Canada's innovation deficit

There is a long centre-page article in the Globe and Mail today about innovation, and how Canada is not doing it.

I don't intend to go into the details of it all, but I was admittedly taken aback by a couple of the graphs that show Canada's expenditure on research and development (R&D) compared to our economic "peers" (or maybe we should say "aspirational peers"), which show us languishing way down below the likes of USA, South Korea, Japan, EU, and indeed the whole of the OECD, whether on a percentage-of-GDP or per capita basis.

Just one point to note: this cannot be pinned onto Justin Trudeau (Take note, Mr. Poilievre) - it has been happening at least under the last few governments, of different colours and ideologies.

Another rather alarming statistic in the article, from Statistics Canada no less: fewer than 2% of Canadian businesses incorporate R&D into their business strategies. I'm not sure quite how they can actually measure that, but if it's true, then it's a damning victory of short-term profit-based thinking over long-term planning.