Industry Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[Matthew Ivis]

Thank you.

That was a good question, because the answer I was going to give to your first question was that it's not just government. There's a collaborative need here. There is a need to work together on this issue.

There are three areas I will point to from our perspective, and they probably parallel my colleagues in a lot of our industry. One area is we have a tremendous number of programs that focus on youth engagement. So applied technology and science demonstrate it, and it's not just theoretical tables you're learning. There's an application to this knowledge that's fun. It's interesting. Actually I have just collated that for another effort, so if you're interested, I would be happy to provide the range of programs we participate in.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Do you offer these young people summer jobs? Do they get a bit of training in the company?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Vincent, excuse me.

I'm sorry, the time is over. We can do what Mr. Seaman did previously. He can answer a previous question at a later question.

We have Monsieur Arthur.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Seaman, I would like you to expand on the answer you gave Mr. Vincent when you were talking about Microsoft's program in the schools.

Did you say that it was not working as well in Quebec as elsewhere?

[Marc Seaman]

You misunderstood. I said that there are already programs established in other provinces and that we are currently working with Quebec. There is no difference, there is no one province where it is working better than in another.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

In other words, all of the provinces accept gifts.

[Marc Seaman]

Yes, but as I said, it is a question of evolution. It is different in each province. It all depends on what their school boards want to do.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You also drew a terrifying picture a little earlier when you talked about classes in our schools where the cleverest, the most highly skilled when it comes to computers, are not the teachers, but the gifted kids in the class.

This situation will not change overnight, because those teachers, who are completely incompetent when it comes to computers, are protected by layers and layers of union security and seniority. They are more focused on watching the calendar until they hit retirement age than on letting young people advance in a field that they don't know and don't like.

A majority of teachers are like a majority of the members of this committee: they are not even capable of programming their video recorder. I am convinced that Ms. Brunelle asks her 14-year-old son to do it.

How do we reach the teachers in a country as complicated as Canada, where each province has its own jurisdiction? In China, the 100 most influential people in the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government are all engineers. All of them, without exception. They are all engineers. How do we reach the teachers in Quebec and Canada when our country is governed by lawyers?

[Bernard Courtois]

We have to be careful when we say there is a generation gap and that some people learn how to use technology and others don't. There is a continuum. People of all ages use the Internet, whether to make travel reservations or to do their banking.

The situation in the school system is complex. Sometimes, there are things in the structure of the school system that are discouraging. If teachers want to take additional training in a tech field, it won't have the same effect as if they wanted to take further university courses in their field. In some provinces, a teacher who takes courses in his or her own field will climb the ranks of the pay scale, but if a teacher takes additional training in technology, even in order to be able to teach his or her own subject better by making more use of technology, it doesn't lead to a pay increase. So we are discouraging them from making an effort. The system has all sorts of things, and various companies offer all sorts of individual programs. It should all be brought together and a coherent strategy adopted.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Courtois, it must be 20 years since Canada has won a Nobel prize. The last one I know of was a Nobel prize for chemistry, which was won by someone at the University of Toronto.

In your field, computer technology and communications, what is there that Canada is the best in the world at? What specific field is there where it is absolutely the best in the world?

[Bernard Courtois]

There are several.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Name just one. Be very specific, very narrow.

[Bernard Courtois]

The BlackBerry, which really is quite important. There are several other similar areas. Also, in Waterloo, we have the Perimeter Institute, which has attracted 80 Nobel prize calibre researchers. They are all potential candidates for a Nobel prize, and they come to Canada because this is where they find the most attractive environment in terms of the quality of their work and what they can accomplish.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Courtois.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Monsieur Arthur.

I think Madame Brunelle as well wanted to respond to your questions.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'll go to Ms. Nash, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

I want to go back to the line of questioning I had raised earlier, about the disconnect between your sector and other education or investment needs, and I'd like to ask you specifically about small business.

Mr. Courtois, you said that in a lot of the small businesses, especially in manufacturing—but also, I would argue, retail, hospitality, or whatever the sector—there is a need, especially with the high dollar, to be investing in new technology. But sometimes, when you're up to your nose in a storm, it's difficult to kind of look around and see how you should be getting yourself out of the water.

How can government help businesses, small businesses especially, in terms of assisting them to make the investments in technology that would assist them in being more successful?

[Bernard Courtois]

Studies show that the problem about the use of technology in Canada lies mainly with smaller firms and--you're right--across all sectors of the economy. Those macroeconomic studies demonstrate that. In our industry, you can imagine what position that leaves us in if people are not using our technology and the economy is suffering as a result.

We find that smaller businesses will not react as well to someone saying “I have a product to sell you” as they will to someone in their industry, one of their peers or someone else, saying “Here's what you can do.” We carried out studies on what was in their mindset and how we could tackle the problem. They understand that information and communications technology can help them save costs. What they do not understand is what's really missing--that you can use technology to produce better products more quickly, to grow faster, and to be more competitive.

The gap there is that they do not have access to those resources. They're too small to have true expertise on what you can do with technology to transform your firm. That obviously opens the door to asking if that is something the government can help with.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

There are organizations that.... I'm from Toronto, and the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas offers advice on such things as energy efficiency and cost savings.

It seems to me there's a gap in terms of getting the kind of expertise that you folks have into those small community-based organizations where the smaller businesses are likely to be able to access it.

[Bernard Courtois]

That is where governments can help.

For example, in Ontario we're engaged in discussions with the Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. They reach out to many places throughout the province to try to see whether they can put on programs to educate smaller businesses on what they can do to better succeed.

That's the kind of thing we obviously try--that's what our people do, they sell our products--but there's a role here, apparently, for the government to take to help break the logjam.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

There's another aspect to this that I'm interested in, and I have a question for all of you.

While business obviously has an incentive to want to invest in new technology in order to be successful, many community and non-profit organizations are increasingly cash-strapped. They perform tremendous work for our communities and yet they're often scrambling to keep up. I know that there are programs for school boards and that kind of investment. Can you tell us some of the things you offer for not-for-profit organizations?

[Marc Seaman]

From Microsoft's perspective, any charitable organization receives their entire software inventory free of charge. So we will donate that, and we've been doing that year over year. It's about $16 million to $20 million per year. We'll donate to any organization that submits an application for their software requirements. They will receive them free for that very reason. We don't think they should be encumbered with IT costs when their business is about doing things for the community. So I think that's an important one.

On your previous question, on ICT investment, I can argue that the study is quite significantly behind, from small businesses in Canada as it is in the United States. So as to your question on what the government can do, I think an ICT tax credit, and certainly the ability to depreciate costs over a period of time that is more manageable for businesses, would hopefully help stimulate some ICT investment from small and medium-sized businesses.

[Matthew Ivis]

From IBM's perspective, we have a team of corporate community relations that focus specifically on outreach. We focus a lot of our effort on the K-to-12 space for a lot of the reasons we've discussed today, in that there's a real need to help with education and to make sure that the skills are there for the next generation of jobs.

So we do spend a lot of time on that aspect, but we have various programs that focus on the non-profit sector and on reaching out to specific communities. If you're interested, that would be something we would be happy to elaborate on after this meeting and to provide you with materials.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Nash.

We'll go now to Mr. Eyking, please.