Canada isn't innovating, which hurts our economy, which leads to education cuts, which keeps us from innovating. It's a vicious circle and we must escape it.

So, it’s official: according to The Council of Canadian Academies, one of the explanations of our current economic difficulties is a lack of innovation among Canadian businesses.

The solution must be easy, then. Managers just need to tell their employees to innovate and all will be well.

But isn’t that like expecting those untrained in any field to “just do it!”? Innovation requires people to be able to tap into their natural creativity. While most young children are able to do this naturally – just watch a toddler inventing games with a few inanimate props – most adults have had this instinct suppressed through years of formal education that demand focus, logic and specialization. (See Sir Ken Robinson’s latest book, The Element, for an entertaining and informed discourse on this subject.)

In the short term, therefore, we may lack a labour pool sufficient to produce instant innovations: we don’t have enough people who are comfortable “being creative.” Unless we are vigilant now, the long-term prospects do not look much better. Across the country, provincial governments are building deficits in their efforts to help re-stimulate the economy. We all hope they succeed. In the meantime, provincial ministries, particularly those not directly linked to industrial regeneration, will be required to trim their budgets not only to help reduce deficits now but also to help provinces return to a state of “balance” in the future.

History suggests that one area where economies will be sought is education, particularly at the elementary and secondary levels. Programs that are perceived as frills will be cut. Traditionally, the arts are perceived in this way.

Yet, the arts – performing and visual – are the very subjects that will encourage and facilitate the development of a cadre of individuals confident in, and capable of accessing, their creative abilities. These are the very citizens that, apparently, we have failed to produce enough of in the past and that we will need increasingly in the future.

Retaining one’s creative instincts will matter to all members of the future generation whether or not they end up at the leading edge of innovation in their chosen fields. Try to predict what the world will be like when those entering kindergarten this fall are entering the full-time workforce (assuming there is still such a thing in 2030). The exponential rate of change we have witnessed in the past quarter century suggests that all we can say for certain is that “the future will be different.” The future’s young adults will need to be even more adaptable, flexible – and yes, innovative – than those who were born a half-century ago. We owe it to them to ensure that they are equipped to cope with these unpredictable changes.

This is why, as a society, we cannot allow well-meaning governments and bureaucrats to create circumstances where schools have no choice but to restrict access to the arts as part of their curricula. A well-rounded education is going to be needed to meet our obligations to this future generation. And that means providing access to the three As: academics, athletics, and the arts.

The officials within provincial governments and district school boards should not be permitted to set their priorities any lower. Of course, this will require them to innovate. Let’s hope the very system they exist to administer allowed them, as they themselves went through it, to retain their creative abilities!