RESEARCH
Toronto’s Cultural Sector: Economic dynamics and change, 1991 to 2021
Tara Vinodrai
This report from IPL Affiliated Faculty member Tara Vinodrai was written for the City of Toronto, Economic Development & Culture Division. This report provides an empirical overview of Toronto’s cultural sector, examining long-term changes in employment over the thirty-year period between 1991 and 2021. Insights from this analysis can provide baseline data to inform economic development and cultural planning in the City of Toronto. The analysis can also provide policymakers, decision makers and key stakeholders in the cultural sector with insights into the sector and its contribution to the regional economy.
EVENTS
Remote Work: Urban Panacea or Curse?
September 26, 2024, 4:00PM - 6:00PM, Campbell Conference Facility, 1 Devonshire Place
Join us for the launch event for the research study Remote Work: Urban Panacea or Curse? IPL Affiliated Faculty members Drs. Shauna Brail and Tara Vinodrai of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities will share their surprising findings and will be joined by a panel to discuss the constellation of issues orbiting remote and hybrid work. Panelists include Christa Haanstra, Director, ClarityHub Inc. Rory McNeil, Senior Planner, City of Toronto, and Mary Rowe, President & CEO, Canadian Urban Institute. The discussion will be moderated by Matti Siemiatycki, Professor of Geography and Planning and Director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto.
The future of European competitiveness: Report by Mario Draghi
European Commission
The report looks at the challenges faced by the industry and companies in the Single Market. The findings of the 400 page report will contribute to the Commission’s work on a new plan for Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness. In particular, the findings will inform the development of the new Clean Industrial Deal for competitive industries and quality jobs, which will be presented in the first 100 days of the new Commission mandate. The report suggests that Europe needs to invest €750-800bn a year to keep pace with competitors, such as China and the US. Also see Carbon Brief's summary of what the Draghi report says about EU climate action and energy.
ASPI’s two-decade Critical Technology Tracker
Jennifer Wong Leung, Stephan Robin & Danielle Cave, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
The Critical Technology Tracker is a large data-driven project that now covers 64 critical technologies spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas. It provides a leading indicator of a country’s research performance, strategic intent and potential future science and technology capability. It first launched 1 March 2023 and underwent a major expansion on 28 August 2024 which took the dataset from five years (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years (2003–2023). Explore the website and the broader project here.
Industrial research and development, 2022 (actual), 2023 (preliminary) and 2024 (intentions)
Statistics Canada
Businesses in Canada continued their upward trend in research and development (R&D) spending in 2022, reaching new heights and building on the steady increase that began in 2016. All told, Canadian businesses spent a record $30.4 billion on in-house R&D in 2022, an increase of 9.4% from 2021. Preliminary data for 2023 indicate that in-house R&D spending will continue to rise, albeit at a slower pace with spending increasing by 3.4% (+$1.0 billion) to a projected $31.4 billion, two years after record year-over-year growth from 2020 to 2021 (+17.3%).
Characteristics of research and development in Canadian industry
Statistics Canada
This interactive data visualization dashboard provides a comprehensive picture of research and development (R&D) activities in Canadian industry. Users will find extensive coverage of characteristics on R&D activities in Canadian industry. The dashboard features information on in-house as well as outsourced R&D expenditures, statistics on energy-related R&D expenditures by area of technology and details on intellectual property product commerce.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
Launched in 2016, the Business Accelerator and Incubator Performance Measurement Framework (BAI PMF) project is a voluntary performance measurement initiative co-created by ISED and the Business Accelerator and Incubator (BAI) community. The BAI PMF is a survey created to help improve performance measurement and reporting practices for BAIs across Canada and, over time, to develop a source of data to analyze the impact of BAIs on Canadian start-ups. This study uses a merger of the 2017–2020 BAI PMF data, the latest available at the time of this study, and Statistics Canada's tax filing data from 2014 to 2020 to bring forward novel insights on the profile of companies receiving BAI support and the impact of BAI support on their economic performance. Empirical findings indicate that these companies are young, growth-oriented firms with significant levels of R&D engagement. Most importantly, there is early evidence that BAIs are associated with the growth trajectory of high-potential Canadian start-ups.
