PATENTS AND ARE WE STUPID OR WHAT?

by Marcie M. Farsea, Senior Fellow CanadianBullshit.com, Author

Editor's Note: Miss Farsea is from Corner Brook and is the Corporate Secretary. Marcie is the Author of Your Very First Billion -the "best book ever published on business in Canada" and is an internationally known and appreciated commentator on world financial events. Although you cannot see it, Miss Farsea (pronounced farSEA) comments with a very big smile on her face and her remarks should be placed in that context. One never really knows when she is kidding. (Most people from Corner Brook are like this.) 

The concept behind this website is that we uncover bullshit in our society and suggest a better way. Much of what we uncover is not reported by the mainstream media and often Canadians are simply unaware of reality and we blissfully and often smugly go our way thinking that Canada is something that it is actually not.

This topic relates to one indicator of intellectual power, specifically the number of patents each country holds expressed as a ratio to their population.  Specifically the measurement here is how many patents each country holds -per million people. Patents are normally associated with the invention and  manufacture of goods. Most Canadians would be disappointed when they see that we are #30 on the list. My guess is that the average Canadian thinks we are pretty smart and can compete with any nation in the world. The question becomes -if we are so smart how come we are number 30 on the list?

How on earth did this ever happen? Are we really stupid? It would certainly appear so at least using this one selected indicator! Has our government completely neglected Canadian manufacturing and innovation? It would appear so on that one too. Is there any active program in Canada designed to increase the number of patents Canadians earn and hold? The answer is "no." Here is the list of patents per million people: 

We need to place pressure on our elected representatives and governments, on our education system and on the public itself to try a lot harder. To have only 31 patents per million people is an insult. Note that Japan has 994 or 32 times as many as Canada has per million people. Canada is a third world country when it comes to patents. We are abysmal. Apparently we are too stupid to pound sand down a rat hole when it comes to patents and inventions. We need to change that if we want a vibrant economy with jobs for our citizens and a good future for all. 

It wasn't always like this. Canada discovered insulin, the telephone, hockey, some would even say basketball but I think that is stretching it, We produced the AVRO Arrow, the Canada Arm a key component in space exploration, The Blackberry and we are constantly told about all the good things Canada has done. During the second world war with a population of only 11 million we built thousands of aircraft, ships, guns, and built the third largest navy in the world.  So what happened? 

Sometime starting in the last few decades Canadians stopped building things and our manufacturing fell to under 20% of our GDP. Now it looks like it may settle at 14%. This is absolutely ridiculous for a developed country of 33 million people. Yet we don't have a home grown vehicle production industry, we don't build our large passenger jets, we don't build our military jets anymore, and lately we can't even seem to replace our BC ferry boat fleet without going to Germany to have them build them and we now it looks like we are incapable of operating a nuclear reactor and ensure a continuous supply of medical isotopes. We have over 21 million TV sets in Canada but none of them are made here. With few exceptions, we don't make our socks or underwear anymore. Our shoes are made offshore. Even toys for our kids are made someplace else (China). 

We opened up our borders to free trade with the foolish premise that we should have "a level playing field" with countries ten times or more our population and other countries where the cost of labour was less than ten percent of our costs. We kept no market share for ourselves and let others dominate and provide all our manufactured goods. Suddenly fewer and fewer Canadians were making things and now we find ourselves #31 on the list of patent holders. Is this surprising? 

If you are concerned about this situation pass this page around to people that you know that can help. Bring it to the attention of your elected representative, your local university, your local paper. Start asking questions. Start demanding better performance. Demand that Canada retain 50% of each market for her own inventions, her own workers and open the rest to free trade. In other words 50% of TVs in Canada should be made in Canada by Canadian workers. 50% of vehicles sold in Canada should be made by a Canadian owned car company using Canadian designs for Canadian conditions. That means you get sufficient clearance to deal with our pot holed highways and snow, a block heater as standard equipment, a big honking heater for when it is 40 below and enough mass around you to protect you in an accident. 

If we all sit back and accept Canada in #30 position in the world we must also admit that our society is non performing when it comes to manufacturing and innovation and intellectual prowess and that we depend on people from other countries to tell us how to build things. There is something wrong here and we need to fix it! 

We also need to better understand how business works in Canada and in this regard my book will help. One of the biggest problems with Canada is that we just don't understand what reality is. We have this smug Canadian attitude founded on messages we receive from within our society and media that we are better than anyone when in fact the reality is -in the case of patents that we are #30 in the world. In the case of business we have absolutely no concept of what is going on around us. My book is the first to give you the straight goods. 

Can we improve? Yes we can. The first step is to understand that there is a problem the second step is to fix it. Our tiny population in WW2 achieved great deeds and now three times the size we are capable of doing even more. In WW2 we built over 650,000 army trucks. Now in 2009 we can't even make a truck for the Canadian Army and are buying them from our cousins in the USA. We just need good sound leadership and more people spending more time and energy on productive past times rather than sitting around whining or wasting time on special interest group activities.

My main objective here was to get you thinking. I hope you will add your support to moving our patent standing up the ladder to a position more in keeping with the abilities of our population. For example I see that Australia is number 19. Surely we can beat our mates in Australia! I mean they can't even play hockey! We should be able to get up to #15 or thereabouts where we belong. To put it another way consider this"

How many Canadians does it take to earn one patent? 

Answer 32,258  That makes us 30 th in the world.

How many Norwegians does it take to earn one patent? 

Answer 9708 That makes them #15

How many Japanese does it take to earn one patent?

Answer 1006. That makes them #1 in the world/  And to rub salt into our wounds when you do the math it takes 32 more times Canadians to invent one patent as just one Japanese. The true north strong and free and just a bit slow? 

Too many of us sit around drinking beer and watching hockey. We need to hit the books and start making things instead of buying goods from employed workers in other countries. We need to get more people into engineering and technology courses and less into social studies and the soft sciences and arts courses. And then we need real jobs for them when they graduate so we need more Canadian market share in our economy. We need somebody in Ottawa with vision and leadership abilities to make this happen and a bunch of people out in the land pushing for it. 

Perhaps I have been a bit too harsh here. They didn't call me "Little Miss Bossy" back home for nothing. But watching fellow Canadians try to earn a patent is like watching molasses flow up hill on a cold day. Unless we change our ways we will fall even further down that list. 

Whatever!  Keep smiling!   Marcie

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LINKS 

Patents granted by country

Canadian Intellectual Property Office

BattistonPublishing.com -our Publishing Company- we enlighten and entertain. We published "the best book every written on Business in Canada" YOUR VERY FIRST BILLION  420 pages by popular and world famous Author Miss Marcie M. Farsea. Entertaining and very readable it tells you facts about business that you will not find in any other source and it also applies to business everywhere. Makes a great gift for yourself or anyone else interested in business from students to  startups to major corporations

McGill University article on Canadian Patent law and RIM and how behind we are and the dangers. Worth a read! 

Michael Geist Canada's Communication outlook. We place LAST in innovation!!!

Michael Geist Canada strikes a blow against business method patents while they are allowable in the USA. Huh???

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