Industry-led campaign seeks $550-$600M in new funding to boost ICT capacity

Canada is facing a critical shortage of information and communications technology (ICT) professionals, and a new industry-led consortium has launched a major campaign to squeeze $550-$600 million from the federal government to combat the problem. Key details of the proposal will be hammered out this week when some of the industry’s elite – including Peter Nicholson (BCE Inc) and Jocelyn Ghent-Mallett (former Industry Canada DG) – meet to decide how the money would be administered and handed out. "All the industry players, various stakeholders and partners will be getting together (on Wednesday, Sept. 27) and they’ll be looking at various delivery models and we’ll make a decision on how to deliver this at that time," says Ghent-Mallett, past senior advisor to Newbridge Networks Corp chair Terry Matthews. She is also the project leader for a group calling itself eMPOWR, which represents the microelectronics, photonics, optoelectronics, wireless and related imbedded software industries – some of the key drivers of the ICT sector. EMPOWR’s membership reads like a who’s who of Canada’s ICT sector, with representatives from major communications manufacturers, research and academia. But Canada’s goal of becoming a global leader in the new economy is being undermined by a shortage of highly skilled ICT workers. Training those workers will require a significant increase in the number of university and college professors specializing in this area – and there lies the main problem. EMPOWR says the new federal money is needed to double or even triple the number of researchers and professors in these disciplines, thereby boosting the volume of post-secondary graduates. A recent speech given by Finance minister Paul Martin to the Toronto Board of Trade suggests the federal government may already be leaning in that direction. In the September 14 address outlining his vision of the new economy, Martin made several references to investing in people, describing them as Canada’s most valuable natural resource. "Investing in people means directing more resources to students and to the trade schools, colleges and universities they attend," he said. "Investing in people means graduate schools that attract the very best from around the world." He goes on to say that, "Ours must be an economy that attracts talent like a magnet attracts metal; a society where our people feel that there is nowhere else they would rather be than here, because there is no place they can achieve so much." But without increased financial support from the feds, Ghent-Mallett warns, that will not happen. She says the major problem affecting Canada’s telecommunications industry is a lack of highly qualified personnel, and the only way to get more skilled workers is to have more professors training them. She refutes the over-hyped and over-used ‘brain drain’ message, saying the issue is really a capacity problem. Provincial programs in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta are already in place to "double the pipeline" of student spaces in universities. But for those students to be trained properly, more professors are needed to educate them. "The problem is that if (we) had enough capacity, then (we) could afford to let people go and not have to worry about it," she says. Canada should have enough capacity built into the education system here, so that if graduates want to explore opportunities in other parts of the world, it won’t affect industry within its own borders, Ghent-Mallettt adds. This year’s proposal is an extension of a similar one that was put together by the microelectronics industry last year. During discussions with government officials, however, it was quickly realized that if there was any chance of getting money, the proposal had to encompass a much larger set of industries. This was when the microelectronics group aligned itself with the photonics, optoelectronics and related embedded software industries. Much like the microelectronics submission to the Finance committee last year, it says that for the industry to remain competitive, it needs to triple the number of professors in the country. Ghent-Mallettt says that there are about 60 photonics professors in the country and that number needs to triple. In the wireless sector, she says the number needs to double. Key to eMPOWR’s proposal will be to offer leading telecom researchers attractive compensation packages to head up engineering departments. The federal government’s Chairs of Research Excellence program, announced in the February budget, is a good start but Ghent-Mallett points out that the $200,000 being offered per chair isn’t high enough to attract high-profile "stars" from the U.S. and other countries. After the salary and benefits are paid and the university takes a portion for overhead, there isn’t much left for research and other costs, she says. "If you have this additional research money, you would be able to add it on to the (research chair funding) and therefore attract really high quality people," she says. "And once you start to attract stars, you get more and more good people." Friction between eMPOWR, CITR The main criticism being leveled at the eMPOWR bid is that its approach to the ICT skills shortage is weighted too heavily on the hardware side. EMPOWR eventually added ‘related imbedded software industries’ to its cause, although there was much internal debate about whether it should be included. The group that’s calling for a broader approach to the skills issue is the Canadian Institute of Telecommunications Research (CITR), a federal Network of Centres of Excellence chaired by BCE’s Peter Nicholson, who also co-chairs eMPOWR. While the CITR is technically part of the eMPOWR campaign, there is friction between the two groups. It’s still undecided if CITR will submit a separate funding proposal to the Finance department, as it did last year with an unsuccessful pitch for $350 million in new funding for the ICT sector as a whole. As one insider noted, CITR isn’t pushing a proposal, "it’s pushing a broader vision, and it remains to be seen whether it will end up going forward as one proposal in partnership with eMPOWR) or not." Ghent-Mallett says those negotiations continue, but isn’t sure if it’s appropriate for a hardware-based group to take on a broader mandate. "They (the CITR) haven’t been clear, at least to me, on how they want to do that."

Industry-led campaign seeks $550-$600M in new funding to boost ICT capacity

News | 09/25/2000 4:00 am EDT

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