Canada's R & D strategy it is very difficult to discern - particularly as it applies to its Defence Strategy. Sometimes this simply means there is no articulated strategy.
Canada's R & D expenditures as a percent of GDP have been just about as poor as it's productivity growth numbers.
The Government of Canadas stated science, technology and innovation priority research areas are: environment and agriculture; health and life sciences; natural resources and energy; information and communications technologies; and advanced manufacturing. (Source)
The West has developed over time a series of
"Offset Strategies" to overcome
potential adversaries numerical superiority and to injected uncertainty in their minds, changing their war-fighting calculus so as to maintain the current global system which favours the democracies.
Canada has a resource gap in the funding of its military capability and perhaps more seriously a technology gap that manifests itself even to the untrained eye.
Some of DND's Defence and Security Target Areas are: Autonomous Systems and Robotics, Information Management and Data Science, Human Systems Performance and Protection, Resilient Networked Systems, Explosive Hazard Avoidance, Blast Characterization and Mitigation and Next Generation Material Systems and Signatures (Source)
Defence R&D spending appears though to be thoroughly inadequate.
