Allow me to draw everyone’s attention to a piece last week in the Huffington Post called “How the Liberal Party Plans to Innovate the Way We Innovate”.  The piece was written by a Liberal-connected PR/GR flack named Greg MacNeil who works at “public affairs” (read: lobbying) firm Ensight Canada.

MacNeil starts by asserting that “following Budget 2016, it is clear that when it comes to the innovation agenda, the government’s intentions are substantive”, which is nonsense: the budget simply introduced a price-tag ($800 million for some tech clusters) and some placeholders.  He goes on to state: “the challenge in the past has always been that the various funding and program buckets have been siloed across government. The Liberals are changing that. This new one-window approach will make it easier for organizations to navigate the system and access the information and funding they need. The government believes that this approach can help expand the pre-existing innovation sector in Canada and subsequently grow jobs and investment.”

Question: Does anyone actually believe that the problem with innovation in Canada is that there is no one-stop shop for federal funding?  That the reason firms don’t spend their own money to innovate is because it’s not easy enough to suck money out of the federal bureaucracy?

Question: Does the phrase “innovation sector”, and the implication that innovation isn’t something that happens right across the economy, give you the screaming heebie-jeebies?  Could there possibly be a stronger signal that the government thinks of innovation only in terms of new product innovation?

More from MacNeil: “This innovation strategy will also play a major role in Canada’s multilateral and bilateral relations. Until now, Canada has been one of only a few G7 countries without a specific innovation strategy in place. Many other western countries not only have innovation strategies, but are regularly updating them on an annual basis”

Question: “one of only a few”…out of seven.  Doesn’t sound particularly out of the ordinary to me.  And why on earth does this matter to our foreign relations?  If we’d at any point wanted to put more money and effort into international scientific collaborations, we’d have done so by changing rules on council funding, not developing strategic plans.

MacNeil: “By coordinating these efforts, the government hopes that it will be better positioned to take on serious global issues impacting Canada and our allies in areas like climate change, the arctic and cancer research. Further, it could afford us an opportunity to invest in areas where we would be true pioneers, like quantum computing, as opposed to competing in areas that are already dominated by foreign countries.”

Wait – allies?  Are we only collaborating with NATO countries now?  “Invest in areas where we could be true pioneers as opposed to competing in areas already dominated by foreign countries”?  Interesting approach to industrial policy I suppose – but how does collaborating with other countries give us an advantage in blue ocean sectors?  By definition, wouldn’t our partners get a leg up in these areas, too? 

There is so much to question in this little tract: like, why is an external GR flack trial-ballooning innovation policy ideas on behalf of Liberal Ministers?  Why would anyone think a little bureaucratic rationalization would have an effect on innovation levels in the economy?  Do the Liberals really think that Canadians cannot successfully innovate and compete in areas where companies in foreign countries already work – that we can only “win” if no one is competing against us?  Do they have even the slightest sense that innovation is about more than new inventions?  And why – oh dear God why – does anyone think it is acceptable to write an entire article about innovation policy without ever using the words “firm” or “company” once?

If this really is the basis for the new Liberal innovation plan, we all ought to be very worried indeed.