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From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Status of R&D in Canada
Message-ID: <910@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Mar-87 10:41:36 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.910
Posted: Wed Mar 18 10:41:36 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Mar-87 04:59:33 EST
References: <3655@utai.UUCP> <582@geac.UUCP> <3139@watdcsu.UUCP>
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 51

In article <3139@watdcsu.UUCP> brewster@watdcsu.UUCP (Dave Brewer,
SysDesEng, PAMI, UWaterloo) writes:

>	Ever since the success of Silicon Valley and Route 128 it has generally
>	been held that high-tech development requires a fairly specific infra-
>	structure.  This usually includes a set of appropriate support 
>	companies, associated universities or think-tanks, well developed 
>	cultural environment (plays, theatre, etc), and pleasant living 
>	environment (schools, shopping facilities, open spaces, etc.)
>	All four items can be found in Ottawa and Toronto (and Waterloo??),
>	and this is not true of White Rock or Sarnia.

Well, you're not going to get me to defend either White Rock or Sarnia, but
I should point out that White Rock is about the same distance from downtown
Vancouver that Framingham is from downtown Boston, and closer than the
distance from San Jose to San Francisco. In fact, much of Vancouver's high
tech is found in either Burnaby or Richmond; the latter is your classic 
suburb, and hardly has much in the way of plays or theatre. 

Back to the point about R&D. There are two reasons why BC isn't getting as
much R&D as it should.

First of all, the provincial govt's attitude to post- secondary education
has been ludicrous (when the former Minister of Science, Pat McGeer,
proposed a "Silicon Valley BC", he was also attacking faculty salaries at
the post-secondary institutions as too high); contrast this with the
situation in California, where the Governor, George Deukmeijian, was elected
on a platform of education cutbacks; when he tried to reduce the budget of
the University of California, he got so many representations from business
about this that he relented. Things may change under vander Zalm and the new
Socreds, but I'd have to say I'm cautious at best.

Second, Canadian business only likes to bet on sure things. As a result,
very few companies, even in our high-tech sector, have pure research labs of
the sort maintained by GM, IBM, Bell Labs, or, in much smaller companies, 
DEC, or Wang. This can be seen in the Federal Government position that
research funding should be tied to immediate economic benefits. This problem
is related to the previous one: very few BC business leaders have called the
Socreds to task on their terrible education policies.

***Disclaimer*** I draw my salary (such as it is) from a public
post-secondary institution.

-----
Vincent Manis                {seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis
Dept. of Computer Science    manis@cs.ubc.cdn
Univ. of British Columbia    manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa  
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5      manis@ubc.csnet
(604) 228-6770 or 228-3061

"BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'."