Bentley Allan, Travis Southin, Centre For Net-Zero Industrial Policy
Canada recently announced it would match US tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel, and aluminum. If the main effect of these tariffs is to buy time for Canada to build a more competitive domestic EV industry, that raises the question: What is the plan to use that time to make American and Canadian industry competitive? And what elements need to be added to North American industrial policy to make that a realistic goal? In their latest briefing, the Centre for Net-Zero Industrial Policy looks at how Canada can—and should—move beyond reactive approaches like tariffs and one-off investment incentives to a more strategic mix of policies.
Engines of growth: A framework for igniting Canada’s engines of growth
Robert Asselin, Business Council of Canada
This report calls for a shift in how Canadian policymakers view economic strategy in order to boost productivity. An economic agenda that benefits workers requires a Canadian economy that is more technology driven – one that focuses on production over consumption and encourages competition at scale in technologically advanced industries. The report concludes with seventeen concrete recommendations to ignite Canada’s economic growth engines.
International Talent Programs in the Changing Global Environment
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
At the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, this report reviews foreign and domestic talent or incentive programs and their corresponding scientific, economic, and national security benefits. International Talent Programs in the Changing Global Environment makes recommendations to improve the effectiveness of U.S. mechanisms for attracting and retaining international students and scholars relative to the programs and incentives other nations use to support national research capabilities, especially in national security and defense-related fields.
A Techno-Economic Agenda for Canada’s Next Federal Government
Robert D. Atkinson and Lawrence Zhang, ITIF Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness
This report from the Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) offers the following techno-economic policy agenda with 10 key recommendations for the next federal government: 1. Establish a productivity commissioner; 2. Improve tax incentives for innovation; 3. Introduce a time-limited tax credit for capital investment; 4. Make Canadian colleges and universities engines of R&D commercialization; 5. Create three or four “Manufacturing Canada” institutes; 6. Develop an innovation-friendly regulatory system; 7. Pursue regulatory interoperability with Canadian trade partners; 8. Set robust artificial intelligence (AI) adoption milestones for the federal government; 9. Build an independent Canada Innovation Agency; 10.Pilot a federal IT procurement innovation testbed.
Building Winners: Strategic Procurement in the Age of Innovation
Council of Canadian Innovators
This report lays out the reasons why "Canadian policymakers must embrace procurement as a tool of industrial policy if we want to stay competitive and prosperous in the 21st century." It is authored by CCI Director of Policy and Research Laurent Carbonneau and Dan Ciuriak, fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the C.D. Howe Institute, and former Deputy Chief Economist and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada).
This report is a follow up to Spring 2024's Buying Ideas: Procuring Public Sector Innovation in Canada. That report provided an in-depth look at how to fix government procurement in Canada.presented governments with a suite of options to better use procurement as an innovation policy lever – empowering and educating public servants to boost capacity, cutting red tape, and using a small and medium enterprise target as a lever to make progress and to learn by doing.
This report argues that the return of industrial policy globally has been driven by the rise of the confluence of rising economic rents and strategic competition in the modern knowledge-based and data-driven economy which features the emergence of new general-purpose technologies. Further, it argues that firm microstructure explains the connected problems of tepid growth in incomes, weak innovation and productivity performance and problems encountered in scaling firms.
The authors summarize the main conclusions drawn from this analysis as follows:
Public procurement is uniquely positioned to address Canada's firm microstructure challenges by directly engaging with and supporting specific companies.
A "connected" innovation system, in which procurement creates initial markets for new technologies, has proven more effective than the traditional approach in advanced countries of disconnected systems focused solely on research support. In periods of rapid technological change, both firms and countries must be willing to prioritize long-term strategic positioning over short-term efficiencies or profits.
By “picking needs” and using procurement strategically to meet them, Canada can build up "winners" in key technological areas and thereby also effect the change in microstructure of its industries that is key to resolving the nexus of problems that Canada faces. Canada will have to be opportunistic and focused on areas where emerging technologies can disrupt existing systems and where Canadian firms have potential for growth.
EVENTS
WICK#12 PhD Workshop in Economics of Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge
December 12-13 2024, Turin
Annual meeting for doctoral students and young researchers in Economics of Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge. The Workshop is organized by the students of the Vilfredo Pareto Doctoral Program in Economics, in collaboration with the University of Turin, BRICK, Collegio Carlo Alberto and Young Scholar Initiative
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This newsletter is prepared by Travis Southin.
Project manager is David A. Wolfe
