Editorial - 21-14

Alberta is being handed a golden opportunity to enhance its nascent tech sector with the release of a report encouraging the government to provide strategic assistance to industry. The report calls upon the government of Ed Stelmach to open up the bulging provincial treasury and pony up $500 million or so to stimulate the formation and growth of technology-based firms (see page 5).

Alberta has made great strides on the research front in recent years, creating large endowments for health and engineering research and establishing a network of research institutes in areas that correspond to provincial priorities, both social and economic. The results have been nothing less than spectacular and Alberta's two biggest universities now rank among the nation's leaders.

But the effrontery of proposing assistance to business would have been anathema just a few years ago. That the government struck a Task Force on Value-Added and Technology Commercialization indicates just how much attitudes are changing.

There's no question the need is there. Alberta lags nearly every other large province in the amount of tech-based venture capital it attracts. The flood of revenue stemming from the resource sector has drowned a greater awareness among many provincial politicians of the need to diversify into knowledge-based business.

Kudos to premier Stelmach and Doug Horner (minister of Advanced Education and Technology) for pushing the high-tech agenda. Now it's up to Alberta to respond positively in the next provincial Budget.