Failure to innovate results in poor grades on Canada's report card

The Conference Board of Canada
News Release

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Canada's socio-economic performance is mediocre compared to other developed countries, according to the Conference Board's 11th annual snapshot of Canada's outcomes in six domains-Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education and Skills, Health and Society.

"Running through this story is the common thread of a failure to innovate. Innovation is centrally important to Canada's competitiveness and sustainable prosperity, but our performance is woefully inadequate," said Anne Golden, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Conference Board. "This poor performance on innovation is also a key contributor to Canada's failure to keep up with the top countries in the Health and Society domains and to our 14th place ranking in the Environment domain.


"This record will not be good enough to meet the fundamental goal of a high and sustainable quality of life for all Canadians."

Canada earns a "D" on Innovation, ranking 14th among the 17 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries being benchmarked.

Canada's record is poor on developing and exploiting new products, processes and services, and on upgrading constantly the quality of what it already produces.

Canada's ranking on the Environment domain-another "D"-is dragged down by its performance on climate change and waste generation.

Canada's best grade, an "A," comes in the Education and Skills domain.
With comparatively modest spending, Canada delivers high-quality education to people between ages 5 and 25. However, Canada does not produce enough graduates in the disciplines that underpin innovation; nor does it do well in basic skills and literacy for its adult population.

In the categories of economic performance, social indicators and health outcomes, Canada is a "B" performer. "These rankings confirm the argument that the Conference Board has made repeatedly in its annual benchmarking," said Golden.

"Canada is not living up to its brand in health and social outcomes and is trailing the top performers in the global economy."

This is the first edition of How Canada Performs: A Report Card on
Canada. It continues the Conference Board's decade-long tradition of benchmarking Canada's performance against the best countries in the world.

This report card improves upon past evaluations by ranking outcomes, looking at the underlying causes and identifying the policies that can improve our performance.

The report is publicly available at www.e-library.ca .

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