ARCHIVED - Inter-Sectoral Partnerships for Non-Regulatory Federal Laboratories

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Section 6 – Concluding Observations

The Panel was given an important mandate. The completion of its work within the short time frame available is due in significant part to the excellent support it received from the Treasury Board Secretariat and from the constructive input from officials and scientists in government and other sectors. In addition, the fact that inter-sectoral mechanisms for enhancing S&T and its links to innovation have become an increasingly prominent topic of discussion and element of national policy in Canada and abroad has given the Panel's work a sense of timeliness.

The timeliness of the government's initiatives related to inter-sectoral S&T collaboration was reinforced by the increasingly positive interest and optimism that developed among stakeholders in the course of the Panel's work. The Government of Canada's commitment to realizing the benefits of collaborative approaches was welcomed as recognition of the importance of science and technology and of the need for a holistic approach to meeting the science and innovation challenges facing the nation, now and in the future. The strong, positive response to the call for proposals demonstrated a considerable interest in, and generally felt need for, a significant advance in integration activities among government, academia and the private sector and for a broader ongoing government thrust in promoting ISTI.

Individuals working in and managing federal laboratories are keenly aware of the competitive threat they face in key areas of recruitment, including access to complementary expertise, and quality of facilities and equipment. They see forming partnerships with other sectors as an opportunity to create an enriched environment for attracting new employees.

There is strong and widespread respect for government laboratories and their personnel within the Canadian S&T community. Business representatives, particularly those from SMEs, emphasized the importance of maintaining and enhancing the access to, and positive interaction they experience with, government laboratories. Clearly all three sectors have distinctive and important roles to play in the Canadian science and innovation system. ISTI can and should be pursued in ways that contribute to the strength of all sectors without weakening the ability of each to perform its distinctive role.

The independence of the Panel, and the consultative process it used, were identified by stakeholders as important contributors to their willingness to actively participate in the discussions. This suggests that similar characteristics may be useful in any mechanisms established by the government to evaluate ISTI initiatives in the future.

The Panel has concluded that adoption of its suggested framework for ISTI could proceed expeditiously as a general guide for evaluating future ISTI proposals involving federal laboratories – whether these are initiated by federal departments and agencies or emerge in response to a general call for proposals. The Panel believes the framework is robust enough, and the proof of concept sufficiently well established, for the government to proceed with considering proposals beyond the five "early candidates" recommended in this report. Moreover, the Panel is aware that consideration of certain ISTI initiatives, other than those proposed to the Panel, was well advanced at the time the Panel was announced. It is likely that some of these initiatives can be aligned with the proposed framework without significant delay. As experience grows in the operation of these new entities, one can anticipate that, in some instances, partnering arrangements, initially involving the federal government, may evolve to become wholly non-governmental enterprises.

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