Expanding the nation’s capacity to innovate, enhancing business competitiveness and further industry, government and post-secondary collaboration on research and development is needed if Canada wants to see improvements to its global competitiveness ranking, which has fallen once again.
Canada was outpaced in the latest World Economic Forum’s (WEF) competitiveness rankings, falling to 15th place of 144 national economies in 2014-15, despite holding on to 14th place for the last two years. Canada fell out of the top 10 in 2011-12 and this year’s score is the lowest the country has seen since 2006’s 16th place score.
There were a few key drivers to the latest numbers, or progression of the trend highlighted by experts; underperforming on the capacity for innovation, business sophistication and engaging in global markets.
This is causing Canada to lose ground to other countries that are improving at an excelled rate that Canada hasn’t been able to keep up with, says Michael Bloom, vice-president of industry and business strategy at the Conference Board of Canada, who assisted the WEF with research on Canada’s economic competitiveness for this report, and in years past.
Also sliding one place is the country’s innovation record, to 22nd from 21st in 2013-14. Although the government has made positive steps in terms of funding business development, there is room to make big gains by investing Canadian capital in startups and small enterprises.
“The great startup of today becomes the global company of the future and we’re lacking that piece,” said Mr. Bloom.
A key part in working towards an improved score is Canada’s business sophistication, which in 2014-15 is up to 23rd place, from 25th the year before. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of companies to embrace aspects of innovation that would boost their competitiveness, like step up their spending on R&D, or research and development, and take the risk of expanding into broader markets outside of Canada’s borders.

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