Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance teams with Paul Martin to take technology message across Canada

The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA) is hitting the road this fall to extol the benefits of advanced technology in a cross-Canada tour. CATA will stage at least eight so-called TechAction Town Hall meetings over the next several months, making stops in St John’s, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Calgary and Vancouver, targeting businesses in which advanced technology has yet to firmly establish itself. And it’s bringing in the heavy ammunition to sell the message.

Finance minister Paul Martin is reportedly behind the idea to stage the meetings and will act as the government chair in each city. The business chair will be filled by Rod Bryden, president/CEO of WorldHeart Corp and owner of Ottawa’s National Hockey League franchise. Host duties will be assumed by Brian Edwards, CATA board chair and president of BCE Emergis. Ultimately, the results of the sessions will be fed back to Martin and his Cabinet colleagues in the form of a report.

To ensure the widest possible exposure, each meeting will be televised and participants will be selected from a wide variety of areas, including industry, politics, associations, and relevant organizations.

“The meetings will focus on the business community in each city and on understanding and expanding the use of high technology,” says Barry Gander, CATA’s senior advocate for public policy and the prime mover behind the Town Hall concept. “CATA became aware of the need to expand beyond the reaches of a typical lobby organization and this moves us to the next stage of action and growth. We need to do a better job of connecting technology to the community and extend it in areas of business where advanced technology may not be a way of life.”

The program’s objectives are to determine what strategic industries should be encouraged, align the appropriate school, community college and university curricula, stimulate industry to focus on technological products and spend more on R&D, and stimulate all levels of government to focus on strategic industries.

Among those recruited to accompany the CATA tour is Dr John de la Mothe, whom Gander says is Canada’s foremost expert on regional innovation systems and how technology applies to communities. de la Mothe has participated in the formulation of the surveys for each city and will be using the resulting data in future research on innovation systems.

“I’m the conceptual validation of the process. The objective of the tour is to try and get communities in a framework that’s cohesive so they know who they are, where they’re going and what the government can do to help,” he says.” It should help to let us learn more about the thinking about technology on the ground and get the innovation message across.”

To help finance the tour and surveys, CATA is seeking up to $750,000 in corporate sponsorships and it is working closely with KPMG to prepare materials and their focus. The web will be used heavily to both promote the events and disseminate the results (www.cata.ca).

“We’re putting together a community-based blueprint-creating exercise,” says Gander.

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