The government has announced a new "innovation agency to drive Canadian business investment in research and development (R&D) and foster economic growth," with a budget of $2.6 billion over four years (or about $750 million per year), noting that "Canadian businesses do not invest in R&D to the same degree as their global peers, which weakens Canada's economic competitiveness and reduces opportunities for Canadian workers." Notably, "the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) will join the CIC." IRAP's budget for 2019-20 was IRAP $430.3M, of which $335.7 million was invested in SMEs. I've done a lot of work with IRAP over the years, and I wonder whether the distancing of NRC's scientific research function and IRAP's enterprise support function will change that.
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