How Canada is Fostering and Igniting Innovation on Global Turf

Whether it is ICT or Telecoms, Canada is home to a number of globally well recognized organizations and innovation is quite central to the society. Today the government of Canada is on a mission to not only encourage innovation inside the country but create ample innovation-led opportunities for global innovation hotspots such as India.

The Honorable Navdeep Singh Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Government of Canada exclusively speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the importance of innovation in Canadian society and how Canada is looking at India to become its long term partner towards realizing big potential in an innovation led society.

Navdeep Singh Bains has come to India spearheading a one of its kind Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) Mission to India along with a select set of innovation driven companies that are looking forward to increasing their focus on India.

What is your agenda today and where does Innovation fit it this?

Today we have an agenda that is directed towards three critical areas of people, technology and companies and innovation is quite central to all these three segments. This is where we speak about innovation-led society.

How important is innovation for Canada and how are you promoting the spirit of Innovation?

Innovation is part of our economic agenda – how we grow the economy, how we create good quality jobs, how we enable the standard of living. There are three areas that we are focusing on – one is people – how do we create a smart and domestic pipeline of talent by investment in integrated learning and also how we do look at immigration in our global talent strategy, to really focus on bringing the right people, to really challenge the status quo by new solutions. So people are core of our agenda.

Second is, how do we focus on key immerging technologies – for example, as a government we spend a lot of money in genomics or quantum computing, now artificial intelligence is gaining a lot of momentum, big data, so how do we integrate that with new companies, how do we integrate that with new sectors to really help them accelerate in growth.

And lastly we focus on growth. The idea is how we focus on companies that are growing. So we are identifying the high growth firms and then providing them the opportunities to grow, either through financing to government procurement. So these are the areas that we are looking at. So, our overall our agenda is directed towards people, technology and companies.

India is home to a lot of institution where Innovation is driving force. So what is Canada doing to attract this talent?

Canada has great things to offer to such talent. Our biggest advantage is ‘diversity’. We really value good ideas. And we understand that those ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. We don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. So what I tell to student communities – is that if they have an idea, and they have a solution – and they are looking for an innovative economy – try out Canada!

What are some of the big advantages that Canada has to offer?

As a nation – Canada has a number of advantages that are quite unique in nature. We have a very unique and strong ease of doing business, stable government.

Additionally, this is a country that is open to people, open to trade, because ultimately for companies to grow, they need the best talent both local and international and this is what we offer, as a nation.