Transcript Linda Oliver

Mitacs Research Member Session
Linda Oliver, Vice-President, ITAC
May 12, 2011
www.itac.ca
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About ITAC
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The Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) is the voice of the Canadian
information and communications technologies (ICT) industry.
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ITAC represents a diverse ICT community spanning telecommunications and internet services,
ICT consulting services, hardware, microelectronics, software and electronic content.
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ITAC's community of companies accounts for more than 70 per cent of the nearly 600,000
jobs, $155.3-billion in revenue, $6.2-billion in R&D investment, $30.4-billion in exports and $11billion in capital expenditures that the ICT industry contributes annually to the Canadian
economy.
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The ICT sector currently represents 4.9 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP)
and accounted for 9.4 per cent of all real GDP growth since 2002.
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ITAC is a prominent advocate for the expansion of Canada’s innovative capacity and for
stronger productivity across all sectors through the strategic use of technology.
www.itac.ca
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The Digital Economy Strategy
- Digital Economy Strategy (DES) for Canada - the key
advocacy work.
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DES - Five key areas:
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Capacity to Innovate Using Digital Technologies,
Building a World Class Infrastructure,
Growing the Information and Communications Technology Industry,
Digital Media: Creating Canada’s Digital Content Advantage, and
Building Digital Skills for Tomorrow.
www.itac.ca
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Capacity to Innovate Using
Digital Technologies
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Overcoming Under-investment in Information and
Communications Technologies
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Addressing Our Environmental Challenges
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The Digital Economy and Public Services
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Demographic Challenges
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Governments as Model Users
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Protecting the Online Marketplace
www.itac.ca
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Building a World Class Infrastructure
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Digital Infrastructure is Much More than Broadband
• Canada’s digital economy strategy should explicitly recognize a digital age
definition of infrastructure.
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Setting Canada’s Goals for Broadband Infrastructure
• Set a broadband infrastructure goal for Canada for 2017 that applies to
Canadians in all parts of the country.
• Set that goal on a functional basis that involves a holistic set of measurable
characteristics that represent true, workable participation in the digital economy.
• Create the right climate for business investment, including predictable access to
spectrum and reduction of fees and levies.
• Make more spectrum available for mass-market wireless telecommunications.
• Use spectrum planning policies to promote efficient use of spectrum.
• Target public investment to incenting business investment and then to any
remaining unaddressed needs.
• Reinvest significant proceeds from spectrum auctions to achieve the objectives of
the digital economy strategy.
www.itac.ca
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Growing the ICT Industry
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Understand the characteristics of Canadian high-growth potential firms and the conditions that
foster or impede their growth through sustained research activity.
Increase collaboration between our existing support mechanisms and entities, including across
levels of government.
Set targets for growth of the Canadian ICT sector (e.g. 20 above $1 billion by 2017) and
measure annual progress toward that outcome.
Address the venture capital crisis as the largest impediment to all our ambitions for growth
through new strategies (tax credits, flow-through shares, etc.) to get the retail venture capital
sector more active in developing the ICT industry.
Extend SR&ED credits or deploy other means to cover global sale and marketing investments of
Canadian companies.
Allow companies to choose between a refundable wage credit and non-refundable SR&ED
credits for eligible research and development activities.
Ensure that in our administration of SR&ED we do not treat research on software and
applications unfavourably.
Continue to support commercialization programs that have a proven track record in aiding the
formation of early stage enterprises such as IRAP (which is chronically oversubscribed) and
Precarn. We will not achieve the significant step-up we need by simply trading off new initiatives
against existing ones.
Urgently review Canada’s Cryptography Policy to ensure the legal and procedural frameworks
in place operate so that Canadian exporters of cryptography are not disadvantaged as
compared to their competitors in the US, EU and in other Wassenaar Member countries.
www.itac.ca
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Digital Media: Creating Canada’s Digital
Content Advantage
 Aggressively pursue initiatives to foster collaboration
among digital content players, including the full range of
technology players.
 Launch a review of our policy regulatory and legal
regime for broadcasting to adapt it to the digital and
Internet age.
 Pursue digitization of our public archival content through
the Canada Online project or similar collaborative
initiative.
www.itac.ca
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Building Digital Skills for Tomorrow
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Develop a national digital skills strategy for Canada.
Improve our performance in the collection of timely and useful data about all
aspects of the digital labour market including post-secondary enrolment data
and data about the evolution of our progress toward the creation of a
workforce that reflects a strong infusion of digital skills with all other
specialties.
Coalesce the efforts of the private, public and NGO sectors to promote
STEM literacy through a national campaign. Aim to improve Canada’s
performance in producing science and engineering graduates moving from
our current OECD to the top 5 by 2016.
Double female enrolments in high value programs by 2017.
Create a skills marketplace to drive labour market agility and innovation.
Increase digital economy college and university seats by 20 percent by
2017.
Make the full range of digital literacy skills a priority in primary, secondary,
postsecondary, mid-career and lifelong learning education.
Aggressively build awareness, supports, incentives and partnerships to drive
change
www.itac.ca
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On the horizon for ITAC…
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Government Relations – Government & Opposition
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Digital Economy Strategy – the implementation
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Focus on areas where Government can achieve
objectives of saving money through use of technology
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Business focus on fixing administration of Healthcare
www.itac.ca
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