The world will not wait for our forms to be signed

Written with the help of AI, to bring the style of ancient Greek orator, Demosthenes, to bear on the subject of bureaucratic delays as threats to public service innovation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I stand before you today not as a critic, but to appeal to our collective reason and ambition — to ensure that Canada’s innovation engine is not slowed by the weight of its own machinery.

We have seen how, over time, our system of government has grown increasingly rigid and stagnant. From procurement to hiring, what once enabled swift scientific progress has become a labyrinth of forms, thresholds, and delays. But it is crucial to draw a clear line between different kinds of procurement. It is crucial to distinguish our investments in innovation from other spending, as they have truly different needs on a rapidly accelerating world stage. Federal scientific research is not the same as building a vast, public-facing system like the ArriveCAN app. It does not carry the same risks of misuse, nor the same scale of public expenditure as grants and contributions programs. The stakes are different, and the risks are different. And therefore, so too must be the governance and pace.

The scientists and engineers working within federal laboratories are not buying multi-million-dollar contracts for private companies, or outsourcing billion-dollar systems, or even buying luxury office furniture. They are procuring sensors, catalysts, and components to build test benches and research equipment — the tools that allow Canada’s scientific enterprise to function. Treating these essential, specialized purchases with procedural caution that results in year-long delays it is fundamentally misplaced. Treating them with the same urgency of pace as office furniture is crippling. As we know, and as we have all experienced in our lifetimes, scientific progress moves at the highest pace of all enterprise. In our attempt to protect the public purse, we are, paradoxically, starving the very work that protects Canada’s long-term prosperity, competitiveness, and credibility.

And make no mistake: in a world where science is the new arena of geopolitical competition, delays are not neutral. Every procurement bottleneck, every protracted hiring delay, every risk-averse classification of a lab component as a “capital asset” plays into the hands of others. Imagine, for a moment, that an adversary wished to slow Canada’s rise as a clean energy and technology superpower. They would not need to plant spies or steal data — they would only need to whisper softly in our ear: “be cautious… slow down… add another layer of approval.” And we would do the rest ourselves.

Yet from the very top — from the Prime Minister himself, to the Clerk of the Privy Council, to the Minister of Natural Resources — we have heard a clear and consistent message: we must be nimble; we must focus on the big picture; and we must be able to do big things fast. The call has been sounded. The question is whether our internal systems — from procurement to hiring — will respond in kind, or whether they will continue to resist that call beneath layers of well-intentioned caution.

We are not short on talent or ideas. Within our ranks, we have people who understand these challenges intimately — researchers, administrators, and executives, who know precisely where the bottlenecks lie and how to fix them. What they lack is not insight or excellence, but permission. Permission to act with flexibility, to apply judgment, and to move at the speed of relevance.

As Demosthenes might have said, it is not enough to know what is right — we must have the courage to do what is right. To balance prudence with agility. To safeguard the public interest without smothering it under the weight of process. For if we fail to move now — if we continue to let bureaucracy outpace science — we risk becoming our own greatest obstacle.

Canada wishes to be productive, yet our own inaction betrays us: as OECD data show, our research effort and output trail our peers. Mariana Mazzucato reminds us that the State does not merely fix market failures—it creates markets through innovation—and when it outsources its intellect, it hollows out the very capacity that drives innovation. Every month of bureaucratic delay and every hour stolen by compliance drains the vitality of discovery and the diffusion of knowledge into the economy.

Let us, then, act—not with new slogans or reports—but by empowering federal intramural research to move swiftly, cut its own red tape, and once again make Canada’s laboratories the forge of national productivity.

Let us ensure that Canada’s scientific enterprise is free to move with confidence and clarity — not reckless, but resolute.

Let us reclaim the tempo of innovation.