Canada’s slow granting processes pushing companies abroad, researcher says

OTTAWA—Canada’s slow granting processes for digital media are slowing down the country’s ability to compete internationally and encouraging Canadians to look abroad, Ken Coates, dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Waterloo, told the House heritage committee at a hearing Tuesday. Coates said the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has changed its practices to move faster, departments and agencies remain too slow. “In all levels of government, federal, provincial, and municipal, our granting system does not move at the speed of the Internet. Compare what we do in Canada to what they do in Singapore or Taiwan, where a handful of people can make decisions in a couple of days. Our processes take two years. Two years is a lifetime in the digital media space,” he said. “In digital media, winners and losers change places very quickly. We’re not moving at the speed that we should be.” Coates said granting delays are causing companies and entrepreneurs to look for funding abroad, and they often follow the money to operate in other countries. A new kind of oversight may be necessary to speed up granting processes and put more confidence in public servants to make decisions, he said. Coates said Canada needs to define “fast enough”—which may mean receiving funding for a project within a month. “Not fast enough,” he said, is taking 18 months to jump through regulatory hurdles and other vetting processes. “I feel sorry for government right now. The accountability expectations on you are crippling, quite frankly, and everyone is very nervous. So decisions take way too long.” Coates appeared before the committee Tuesday as part of its continuing study on new media in Canada. When asked for examples of slow granting processes following the committee meeting, Coates said he intended to speak only broadly. But he said agencies like the Canada Media Fund should be faster. The federal government is currently drafting a national digital economy strategy that is expected to be released next year—potentially in the 2011 budget. Industry Minister Tony Clement is set to make an interim announcement on Nov. 22. Canadian culture is a “saleable commodity” and can be a competitive advantage internationally—provided that companies know what the markets are like and how to enter them, Coates said. He pointed to Corus Entertainment as a success story because it sells content to many countries around the globe produced in “dozens of languages. They’ve figured it out.” But countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Malaysia are ahead and moving more quickly and nimbly in the digital media space, and Canada needs to better study Asia and understand how far along are competitors, he said. A “science city” is being developed outside of Hanoi, Vietnam, he said, that will have a population of 1.2 million and 13 universities. The Sangam Digital Media City outside of Seoul, Korea, has 25,000 digital media researchers in one location, he added. “The scale in Asia is simply mind boggling,” Coates said. “You compete by getting in the middle of it, by understanding what’s going on.” Coates told the committee that Taiwan decided about 15 years ago to focus on the “guts” of technology, and today technological devices are loaded with Taiwanese internal components. But digital content is now seen as the next wave, and the country is investing in digital arts centres, institutes, and training for artists and designers. He said the country is focusing its output on China. Taiwan also has exchange programs for workers to move between government, universities and the private sector—an investment in people that encourages its talent to stay or come back to the country. Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of government and regulatory affairs at Telus Corp., also appeared before the committee Tuesday. When asked about investing in digital media, he said money should be put into content and content promotion internationally, not distribution or networks. “It’s about application and software development as much as it is the content itself,” Hennessy said. “You really need content people to start to think about technology and vice versa, and that starts at the universities.” Hennessy said some of the revenues generated from the federal government’s upcoming spectrum auctions should be allocated to digital content. Ian Wilson, executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Stratford Institute, told the committee Tuesday that Canadian content rules are no longer effective in a digital environment, and that Canada’s existing resources need to be mobilized to put extensive amounts of Canadian content and knowledge resources online. He called for a national initiative like the Massey-Lévesque Commission—which established a cultural roadmap for the country in the 1950s—to come up with a strategy for “Canada’s success in the global knowledge economy as a digital nation.” sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Canada’s slow granting processes pushing companies abroad, researcher says

Broadcast | October 27, 2010

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