ALKHOBAR, 22 July — I traveled to Toronto to attend COMDEX Canada in the hope of getting a better feel for the North American high-tech meltdown. The Gulf has traditionally been a launch pad to the United States and Canada for talented high-tech workers. Saudi companies have generally been wary of offering any of their expatriate employees advanced technology training, knowing that it would only make them more attractive to headhunters further west. For the last decade, at any one time I’ve known of at least half a dozen friends preparing to make the leap across the Atlantic to what they dreamed would be a charmed life, filled with prosperity and happiness.
Arriving at the trade show in Toronto I was met with a conflicting group of facts and opinions. After spending a week in the city one thing was clear. With the right set of skills, gainful employment in Canada is still a reality. But don’t even try to imagine that you’re going to an El Dorado and be prepared to make some tough sacrifices to achieve your goals.
Companies at COMDEX Canada were putting on a brave face despite the less than rosy business climate. Just one year earlier, stock in the mighty Canadian communications giant Nortel Networks had stood at an all-time high. How quick the mighty fall. In June, Nortel’s stock tanked after a layoff of a total of 15,000 employees globally. At least 2,500 of those layoffs were in the Ottawa Region alone.
Nevertheless, the Canadian government has not backed down in its quest to significantly increase the role high-tech firms play in the Canadian economy. Canadian Industry Minister Brian Tobin announced at the end of June that the government would be providing $100 million in federal funding to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to help fund research into the impact of the new, knowledge-based economy on business, education and society.
The Canadian government is still committed to invest about $2 billion, shared with the private sector and other levels of government to connect every community in Canada to high-speed, broadband Internet service by 2004.
Canada is working to push e-commerce forward by forming regional e-clusters that promote the high-tech industry. The most successful of these has been the Ottawa Center for Research and Innovation (OCRI). Toronto launched such a venture about a year back called Spadina Bus (spadinabus.com).
According to its leaders, Spadina Bus is two things. It is a dynamic e-cluster situated in the King/Spadina area of downtown Toronto. It is also an association focused on the convergence of industry, community and geography.
The objectives of the association are to foster e-business growth, promote the area nationally and internationally, increase the flow of talent, capital and services to the area, and enhance the intellectual capital in the cluster by facilitating mentoring, learning and business best practices. The Spadina Bus founders recognized the need for an organization to take ownership of branding the area as an e-business hot spot and marketing the area nationally and internationally to fuel future development and growth.
Such organizations as Spadina Bus are important because e-commerce is the one area where Canada sorely lags behind its southern neighbor. By the most recent statistics, 73 percent of Canadians used the Internet in 2000 while in the United States the number was 72 percent. Telephone and cable penetration are higher per capita in Canada than anywhere else in the world. At present Canada has the world’s lowest rate for a DSL line. Unfortunately despite the excellent infrastructure, Canada is behind in the adoption of e-commerce by both industry and consumers. Given the dotcom meltdown in the United States, it seems that Canada is in a prime position right now to move ahead.
If there is any criticism of the Canadian government’s efforts it is that the national education system is not producing enough of the highly skilled workers that Canada’s high-tech industries need. With the economic slowdown the demand has slackened somewhat, but it will not disappear. Canada’s Software Human Resources Council reported that 50 percent of Canadian employers still have difficulty finding the employees they need. Currently, some of Canada’s native sons and daughters who left the country for the warmth of Silicon Valley are coming home and this is helping to fill the gaps but it is anticipated that there will still be openings for several thousand high-tech workers annually. The way to get these jobs is to have the advanced skills needed and this requires constantly updating one’s training in the latest technologies.
Despite the opportunities in Canada, at COMDEX many individuals from the Subcontinent were asking about opportunities back in the Gulf. All of these workers were men and women with children who found the Canadian lifestyle difficult to manage while raising a family.
“There are problems living here that we never considered, but we should have,” said Ahmad A. Siddiqui. “My brother and his wife are doing well. They don’t have any children and they both work. But for my family it’s a stretch. We have young children and my wife must stay home to care for them. Taxes eat up a large portion of our income and they are unavoidable. The commute to my office is long and I work 45-50 hours per week. With these economic conditions I don’t dare complain about the long hours but it means I don’t get to see my family much. Raising the children as good Muslims has been difficult. Their only exposure to our culture is when they go to Islamic school on the weekend. I’m not saying that coming to Canada was a mistake, but it certainly hasn’t been everything we hoped for.”
