A Globe & Mail article titled “By ignoring the knowledge economy, Canada is taking a step backward” penned by Richard Florida and Greg Spencer indicates:

“For the past decade or so, Canada’s leadership has spun a narrative that the resource-rich West is the key source of the country’s economic competitiveness. But in today’s economy, the real sources of sustained prosperity and rising living standards are knowledge, innovation and creativity. Canada has neglected the development of its knowledge-based economy.

“This is a step backward and an unfortunate mistake.”

In their October 2015 report on: Canada’s Urban Competitiveness Agenda: Completing the Transition from a Resource to a Knowledge Economy they indicate that: “economic competitiveness and sustained economic growth rests on what we term the 3Ts of economic development: talent, technology, and tolerance.

A study by the New Zealand Treasury board titled: Innovation and Productivity: Using Bright Ideas to Work Smarter indicates that talent and human capital are key drivers of productivity, innovation, and rising living standards.

Economist of various stripes have concurred on this conclusion and yet our leaders on all three levels of government – municipal; provincial and Federal are either ignoring it or just paying lip service to the knowledge economy.

Ryan Holmes the poster boy for the Vancouver Tech industry in his July 10, 2013 article in the Financial Post titled:  Why Canada is failing at tech – indicates that “Canada suffers from a desperate and growing shortage of computer developers and software engineers. Over the past several decades, Silicon Valley has claimed our best and brightest.” Many companies like Accenture, Deloitte and similar other firms are in the business of importing foreign engineers for their clients such as ICBC and others for their technology project. This may offer a temporary fix, but it does little to nurture a homegrown and enduring tech industry.

At the economic forum - Davos - this year, the focus of which was on the so-called fourth Industrial Revolution, which involves the increasing use of robots, driverless cars and the sweeping changes internet technology is bringing to businesses big and small, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau indicated that Canada is an “engine of invention” that rivals Silicon Valley with excellent universities and a strong high-tech sector that can take advantage of the next technological revolution.

However, Prime Ministers’ liberal policies (election promise to tax stock-option gains as regular income) would have made it harder to invent anything in Canada, except an excuse to leave says, Konrad Yakabuski in his Globe & Mail article “If the dollar goes south, brains will follow”. Fortunately, Canada’s technology sector spoke and the government listened. In March this year Finance Minister Bill Morneau backed off on plans to raise the tax rates on stock options, which would have been a setback for tech start-ups that rely on options to attract and compensate employees before the firms are generating large revenue.

Bloomberg Technology reports: John Ruffolo, the head of OMERS Ventures, the venture capital unit of the Ontario municipal workers pension fund, told a tech conference earlier this year.

“You thought getting talent to either stay in Canada or [trying] to attract folks in the U.S. was hard? Good luck. It just got 40 per cent more expensive,”

Jack M. Mintz in his Financial Post article: Living with the low Canadian brain-drain dollar indicates: “If Canada’s low exchange rate is sustained, we could well see a repetition of brain drain pressures in the coming years.…Of most concern is that many of the emigrating population are future job creators.”

Canada’s reliance on the resource is not easy to escape; our economic policies and our economic engine has for decades been fuelled (no pun intended) by the resource industry but we have to read the writing on the wall and understand and recognise that there is an elephant in the room, the obvious is not being addressed; we need to understand that the economic competitiveness and sustained economic growth & development in the future rests on talent, technology, and tolerance.

An intolerant country like Saudi Arabia has come to understand the writing on the wall and has come up with Saudi Vision 2030 - a policy to wean itself from relying on revenues from oil production. Economist reports in the article: Saudi Arabia’s post-oil future: Saudi Arabia unveiled “a string of commitments to end the kingdom’s dependence on oil by 2030 which, in themselves, would be a remarkable achievement for a hidebound country. This is coming from a country that has one of the largest reserves of oil in the world. Saudi Arabia, the world’s mightiest oil power, is throwing in the towel, which is not good news for Canadian Resource industry, though.

Amidst all this gloom and doom about the declining resource industry and the urgency to promote the tech industry, it was heartening to read about: Canadian VC Funding Hits Record While U.S. Investors Scale Back. The article reports that: Canadian start-ups raised a record amount of money in the first quarter of 2016, according to PitchBook Data, which tracks venture capital and private-equity investments. That’s a notable achievement when venture capitalists in the U.S. are tightening their purse strings. The first three months of 2016 saw the lowest number of U.S. venture deals in four years.

In line with this development it was interesting to read the following developments:

In December of last year, the Province of British Columbia created a $100-million venture capital fund as it builds the foundation for a comprehensive technology strategy aimed at stimulating growth in the fast-moving sector, creating jobs and strengthening a diverse economy. It’s “The #BCTECH Strategy” speaks about: The B.C. tech sector has come into its own. The entrepreneurial drive in B.C. has created tech companies with nine-figure revenues, a vibrant start-up ecosystem, and world-class technology used by the most prestigious companies in finance, information technology, aerospace, and retail.

It will take more than these initiatives to sustain, maintain and fuel growth in the Canadian Tech industry and support home-grown tech industries like: Hootsuite; Sierra Wireless; D-Wave; and others such firms, while supporting US firms such as Intel; Microsemi (PMC Sierra) Amazon; Microsoft; Google to stay and operate in Canada.

It requires a commitment from institutions; government; industry and academia to nurture and grow the local burgeoning tech industry. Commitments such as:

  •  All levels of government must promote globally to attract funding and industries into Canada.
  • Increase funding to our universities to teach new technology related subjects and prepare them for jobs of the future.   
  • Industry and academia need to connect more to conduct research in universities and spin-off start-ups.  
  • Colleges and universities have to train people for jobs that are in demand to reduce the trade gap that exist for talent and technology.  
  • Start the conversation on career guidance before high-school graduates get to university to make their career choice relevant to the present as well as the future.
  • The Tech industry needs to correct the outdated stereotypes of “engineering” as tedious, mechanical work but in reality is a highly creative pursuit prompting inventiveness, playfulness and experimentation.
  • Initiate a renewed push in secondary schools toward science and math fields towards

People like Ryan Homes of Hootsuite & Dennis Pilarinos of Buddybuild - who want to make Vancouver the Silicon Valley of the North needs local talent and support to grow their business and nurture start-ups. The reality is that without local talent and support it cannot happen.

I would like to hear your opinion on what it would take to make the Canadian economy relevant to a future that is driven by technology?

Philip Thomas - Optimizing Project Delivery Services; Workplace Experience Strategist; Design & Circular Thinking; Evangelist for disrupting the AEC Industry.

I do write on Enhancing Client Experience; Project Management; Design Thinking and Circular Thanking; The Untethered Workplace – The Future of Work & the Workplace of the Future and on Disrupting the AEC industry.

To read more on these subject go to our Blog page on our website: www.optumplus.com