OTTAWA – The rapid clip at which new technology is entering and transforming the world is creating both opportunities and challenges for Canadian companies driving the innovation
At the macro level, major “technology disrupters” are changing the way we live and work, according to Andre Leduc, vice-president of government relations and policy at the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) speaking this week at the third annual summit of the Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) in Ottawa on Tuesday during a panel discussion on “business in a hyper-connected world.”
Those disrupters include:
- cloud computing and the remote workforce;
- the user experience in which “consumers like never before have platforms to be able to pool their views,” such as through online hotel and car-rental ratings, and “businesses have to respond to consumers in a way that they’ve never had to before,” said Leduc;
- smart cities: in Austin, Texas, blind people can use a “visually enabled walking stick that talks to them” and helps them navigate on foot to a destination, according to Leduc, who told Cartt.ca that a similar initiative could soon appear in Ottawa in partnership with the CNIB Foundation;
- automated and connected vehicles: “There’s a reason why [General Motors] is closing its plant in Oshawa,” said Leduc. “The automotive marketspace is being turned upside down. In the future, people may not own cars, or if [they] do, your car will work for you – take you to work and pick you up and drive you home.” Overall, he expects that driverless vehicles will “change human mobility,” and if they can accommodate “a dozen people,” raise the question of the need for public transit in the future;
- smart machines and artificial intelligence “embedded in everything”;
- quantum computing that will change cyber-security “significantly,” Leduc predicts;
- 5G will be the “backbone” of new technologies and the applications that emerge from it will “enable all of this transformation to occur;” and
- robotics that are displacing low-wage workers in manufacturing, most notably in Mexico and China.
However, as highlighted by Ottawa high-tech executive John Proctor, not all business disrupters are technologically based.
Although Uber and Lyft are “absolutely disrupting the taxi industry, the tech is actually not that clever,” said Proctor, president and CEO of Martello Technologies, an Ottawa-based firm that develops performance software for cloud and enterprise networks, and which is partnered with telecommunications pioneer Mitel Networks.
“They started out at the beginning of the session with, ‘how do we regulate this?’” – Andre Leduc, ITAC
He explained that for Martello, Ottawa’s latest high-tech company to go public, disruption comes from government policy that does not incentivize small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada to grow. For instance, the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, which provides financial support to SMEs to pursue technology innovation, is limited to companies with 500 or fewer employees.
Proctor said that SMEs should also receive some tax relief. “If you bring your cyber-security to a certain level, we will give you a tax break,” he suggested as a “carrot” rather than a “stick” approach government could take.
ITAC’s Leduc also sees the need for a rethink. He told the summit about a Treasury Board roundtable on regulation for connected and automated vehicles and drones that he recently attended.
“They started out at the beginning of the session with, ‘how do we regulate this?’ and all of the associations – the Canadian vehicle manufacturers – said don’t start with regulations, end with regulations,” Leduc said. “Start with codes of conduct, best practices, standards – and see what innovations are actually happening in the industry so you don’t impede innovation by regulating too early.”
