECD average and showing little growth over the past decade.
The persistent gap between discovery and deployment can be addressed by better catalyzing the
applied research capacity of Canada’s polytechnics.

Polytechnics Canada’s recommendations to the Standing Committee on Science and Research include:

• Expand Canada’s focus beyond funding research activity to include funding research outcomes
• Integrate polytechnic applied research into national R&D and commercialization frameworks such as BOREALIS
• Embed intellectual property (IP) support into applied research investments to create a seamless pathway from early IP identification through to scale-up