Throwing money at a problem in the form of developing a “Centre” is typically Canadian, almost as much as doing a walkaton/marathon across Canada to raise awareness for some disease. The idea is that this develops “infrastructure” for an issue and a physical focal point. They just don’t have any other ideas or ways to address it, because they are so out of touch with how society and technology are evolving and they are hoping a geographic (old school) physical location will somehow become the respository for that.

Remember that most of the folks (politicians, public service employees) in gov’t are 50 plus years, and often have difficulty even using technology and are resistant to change. They have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, because their skill level is rapidly becoming obsolete (their roles, positions, identities, etc).

Most change (real change) has always occurred at a grass roots level (social, moral, health - eg. smoking bylaws). Government policies always occur after the fact for an impetus that is already underway. They just provide the band-aid marking the sore-spot or pain-point. We shouldn’t expect much more from gov’t, because they simply don’t have the capacity, creativity or moveablity. We need to step right over their heads and totally exclude them from everything - ignore them and just do what we are going to do anyway with disruptive technologies.

Bureaucarcy (as with large corporations) is not known for its quick steps or responsiveness to innovation. If they could even just revamp CRA , then business may be more inspired to innovate by freeing up energy and resources (financial and otherwise) devoted to the paperwork burden of vague tax policies that are available to some, but not others, depending on how aggressive one’s accountants or financial consultants are. That would at least level the playing field for financially strapped new enterprises.

This is in addition to your suggestion to better support the Canada Competition Act, which is just a policy, but one without teeth if there are no resources available for innovation to compete equally, because of a cumbersome taxation system.

We shouldn’t expect the gov’t to do it for us. We really should be the ones “doing” without the expectation of trying to “dance with the dinosaurs”. If we continue to wait for them to catch up, we will have a hard time moving forward if we are always looking backwards. And if there is no crisis to change or adapt competitively (i.e. reason) there is unlikely to be anything other than a few more “gesture Centres” for face/media-value.

Thank you for this article.

Did you see that news about Sarkozy’s newspaper bailout? There’s a great idea.

Now most banking is completely automated — through machines and electronic transactions. Their costs have gone down, but they’re milking fees from from all angles.

I think banks are a bit more complicated though as the US has a very fragmented market. What about HSBC Canada? They are an international bank, are they just as bad?