One real surprise was the number of Canadian small business owners who were curious about the opportunities for expansion in the Gulf. With the economies of North America sluggish, small companies are looking further afield for profits. Many people had heard about opportunities especially in the UAE and they wanted to confirm that the information they’d read about lifestyle and limited taxation was true. It was a pity that some very negative impressions about Saudi Arabia still persisted and it is incumbent upon the overseas Saudi business councils to work harder to change such perceptions.
To get a view from the top about what really is happening in the Canadian high-tech industry, I asked for some comments on the situation from Frank Clegg, president, Microsoft Canada. Clegg gave a keynote presentation at the trade show titled, “The 5th Revolution of Computing.”
“With regards to your specific questions regarding the state of the computing/IT industry in Canada, and the activities Canadian IT companies are engaging in to bring international talent to Canada, I can’t speak for our competitors, but I certainly can offer you a few of my thoughts from Microsoft Canada’s perspective,” said Clegg.
“There has been a lot of attention paid to the so-called ‘collapse’ of the computing sector in Canada. While we recognize that our industry is currently facing a challenging business cycle, we don’t share the gloom-and-doom outlook of so many others. For example, PC shipments are up nine percent in Canada in the first quarter of this year vs. a six percent decline in the United States. The wireless phone market is expected to grow 20-30 percent over the next year and the number of Canadians who are currently accessing the Internet via a high-speed connection is at 1.3 million and growing everyday. Canada is among the most wired countries in the world and there’s a real demand for innovative, robust technologies that provide the consumer with a high degree of reliability, agility and simplicity. We think we are perfectly positioned to continue to lead our industry with our .NET framework.
“I also firmly believe that, for every company that is being profiled by the media for their difficulties, there are numerous examples of success stories. I’m proud to be able to state that at Microsoft we just experienced our best two fiscal quarters in the history of our company!
“I’m somewhat surprised at the feedback you received at COMDEX with regard to industry workers seeking to leave the country. I myself am an example of a Canadian who worked in the US but decided to come back home to take advantage of the numerous opportunities that are still available. At Microsoft, we are committed to attracting the best and brightest from around the world. Microsoft Canada is also dedicated to helping our young people in Canada develop the tech skills they’ll need to thrive in the new, digital economy. We have numerous education initiatives designed to ensure that students of all levels have access to the latest technologies,” Clegg concluded.
To bolster Clegg’s comments, at the trade show Microsoft Canada’s representatives were handing out business cards printed with the URL microsoft.ca/jobs for those interested in employment.
An additional resource for those looking for career opportunities in the Canadian market is Monster.ca. Representatives for Canada’s leading career management portal were out in force at COMDEX Canada. Monster.ca has a database of over 600,000 resumes, the largest in Canada. Monster posts approximately 400,000 jobs, from entry-level to executive level and its use is free for job-seekers. Headquartered in Montreal, Monster.ca is the Canadian member of the global Monster Career Network that operates in 15 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
Now with all this talk of jobs and high-tech meltdowns, I haven’t gotten around to mentioning what I liked best at COMDEX Canada. The newest models of Kodak’s PalmPix cameras were hot and will probably be a hit with Palm users worldwide. The software training modules presented by Corporate Communications Interactive were clear, concise, innovative and affordable. They are actively looking for a Middle East rep so the products should be available in the market soon. And then there was MAX.
MAX was being promoted as the family TV’s new best friend. The company, Multimedia Network Computer, headquartered in Montpellier, France, claims that MAX is the first all-in-one consumer electronics system that lets families use their TVs to surf the web, play computer games, watch DVDs, listen to CDs and MP3 music and more — all in a 15.8 pound console that is smaller than a VCR. MAX will be available in Canada through major retailers beginning in October 2001, at an estimated street price of 1,099 Canadian dollars. Additional information on MAX can be found at www.mnc.tv.