I’d like to take more time this summer to collect thoughts on how Canada can create a better environment to encourage more innovation.
At The 2016 Canadian Telecom Summit earlier this month, Namir Anani, CEO of ICTC, hosted a panel called “Strengthening Canada’s Digital Advantage in a Hyper-connected Global Economy” which provided a number of valuable discussion points.
Earlier this week, I wrote about “Powering an innovation economy“. In that post, I said “Real innovation needs government to get out of the way, allowing successful businesses to thrive and letting unsuccessful ones fail.”
That post also cited another earlier piece called “Donโt do stupid stuff,” in which I wrote “Increasingly, it appears that Canada needs a digital conscience in Ottawa.”
Perhaps that conscience can be embodied in the form of a Chief Digital Economy Officer, charged with looking across all departments and agencies, intervening when policies are at cross-purposes with advancement of an innovation agenda. As I suggested yesterday on Twitter, we might want to look at issues through an innovation economy lens, asking “Are we helping or hindering innovation?” Are we encouraging adoption of digital technologies? Are we establishing an overall environment that encourages entrepreneurs to locate in Canada and create jobs in Canada.
Every time we have governments handing out cash to one company as an incentive to create jobs, I wonder if it represents an admission that Canada is not competitive on its own. Should we celebrate companies that have a business model that is dependent on special concessions and hand-outs or should we fix the structural problems that made those hand-outs necessary?
Do handouts demonstrate failed policy? As I have asked before, are we picking winners and creating more losers?
Sure, those ceremonial cheques create a classic political photo-op. What politician doesn’t like handing out other people’s money under the guise of creating jobs? But, think of where these subsidies come from: out of the pockets of companies that are succeeding at being profitable without a hand-out. How does it encourage entrepreneurship to create a system that transfers taxes on profitable firms to companies that aren’t? What behaviour are we rewarding?
In the meantime, we have government agencies at various levels that have imposed “convenience fees” on online transactions, but waive fees for paying in person. What behaviour are we rewarding?
And who could forget my favourite piece of political pandering, the legislation that led to my post “Don’t do stupid stuff,” a legislated ban on charging for paper bills, found at Section 27.2 of the Telecom Act: “Any person who provides telecommunications services shall not charge a subscriber for providing the subscriber with a paper bill.” Read the post I wrote at the time to get a taste for how this was so completely unnecessary. What behaviour are we rewarding?
Can a digital conscience help reward the kinds of behaviour to guide us toward a more innovative economy?
[Update: June 22, 10:45am] The government has launched its “interactive Innovation Agenda website.”
The website, Canada.ca/Innovation, allows Canadians to share their ideas for positioning Canada as a world leader in turning ideas into solutions, science into technologies, skills into jobs and start-up companies into global successes.