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2007

"What's wrong with Canada's innovation?" by Guy Stanley

Fifteen years after Michael Porter’s report on Canada’s competitiveness, the country’s innovation performance continues to fall in relation to that of competitors. It is losing its capacity to generate a top-notch living standard, while other countries are nurturing innovation systems that outperform Canada economically. The formula for enhancing innovation has so far eluded policy-makers despite a stream of prosperity initiatives and innovation strategies announced since the mid-1990s. The root cause: policy incoherence. To fix things, government will have to become as adept at managing complexity and inducing system coordination as it is now at manipulating macro-economic levers. download article (PDF)

Wed 03/01/2007
Fifteen years after Michael Porter’s report on Canada’s competitiveness, the country’s innovation performance continues to fall in relation to that of competitors. It is losing its capacity to generate a top-notch living standard, while other countries are nurturing innovation systems that outperform Canada economically. The formula for enhancing innovation has so far eluded policy-makers despite a stream of prosperity initiatives and innovation strategies announced since the mid-1990s. The root cause: policy incoherence. To fix things, government will have to become as adept at managing complexity and inducing system coordination as it is now at manipulating macro-economic levers. .irpp.org/po

2006

6/21/2002 Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade .doc by Guy Stanley

Will U.S. learn from errors of the past?: Bush should heed Britishforeign-policy gaffes
Aug 12 09:00 - GAZ - - INF - All Infomart Publications

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Section: Editorial / Op-ed

Byline: GUY STANLEY

What with our major treaties put on ice, the emerging U.S. foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration might look like policy with the foreign left out.

It's not the first time the world's top nation has chosen this approach. Historians have seen something like this a couple of times before, when Britain was No. 1.

``Splendid isolation'' was the phrase made famous by Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier to describe Britain and her empire in the jubilee year 1896. Britain by then faced hostile alliances in Europe and the Middle East and fell back on imperial glory to assert itself internationally.

A better parallel is perhaps mid-Victorian Britain. From the mid-1860s to the mid-1870s, Britain then, like the U.S. today, was by far the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet and had no serious rivals.

Under Lords Palmerston and Russell and the ``Great Ministry'' of W.E. Gladstone, Britain consciously turned away from entangling alliances and foreign adventures to concentrate on electoral reform and lowering taxes. (In those days, Liberals favoured free markets, limited government and evangelical religion - like Bush's political base today.)

Particularly challenging to the Liberals was the need to cut naval spending in an age when the ironclad, a new and still unproved armoured naval vessel, threatened slow adapters with the obsolescence of their battle fleets.

Instead of using arms negotiations to control the pace of change, the British accelerated acquisition of the new ships, seeking savings by scrapping unarmoured vessels and finding more efficient fleet deployments.

Did the strategy work? Britain achieved steady economic growth and reinforced its role as the pre-eminent global financial centre, combining prosperity and democratic progress in what historians now call the Age of Equipoise.

Like Britain in the 1860s, the U.S. today is the unchallenged global leader, but its claims to find its own prosperity going forward might be harmed by the diplomatic arrangements made by earlier governments.

Turning to new defence technology rather than arms control for security, the American administration hopes to emphasize economic growth along with technological leadership.

Yet Britain's domestic successes were matched by serious foreign-policy gaffes that antagonized Washington and every European capital from Paris to Moscow.

One of Britain's foreign-policy successes during this period was a free-trade agreement with France. Gladstone hoped it would influence others to liberalize trade, too. Instead, the others - especially the U.S. - became more protectionist.

Then there was a blunder of strategic proportions that opened the door to world war and the ultimate destruction of European leadership 50 years later: the policy of ``meddle and muddle'' and ultimate neutrality during Bismarck's wars of German unification.

This permitted the emergence of a united Germany as a rival and competitor free of restraints, able to seize the initiative in shaping events on the continent.

``Lack of insight into other countries, moral indignation unsupported by moral force and rank ignorance,'' characterized Liberal foreign policy in these years, according to one British historian.

Subordinating diplomacy to economics enabled the mid-Victorians to expand domestic prosperity, strengthen democracy and make Britain a ``kinder and gentler'' society. Yet the foreign-policy blunders wrote IOUs that, when cashed, brought British global hegemony to an end.

The U.S. occupies an equivalent place among nations now and appears to be making choices similar to those of the mid-Victorians.

Can the Bush administration avoid the same fate for the U.S. and its allies?

- Guy Stanley is director, International MBA, Faculty of Administration, at the University of Ottawa.

-Dr. Guy Stanley