Monty Little

By Monty Little, Chairman, Science Council of British Columbia

"British Columbia? That's a resource-based province, isn't it? They'll be looking for some support for their forest, mining and fisheries industries." I can imagine that kind of thinking going on in Ottawa in the run-up to a typical federal budget. But while our resource industries remain a key part of the BC economy, other sectors such as biotechnology, multimedia, fuel cells and environmental technology have burst on the scene.

BC's biggest company in capitalization terms is not Canadian Forest Products, Placer Dome or Canfisco, but PMC-Sierra, a firm that makes Internet switching chips. While PMC-Sierra tops the BC high-tech list with an April 2000 valuation of US$37 billion, six other BC-based high-tech companies are worth over $1 billion.

I'm not sure why it has taken so long for BC to be recognized for its achievements in the technology sectors. Perhaps it has something to do with the chilly relations that existed between Ottawa and Victoria during the 1990's.

But what a difference the rollover of four digits on the calendar has made! When Finance Minister Paul Martin introduced his 2000 federal budget last February, members of BC's science and technology community could hardly believe their eyes. There was major support for the BC Cancer Agency's new Genome Sequence Centre in Vancouver and for the TRIUMF particle physics facility near the UBC campus. Add to these, more money for the Canada Foundation for Innovation, university research chairs and other nationwide initiatives that will benefit BC researchers, and you can see that BC science and technology experienced something of a revolution in recognition and support.

A few weeks later it was the province's turn. For the first time in recent memory, science and technology were mentioned prominently in the finance minister's budget address. "With success stories like PMC-Sierra, Creo Products and McDonald-Dett-weiler, BC is making a cutting-edge contribution to the global technological revolution," said Finance minister Paul Ramsey. (Each of those companies received R&D funding assistance from the Science Council of BC during their formative years.)

"We will continue working with this sector, encouraging it to grow at home and marketing it abroad."

Indeed, the provincial government has introduced a high-tech R&D tax credit program and plans to invest directly in research partnerships in new media (such as DVD-ROM's and the Web), fuel cell and clean-energy technologies, information technology, biotechnology and aerospace. It joined the federal government in allowing British Columbians to defer income tax on benefits from stock options and reduce the taxation of capital gains. And it added a further $117 million to the Knowledge Development Fund, BC's equivalent to the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Both Ottawa and Victoria have been slow to recognize what's been happening in the advanced technology sector here in BC. But they've recognized it now.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this year's budgets show they are willing to work together to achieve common goals in this area. I hope these early promises are borne out by their actions in coming years. After all, we can't ignore BC's biggest and best resource - the brains working in the technology industries.