Chart - April 3, 2026
Canada's Patent Applications Stagnation
Every year, Canada grants about 100 patents per million people. This has remained pretty much flat since the early 1990s. But other countries have taken a strategic approach to creating IP and have increased their patents per million people to more than 600.
China, the USA, Germany and Finland have been leading the pack.
Canada invests more money as a share of GDP in post-secondary research and development but the outputs are commercialized in other countries; meaning that the benefits from this spending are being realized elsewhere. Canada is a world leader in research and development capabilities but runs a persistent deficit in IP ownership which means our research is delivering economic benefits away from Canada’s economy.
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