Earlier this week, I ranted about The Ottawa Citizen publishing a lead editorial that was sloppy in its choice of language. The article said quite plainly:
Nobody with a cutting-edge product to sell wants to set up someplace where mobile phone and data connections are second-rate and cripplingly expensive, particularly if they’re in the information-age industries we prize so highly, any more than you’d build a factory in a place with no roads or rail.
Let me suggest that you can parse that sentence and apply syllogistic logic to see that all that was necessary to disprove a thesis – that Canadian “mobile phone and data connections are second-rate and cripplingly expensive” – was to find a single counter example of a company with a cutting-edge product that wanted to set up in Canada. I suggested in my original posting that all the Citizen had to do was look at Ottawa’s technology sector in its own backyard.
In his blog, Michael Geist tries to clarify what the intent of the Citizen might have been. Michael’s weekly Law Bytes column is carried by the Citizen. He wrote:
I believe that the Citizen was trying to make the case – rightly in my view – that the long-term ability to attract and retain that talent and investment requires a forward looking law and policy infrastructure that supports sufficient competition to allow for pricing that is globally competitive.
I think that most of us would agree that “a forward looking law and policy infrastructure” is at least a contributing factor to encourage attraction and retention of talent and investment.
But, what does that law and policy infrastructure looks like? To “allow for pricing that is globally competitive,” is a very different proposition from say, intervention in a market. How does one define “sufficient competition“? Would we use competition law tests?
Is there any solid academic, econometric analysis to support the assertions being put forward?
Does any of this sound like an interesting doctoral research project?