Province earns an overall "C" grade
OTTAWA, May 14, 2018 /CNW/ - Quebec remains one of the top-ranking provinces, but falls to a "C" grade overall and places 9th among the 26 comparator regions, on The Conference Board of Canada's most recent How Canada Performs: Innovation report card.
"Quebec ranks among the top ten performers in the world when it comes to innovation, placing it higher than Canada as a whole," said Paul Preston, Director of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, The Conference Board of Canada. "However, stronger performances by international peers in the latest report card have pushed the province down one grade and one rank since the last report card."
HIGHLIGHTS
- Quebec scores an overall "C" grade on innovation and ranks 9th out of 26 comparator jurisdictions.
- The province receives "A" grades on public R&D and entrepreneurial ambition.
- With venture capital investment of 0.2 per cent of GDP, Quebec ranks second, behind only the United States.
Ten indicators were used to measure the provinces' innovation performance. This includes indicators in three categories:
- innovation capacity—i.e., investments and resources that provide a foundation for research, idea-generation, and insight-sharing (including public R&D, researchers engaged in R&D, and scientific articles);
- innovation activity—i.e., entrepreneurial ambition, investments in ICT and venture capital, and business R&D activity that help to transform ideas into commercialized products, services and processes; and
- innovation results—i.e., evidence of the impact of research, innovation and commercialization as captured in patents, new ventures, and overall labour productivity.
Quebec receives two "A"s, one "B", three "C"s and four "D" grades.
Quebec earns an "A" grade on entrepreneurial ambition. With 15 per cent of survey respondents indicating that they have recently started or are about to start a new venture, Quebec ranks 5th among all peers, and ahead of all international comparators on this indicator. The province receives another "A" on public R&D. It ranks third overall on this indicator, largely because of its very strong higher education R&D spending.
Quebec scores a strong "B" and ranks second among all peers on venture capital investment. With venture capital investment of 0.2 per cent of GDP, Quebec trails only the United States.
The province's three "C" grades are for researchers engaged in R&D (including researchers employed in business, higher education and government), scientific articles, and business enterprise R&D (BERD). Quebec ranks 6th and earns a "C" on researchers engaged in R&D activities. Although Quebec ranks highly on this indicator, it scores only a "C" grade because the performance of the top three countries is especially strong. The province ranks 12th overall on scientific articles with 2,334 publications per million population, which is only slight behind the Canadian average of 2,437 articles per million population. Quebec also outperforms all provinces on BERD with spending of 1.44 per cent of GDP. However, it still trails 9 international peers and spends more than a percentage point less than what firms in top-performing Japan spend.
"Quebec gets "D" grades on four innovation indicators—ICT investment, patents, enterprise entry rates and labour productivity, which suggests that the province may be facing challenges with commercialization and reaping the larger benefits of innovation," said Preston.
Quebec's performance on patents per million population has slipped substantially since the previous report card. It receives a "D" grade and ranks 20th among 26 comparator jurisdictions. Quebec remains the poorest-performing province on the enterprise entries indicator, with an enterprise entry rate of just 10.2 per cent—more than 5 percentage points lower than Alberta's rate of 15.5 per cent. On labour productivity, Quebec earns a "D" and ranks 22nd among the 26 jurisdictions.
How Canada Performs is an ongoing research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada's socio-economic performance. Six performance domains are assessed: Economy, Education and Skills, Innovation, Environment, Health, and Society.
This is the second time that provincial rankings have been included in the innovation report card. Further details, including information on data sources and the methodology behind the rankings, can be found on the How Canada Performs website.
Paul Preston will present the findings from the How Canada Performs Report Card on Innovation in a live webinar on June 26.
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SOURCE Conference Board of Canada
Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected] or Juline Ranger, Director of Communications, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 431, E-mail: [email protected]
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