Champagne has to help boost Canada’s capacity for successful innovation

TORONTO—The Liberals have promised a Canada Advanced Research Projects Agency (CARPA) as a public-private “bridge” to “help unleash bold, new research and ideas, protect Canada’s competitive advantage, and help Canadian companies grow and create highly skilled jobs.” It will be modelled, the Liberals say, on the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with an initial endowment of $2-billion. Clearly, more needs to be done to boost Canada’s capacity for successful innovation. This is essential to create good jobs through growing businesses that have rich intellectual property, decarbonize and increase our exports, and increase the tax base so we can afford the public goods and services we need and want. We don’t want to be North America’s slow-growth attic. There’s much aspiration in the language around CARPA. But what its actual mission would be, whether it would have strategic priorities and, if so: how would they be set; how would it actually operate; what would its actual structure look like; how would projects be determined and implemented; what precise objectives and measures of success would be set; and would it play a role in commercialization; would government be a customer for successful projects; and what would an annual budget look like? And who would spend the money? In the U.S., 66 per cent of DARPA’s US$3.6-billion budget is performed by industry, 17 per cent by universities and colleges and 10 per cent by federal laboratories. All these questions, and others, will need to be answered when MPs are presented with legislation to establish CARPA. If it is to deliver value it has to be something more than just another granting agency. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne’s mandate letter instructs him to work with Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos to implement the promise with “a uniquely Canadian approach” modelled on DARPA and in doing this “develop a plan to modernize the federal funding research ecosystem to maximize the impact of investments in both research excellence and downstream innovation, with a particular focus on the relationships among the federal research granting agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.” This mouthful implies sweeping change, but is that what's intended? As in a number of other countries—from Britain (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), to Japan (Moonshot Research and Development Program)—there is enthusiasm to create a DARPA-style entity in Canada. Politicians, business lobbies, universities, and policy-makers are captivated by DARPA’s role in envisaging and launching the internet, and in creating the Global Positioning System and its many advances in computing and communications, sensors, microelectronics and all the technologies that made possible the huge computer games industry, which also contributed, for example, to the development of self-driving cars and mRNA vaccines. Today, DARPA is pushing ahead in artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, quantum computing, next generation computing and electronics technologies, and biotechnology to advance U.S, national security, with hoped-for commercial potential as well. But what is often overlooked in DARPA’s success is the rich supporting research infrastructure and legions of leading scientists and engineers in U.S. universities, corporations, and government laboratories. They have made DARPA’s successes possible. The U.S. has a powerful ecosystem. It has formidable basic research in its top universities and corporations rich in applied science and engineering, deep financial markets, and an enviable capacity for commercialization. DARPA operates within that universe. DARPA benefits as well because science and engineering—from basic research to knowledge commercialization—is deeply embedded in the U.S. public and private-sector cultures. While Canada has strengths, that doesn’t automatically mean Canada has the scientific depth, institutional, or managerial capabilities, or the culture to replicate a DARPA-style entity, even in a more limited range of project priorities. Nor do we have the business strengths to lead on innovation. Our low level of research spending by business and disappointing record in turning new knowledge into commercial success mean we need much more than a CARPA—we need a major new mindset in our public and private institutions. It’s important as well to understand how DARPA projects succeed. Money wasn’t the biggest factor in launching the internet, for example. DARPA provided a budget of just US$1-million. What made it possible was the vision and high level of knowledge on what could be accomplished. As Annie Jacobsen explains in her history of DARPA, The Pentagon’s Brain, it was the unique capability to identify and attract top thinkers and to invest in their ideas. In 1968, researchers persuaded DARPA to provide US$1-million and, by 1969, they had networked four research university computer systems into ARPANET, forerunner of the internet. DARPA-funded teams also ensured network redundancy so no organization or country could control the internet while they also developed what even now are the internet’s core communications protocols. DARPA was launched in 1958 with a US$10-million budget as the Advanced Research Projects Agency to advance defence technologies for U.S. national security by focusing on research for “transformative change rather than incremental advances”—high-risk, high-reward projects. Following on DARPA’s success, the U.S. in 2007 created the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, to help develop new energy-related technologies, including battery technologies, methane remediation systems, and improved electric grid reliability, focusing on “early-stage energy technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with modest funding over a defined period of time.” Since 2009, when ARPA-E received its first funding of US$400 million, it has provided almost US$3-billion in R&D funding for more than 1,270 “potentially transformational energy technology projects," it says. Some 109 new companies have been formed, 253 licences have been issued for the 789 patents developed in its projects, 266 research projects have partnered with another government agency, and 183 research teams have raised more than US$7.6-billion in private-sector follow-on funding to advance their technology to the market. Now the Biden administration is proposing an ARPA-Health, or ARPA-H, to pursue biomedical breakthroughs. In Canada, it’s now up to Champagne to produce a credible proposal for CARPA, but based on realistic analysis, not wishful thinking. Canada needs to do better on innovation but Champagne must show how a CARPA would make a real difference. David Crane can be reached at crane@interlog.com. The Hill Times

Champagne has to help boost Canada’s capacity for successful innovation

Canada needs to do better on innovation, but François-Philippe Champagne must show how a CARPA would make a real difference.

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Champagne has to help boost Canada’s capacity for successful innovation

Canada needs to do better on innovation, but François-Philippe Champagne must show how a CARPA would make a real difference.

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