Canada a ‘laggard’ in ICT investment, growth, forum hears

OTTAWA — Canada needs to “come to grips” with its lagging productivity and mobile broadband penetration if it wants to compete on the global stage, panellists said Wednesday during the annual Canadian Internet Registration Authority’s (CIRA) Canadian Internet Forum. It’s not that sexy to talk about the economy and national productivity, Chris Tacit, vice-president of the Internet Society Canada Chapter, told attendees gathered at the Museum of Nature, adding that two key challenges to tackle are the discoverability of information and communications technologies as well as the creation of a national broadband strategy. Having broadband is a lot like having water or electricity, Tacit said. “There are both private and public benefits to having clean water. Part of it is, yes, you wash yourself you get to drink it, you get to cook,” but there are also public benefits, such as the improvement of the health of society, he said. “There’s a very big public interest in making sure our broadband society and ICT are well developed.” CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais also called for a national broadband strategy recently. Tacit said he was “heartened” by the federal Liberal government’s focus on innovation. Innovation is a mindset, said Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s associate deputy minister Kelly Gillis during her opening address to the forum, quoting department minister Navdeep Bains. “The Internet is the infrastructure that the Innovation Agenda will run on,” she said. But Canada doesn’t rank as high “in all things Internet and broadband” among peer countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as it used to, CIRA president and CEO Byron Holland said. “And it’s not that we’ve gone backwards. Of course we’ve continued to progress, it’s just the challenge is our peers, our competitors around the world are progressing faster, and we should be concerned about that. It’s definitely troubling to me,” Holland said. “I strongly believe the quality of broadband and the price of broadband together really form the digital currency of this country.” Speaking via videoconference from Paris, Verena Weber, an OECD economist and policy analyst, noted Canada was ranked below average for mobile broadband penetration and only at the average for peak speeds. The speed leaders, Weber noted, were those countries deploying the most fibre-to-the-home. “So we have a huge correlation here,” she said. “That naturally means the more fibre that is provided to Canadians, the more you have fibre-to-the-home, the more the average speed increases.” Canada rose from a D-grade to a C-grade on the Conference Board of Canada’s latest innovation report card, Pedro Atunes, deputy chief economist with the Conference Board, said. The report looks at a variety of issues, he said, including scholarly articles, scientific journals, patent applications, and ICT investment. “I think ICT investment as a whole, we’re not a leader in Canada,” Atunes said. “In some provinces, perhaps we’re doing a little better than others, but essentially we’re laggards in terms of benchmarking against top performers.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.caand editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Canada a ‘laggard’ in ICT investment, growth, forum hears

News | June 1, 2016

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Canada a ‘laggard’ in ICT investment, growth, forum hears

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