First revealed as part of Canada’s 2022 federal budget, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Innovation, Science, and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne have announced a “blueprint” for the forthcoming Canadian Innovation Corporation (CIC).
Originally known as the Canadian Innovation and Investment Agency, the CIC will work with an initial $2.6 billion budget over four years — up from the $1 billion budget that was earmarked on its first announcement. With this budget increase, the CIC will also now include the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. It will be a Crown corporation led by private sector experts, reporting to the Innovation minister.
What will the CIC do?
As its mandate, the CIC will “not be just another funding agency,” explains the blueprint — although they do outline that funding is expected to be approximately $50,000 to $5 million per project. Rather, it will be an all-out push to help drive Canadian R&D. As they explain, “it will be an outcome-driven organization with a clear and focused mandate to help Canadian businesses across all sectors and regions become more innovative and productive.”
In addition to funding projects at a variety of innovation stages, the CIC will offer advisory services, including helping businesses navigate funding, connecting them to publicly funded researchers, and proposal help.
Reaction
One group that will certainly keep its eye on the CIC is the Council of Canadian Innovators. In an email newsletter outlining their take on the announcement, the CCI started out positive, saying “in theory, there’s a lot to like with the CIC.”
Ultimately, however, the CCI notes that the “devil is in the details,” and that many previous programs started out promising before fizzling out. As CCI President Benjamin Bergen outlined in a response statement:
“If the CEO and board members are pulled from the ecosystem of bloated innovation intermediaries, we fear that the CIC will ultimately fall back on the same failed approaches that have left Canada at the bottom of the OECD innovation ranks. This organization requires leadership with first-hand experience in the private sector to give this new agency the best possible shot at success.”
Continuing, Bergen explains what the leadership team behind the CIC will need:
“While we welcome the CIC blueprint’s emphasis on the importance of intellectual property and other intangible assets, to go from words to outcomes, the leadership team will need to have a deep and sophisticated knowledge of freedom-to-operate issues, and how to successfully navigate IP issues within modern global value chains.”
