The article goes on:

“This country is doing dismally in the critically important area of innovation,” writes the board’s president, Anne Golden. “And the implications of that failure … show up in the absence of creative policy and investment decisions across all the other domains.”

The report card, to be released today, compares Canada’s performance in six domains to that of 16 other industrialized countries. The only area in which Canada receives an A is education, mainly because the country is good at pumping large quantities of students through to postsecondary institutions.

But even in education, Canada falters when it comes to producing highly educated professionals who spawn creativity, the report says.

(…)

In economics, Canada gets top marks for low inflation, and does well in growth, labour productivity and unemployment.

It gets low marks, however, for its ability to attract foreign direct investment, which often brings in fresh ideas, more investment, advanced technology and entrepreneurial ideas.

In health care, Canada does well at saving people from the flu and pneumonia, but performance on infant mortality and death from diabetes is weak.

Since Canada’s health-care system is geared toward resolving urgent needs, little innovative thinking is done on how to prevent illness, the report says. Canada ranks 10th out of 17 in the “society” domain, mainly because of subpar rankings on poverty among children and the working-age population.

(…)

But Canada fares miserably in the areas of innovation and environment, earning a D grade in both categories.

While Canada’s air and water quality are high, and protection of biodiversity is solid, our level of waste generation and our battle to curb climate change are rock bottom, the report says.

Again, the lack of creative thinking to solve these problems slows progress, Ms. Golden said. And so it’s no surprise that in the innovation category, Canada ranks 14th out of 17 countries – “an alarming portent for the future.”

Canada’s scientists don’t keep up with their global peers in the number of articles published, and its inventors don’t keep up in the number of patents, the report shows. For its competitive advantage, it relies on natural resources, and adds little value to goods or services. Canada has a shortage of skilled labour and graduates a low share of science, engineering and trades experts.

The country doesn’t take advantage of high technology, or keep up in the commercialization of knowledge.

“Canadians are complacent and generally unwilling to take risks,” the report scolds. “This culture holds Canada back.”

Pretty damning stuff. The recommendations by the Conference Board sound good, but not a single one addresses what I consider the key element: cities, and that we’re throttling them:

How does the country move forward? Conference Board has 10 suggestions

In a report to be released today on the ranking of Canada’s economy among those of 16 other nations, the Conference Board of Canada pulls no punches in its harsh assessment of the country’s performance, but also offers solutions.

Here are 10 things the board says Canada could do to rid itself of mediocrity:

1) Focus investments on commercialization.

2) Promote cross-border investment flows.

3) Cut taxes on capital investment.

4) Cut red tape.

5) Set up a cap-and-trade system to put a price on emissions.

6) Recognize immigrants’ credentials.

7) Finance a handful of world-class universities.

8 ) Teach all adults to read well.

9) Fund health promotion.

10) Spend more on social programs for children and poor workers.

In other words, the Board makes suggestions that still keep everything very controlled and orderly. It doesn’t recognize the role of cities as places of agility and quick transfer of knowledge (good “chaos”) — and therefore as hubs of innovation, and that’s a mistake. It’s a (typically Canadian, or just bureaucratic?) tame set of recommendations, which don’t allow anyone really to cut loose and run with an idea.

I’m hoping that I get to write a piece or two for a local business newspaper (after which I’ll tackle the book, haha). Christopher Hume, who did the audiotours of Toronto architecture, wrote an article in the TorStar on the 19th, Time for Toronto to get angry, in which he lambasts the (Canadian — federal & provincial) taxation system, which systematically throttles cities (in this case Toronto).

My take (and I’ve written about this before, on my Victoria City Style Council wiki, for example) is that Toronto is emblematic of all Canadian cities, which are hamstrung in how they can raise revenue (virtually everything has to come from business & residential taxes). Yet cities don’t have the money to provide all the services we need. Cities are supposed to “fix” the homelessness crisis, the drug crisis, the affordability crisis, and every other crisis along the way. Cities are supposed to provide culture, infrastructure, vibrancy, yet they’re supposed to do it all on a shoe-string.

The Conference Board of Canada came out with an utterly damning report recently, castigating Canada for its inability to be be economically innovative. Well, my theory is simply this: the vast majority of Canadians live in urban centres, and innovation traditionally comes out of urban contexts. It’s people in cities who create innovation — economic, cultural, technological — in conjunction with other driving engines like great universities and thriving arts scenes and technology hubs. It’s all about cities: they’re the contributors. Yet Canadians are given this load of bull which valorizes a myth of rural Canada, waving wheatfields, roaming buffalo, and of course, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok” in British Columbia. So if Canada is falling down flat on the innovation front, it’s because our government — at federal and provincial level — does nothing to ensure that cities have the money they need to keep those engines humming, to support the cultural scene, to give cities everything they need to build hum-dinger economies. Vancouver has the Olympics coming up in Winter 2010, so the provincial government is throwing money at Vancouver. Now. But once that’s over, they’ll go back to underfunding Vancouver — but even the current boon to Vancouver means nothing for Victoria (which gets the scraps) or any of the other smaller cities in BC.

It is we the people who live in cities, who spend our money here, who consume & produce here, who are producing everything worth anything — yet when I buy a service or a consumer good in this city, I pay a combined tax of 13% (7% to the province, 6% to the feds) on every single item, whether it’s a service or a good/product. The good people of Victoria are providing me with that service, or selling me that product. Yet the tax I pay does not go back to the city — my city — in which I spent my money, but instead goes to the province’s and the federal government’s coffers. That is not right. That’s starvation of the cities, that’s stealing from the cities. And that systematic killing of the goose (city) laying the golden eggs is, IMO, one of the key (if not the key) reason for Canada’s poor performance on any innovation index.

And it makes us complacent. We can’t even imagine anymore that it might be different, that this yoke of provincial & federal oppression could be lifted, or at least fitted a bit more …innovatively, or intelligently, so that it doesn’t kill us.

Oh well, excuse the rant! But it makes me mad — we have it all, in a sense, but the combined complacency and fiscal starvation leave us weak.

Re. “Fast Cities” and FastCompany — I have to admit that I made some errors in my submission, leaving out the word “advanced” in the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology park’s name, and perhaps the CRD (Capital Regional District) population is more like 345,000 instead of 350K, and the gleaming new office towers are in the works (i.e., not yet built), with groundbreaking happening last week, next week, and soon, but other than that, it’s more or less all accurate.

You could probably out together a guide for Victoria in book form in to time at all now. Not that you need another project, but if you did, well….