Working for a living.

When it comes to innovating I am finding it difficult to be a Canadian. Is this lack of innovation a by product of our culture? We used to be very creative some really important things have come from Canada in the past.

Let me just say this to start, I have no idea what kinds of research and innovation is occurring outside of information technology. That being said I am still seeing new and interesting things come out of the U.S. while Canada remains silent. I have lived in provinces where high speed Internet access has been affordable for almost 20 years. Instead of it becoming a hotbed of Canadian innovation it became a hot bed of shady Call Centers. IBM and Xerox are there, or at least their Call Centers are. No not the support one … If you are getting a technical problem resolved you are probably calling India.

One of the problems may have something to do with our resource based mentality. Recently I’d inquired about getting a small business loan from the Canadian government. The people I was dealing with were very nice, they helped me every step of the way, but in the end although they liked what my business was doing, they told me that they could not approve a loan that was going to be used to pay wages, that they would not invest in Intellectual property because it wasn’t Tangible, “Unless you can put a serial number on it we won't invest in it.” Is what I was told.

Another issue may have something to do with our closest neighbour. Why spend all your time fighting with Canadian red tape when you can just go south. Sure they don’t have health care, but the people are almost the same and the weather is better. Oh and if your company does well maybe you can put your call center in Canada some day.