Canada and the Intelligence Economy

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
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Canada must focus on innovation economy to thrive in digital age

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND—As the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum enters its final quarter, there continues to be a lot of buzz about Canada in General and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular.

Trudeau had a hectic day Friday that included meetings with international leaders and a session in the grand Congress Hall on gender equality that included Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook and Melinda Gates from the Gates Foundation.

The annual Canadian cocktail party was jammed and the crowd was nothing less than ebullient.

My wife, Ana Lopes, and I must have heard people say half a dozen times something to the effect of “you must be so proud of your prime minister.” Heady times for sure. No doubt the PMO is enjoying it but also fully aware of the concept of a honeymoon.

Virtually every comment made could be described as addressing the challenge of creating a digital innovation economy. It’s understood that the current economic slump is linked to Canada’s reliance on resources industries and that our falling petrodollar only underlines the urgency of shifting to a new kind of the economy for the 21st century.

Let me editorialize on the discussion. My opinion is that if we view the task ahead through the innovation economy lens, we can do some great things.

For example, the bold efforts of Canada to move toward carbon neutrality came up several times. To me these are part of building this new economy. Fighting climate change is not a cost — it’s an investment in new technologies, behaviours and in creating 21st century, green, high-tech jobs,

Consider the government’s plans of investing in infrastructure. They make a lot of sense. But we can’t just create more of the old infrastructure, we need to embrace the new — for example developing a national strategy for intelligent, autonomous vehicles.

There was discussion about reinventing the public service for the digital age, which was music to my ears. Several leaders addressed the challenges of talent, changing education and retooling the workforce, not just for today’s skills, but for tomorrow’s.

One big theme was how government procurement could stimulate entrepreneurship and competitiveness of Canadian companies to get momentum and grow.

Another theme raised was the need to re-engage Canadian expatriates as a powerful resource in helping Canada expand and be more effective around the world. One person said that Hong Kong is the fourth largest Canadian city — if you count the number of Canadians living there. Silicon valley is also deeply populated with Canadians and if Canada develops a vibrant innovation economy, it will be able to get some of them back.

But even if they stay there, they can be effective ambassadors and contributors to Canada. For starters, one civil society leader said, we should reinstate the right of Canadians abroad to vote.

Several people talked about how Canadian firms are not investing in R&D the way they should be, an obvious roadblock on the way to a new economy. The consensus was that a emaciated dollar is helping us in these challenges, and it was said that the strong dollar cost Canada 7,000 companies by weakening exports. But he also cited a danger of a weak currency — that early stage companies were cheap to acquire by foreign firms.

Thinking about job creation in communities? One minister advised Canada build clusters of excellence around topics like big data, the internet of things and other disciplines of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the theme of Davos this year).

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news...ive-in-digital-age-davos-delegates-agree.html