Vouchers and clean tech funds highlight BC government's new Technology Strategy

Key to growth of provincial economy

The British Columbia government has unveiled a technology strategy to leverage the fast-growing sector for increasing employment, exports and spill-over into the other key sectors of the provincial economy. Announced earlier this month, BC's Technology Strategy: Building BC's Economy is the last of eight sectoral strategies developed since the release of the provincial BC Jobs Plan. It ties the strategies together and focuses on the province's four key tech sectors — clean tech, health and life sciences, information and communications technologies and wireless, digital and screen-based media.

While the sector announces some new funding, its central thrust is high-level and intended to stimulate new thinking and ultimately new initiatives that bolster the province's major industry sectors: forestry, mining, natural gas, agrifoods, tourism, transportation and international education.

The BC tech sector represents 5.9% of provincial GDP (PGDP), employs 84,000 people, is comprised of nearly 9,000 established companies and provides an average wage level of $63,000 — far above the provincial average.

While there's no questioning the overall vibrancy of the BC tech sector, the province lags in key metrics when compared to other major provinces, according to a new report from KPMG commissioned by the BC Technology Industries Association (BCTIA). The strategy is aimed at boosting employment by nearly 20% to 100,000 and growing its share of PGDP 7.25% — an increase of 22.3% — by 2014.

"We're calling it more of a commercialization strategy to support industry to do new innovation and get it commercialized," says Pat Bell, minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation. "We've had good success with commercialization but often the benefits go elsewhere. Our focus is to get industry to work within our capacity and pursue unique areas of opportunity. We see technology as horizontal as it cuts across all other sectors."

To that end, the strategy announced $7 million for a pilot vouchers program, following the lead of Alberta and the Industrial Research Assistance Program. Bells says he hopes to see a permanent program evolve out of the pilot, which offers vouchers of between $15,000 and $50,000 to match technology and talent emanating from the province's post-secondary institutions and transferred to industry.

"The applications will start coming in this fall and after we spend about two-thirds of the fund we should know if we met the objectives," says Bell.

The strategy also commits $12 million per year to the Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) fund. The ICE fund had previously been funded through environmental levies worth about $25 million. It's expected that incremental funds will be added at a later date.

The strategy also cites procurement as an effective means for providing companies with the opportunity of using government as their first customer.

"We're committed to the procurement process to stimulate innovation and commercialization and give companies the opportunity for first deployment," says Bell, adding that the province's Wood First program added a procurement component while he was minister of Forest, Mining and Lands. "The amount will be specific to each individual procurement and we want industry to watch out for procurement processes and make proposals."

Mostly, however, the strategy provides an overview and vision of the tech sector, outlining the various ways in which the government intends to encourage company formation, growth and exports. Its four key action items are:

* accelerate technology commercialization and adoption;

* build on regional strengths to create new opportunities;

* develop talent for a knowledge-based economy; and,

* expand markets for BC technology.

"The strategy is a recognition by the government of the importance of the sector relative to the provincial economy. That's the underlying theme. It's a step in the right direction and the theme of commercialization benefits have become more pronounced over time," says Bill Tam, BCTIA's president and CEO. "The big issue for us is there are too many small companies. We need to grow them to become the middle class (R$, March 15/12)."

Tam hopes that the strategy will serve as a baseline for promoting the importance of the technology industry to the public at large, adding that economic growth depends on the knowledge economy and innovation, regardless of sector.

Dr Alan Winter, president and CEO of Genome BC and a veteran technology executive, says that while the strategy largely hovers "at 100,000 feet", the specific initiatives are welcome, particularly the clean tech and voucher investments.

"The voucher program is a great way for fourth pillar organizations (like Genome BC and MITACS) to know early on the kinds of companies that would apply for this kind of assistance," says Winter. "In Alberta, 215 companies applied to the first round of its voucher program, which tells you that early-stage companies need this type of support to get rolling and brought into the ecosystem."

Winter says Pat Bell is a solid minister who's in a good position to encourage the growth and global reach of the tech sector, given his experience with forestry and his leadership in opening up the Chinese market for forest products.

"The strategy sets a good context, laying out where the province is interested and sees opportunity," says Winter. "Time will tell whether it translates into further investment in these areas … There has been significant growth in the tech sector — 5.7% for the past 10 years — but it's still quite small."

review past investments

In addition to specific initiatives, the strategy also commits to a review of past provincial tech investments by the Premier's Technology Council. The council will produce an initial scan of the report by late 2012 and submit its final report to Cabinet in 2013, making recommendations on how the province can "tie future investments to commercialization outcomes".

"BC spends about $200 a year on research but lots of times it's expended in areas where we don't have an opportunity to commercialize," says Bell. "In terms of money spent on the life sciences, for instance, some areas are quite successful while some are more challenging."

The strategy also says the government will expand and further develop regional innovation networks to ensure that the benefits of the knowledge economy are distributed beyond the lower mainland.

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