Published: Globe and Mail, December 7, 1996 FOCUS Pg. 1
David Williams, 24; economist; born in St. John's; honours BSc at Dalhousie University, MA at Simon Fraser University; personable, intelligent, ambitious; works in Chicago for an agency of the American Medical Association. Plans: PhD at an American university. Chance of returning to Canada: Not good.
by Deborah Jones
Vancouver -- At just 24 years of age, David Williams is no greenhorn. From his perspective at a desk in a 30-storey office tower in Chicago, he already knows as much about the Brain Drain as anybody. He was born and partly educated in Atlantic Canada, where the trend even has its own emotive tag: goin' down the road, the institutionalized passage of life in which the best and brightest leave to seek their fortunes.
Mr. Williams checked out Montreal and Vancouver, and found no hope of a satisfying long-term future in his field. And so, bearing a master's degree in economics, he went down yet another road, leading right out of the country. Today his skills as a knowledge worker boost the new economy in the United States, courtesy of Canada's publicly subsidized education system.
Every place you turn, someone is yammering on about the New Economy and Knowledge Workers. In these tumultuous times of job uncertainty, the global economy and technologization of human labour, the theme goes, knowledge workers alone can lead us to a land of riches. At least they can keep our economy sufficiently strong to pay for our kinder, gentler society, in which the unemployed depend on a social safety net and technology performs more and more jobs. So how come we're letting Knowledge Workers go, without so much as a by your leave?
When so much of the Canadian population is unemployed (officially 10 per cent at latest count), jobs in some so-called knowledge sectors are going begging. By the year 2000, there will be a shortage of 200,000 software workers in Canada, says the Software Human Resource Council. On Wednesday, Industry Canada and several high-tech groups held a round-table to talk about the problem of finding enough trained workers. Paradoxically, many people in the knowledge industries complain that, for a slew of reasons, the Canadian social, tax and corporate environments dissuade them from staying at home, especially now, at a time of government and university cutbacks, corporate downsizing and reductions in research funding.
A new report from the Canadian Advanced Technology Association surveyed electrical and computer engineering students and graduates at the University of Waterloo and found that more than three-quarters of those in fourth year were willing to move to the U.S. for work. Of Waterloo alumni working in the U.S., almost two-thirds would consider returning to Canada, were it not for a gap in take-home pay of more than 40 per cent.
"Not only are we not producing the skills we need in sufficient quantity to meet our domestic needs, but our member firms are competing against recruiters from other markets, most notably the United States," complained Peter Broadmore, of the Information Technology Association of Canada, to the Commons industry committee last week. Increasingly, corporations, universities and analysts are raising an alarm about a new brain drain of the best and brightest in many knowledge fields.
For Mr. Williams' part, he tried to remain home. He looked for work in Halifax after earning a bachelor's degree at Dalhousie University. "I would love to have stayed, but there were no opportunities. For a summer job I was willing to work almost on a volunteer basis, and there was nothing."
He moved west to British Columbia to take a master's degree at Simon Fraser University because, he says, "I thought after graduation I might not have to make another move. But job prospects didn't seem good in Vancouver either, and I know only one fellow in my graduating class of 30 who found work there in economics."
A job posting on the Internet led him to Chicago two years ago. "I was astounded at the need for people with my job skills. There's no comparison between the job market in Chicago and all the rest of Canada," he says from his office at an insurance subsidiary of the American Medical Association. In the future, he'll aim for a doctorate at a northeastern U.S. university -- yet to be chosen -- where he considers the top mentors to be. For now, "I'm happy here. It seems like a land of opportunity."
Numerous private and public organizations track labour information in Canada, but data on how many knowledge workers are leaving the country are as scarce as hen's teeth. Statistics Canada does not tabulate emigrants by occupation, universities are just starting to track the destinations of their graduates, and private research firms, like the Vancouver office of KPMG Inc., have not extensively studied movement in the knowledge sectors.
However, anecdotal reports suggest that if there is a brain drain it's among research and development people, says James Topham, a KPMG partner whose clients are high-technology firms in British Columbia.
Complicating matters is that there's no accepted definition of who knowledge workers are. Some categorize them as people in the sciences; others call them symbol analysts; still others say knowledge workers are simply those who apply the latest technology and research to their work, be it traditional or high-tech.
U.S. writer Jeremy Rifkin took a stab at identifying them in his 1994 book, The End of Work . His contentious list includes: research scientists, design engineers, civil engineers, software analysts, biotechnology researchers, public-relations specialists, lawyers, investment bankers, managment consultants, financial and tax consultants, architects, strategic planners, marketing specialists, film producers and editors, art directors, publishers, writers, editors and journalists.
Whoever knowledge workers are, too many of them are leaving, say some of Canada's leading thinkers.
"It's a chronic problem for Canada and it's difficult to track because everything's anecdotal, but in my experience some of the best minds in Canada end up elsewhere, particularly the United States," says Michael Smith, a Vancouver scientist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for chemistry.
There are, to our credit, stars like Dr. Smith (who immigrated to Canada from Britain four decades ago) in the Canadian knowledge firmament, as well as a handful of stellar Canadian research facilities and knowledge-based companies that bow to no one.
And there are exceptions to the brain drain: Vancouver is currently abuzz with the arrival of a technology firm that just moved from Massachusetts; newcomers from Asia often arrive carrying impressive credentials as knowledge workers. "What's attractive about Canada is the peacefulness and the nature," says Danny Wong, manager of Hewlett-Packard's new Vancouver calling centre that serves the Americas and Asia. He is a systems engineer who has lived throughout Asia, Canada and the United States. "If you wanted to live in the United States, you could get more money. But you'd have to live in the United States."
But there are lots of people, especially those at the top of their fields, who want to live in America. The expatriates range from doctors fed up with cutbacks in health care to an estimated 300,000 Canadians working in Northern California's high-tech Silicon Valley.
"The shame is that Canada is something very special. I never thought I'd leave," says neurosurgeon Beverly Walters, who in 1993 departed from a position as associate professor at the University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Science Centre for Brown University and Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island. Dr. Walters and her husband, also a medical specialist, were drawn south not because of remuneration -- though they concede it is better -- but because of reductions in equipment and resources in Toronto.
"Prior to leaving, those resources essentially dried up," says Dr. Walters, for whom the last straw was the resignation of her secretary, who could no longer stand the stress of cancelling patients' surgery. Dr. Walters' 22-year-old son is studying molecular genetics in Toronto, and when he achieves a doctorate, she says, "It will be in his best interests to move to the States."
The outflow of talent is a weary refrain, one long familiar in the entertainment industries, and now increasingly common among academics, scientists and managers. Today's departed knowledge workers boost the economy, create jobs and provide other benefits wherever they are -- but not in Canada. Taxpayers here also know they will probably not recoup the money they invested in the departed workers: an economics student at Simon Fraser University, for example, pays about $2,200 in tuition costs, a fraction of the $20,000 annually that his or her education costs.
"There's a realization that newer high-tech industries are going to contribute to the well-being of the country, and you should do all you can to foster them," says Dr. Smith. But Canada is discouraging knowledge workers by reducing research funding and failing to provide an appealing environment for high-tech entrepreneurs.
University of Toronto chemistry professor Cynthia Goh, associate chair of graduate studies, moved to Canada from the U.S. because of the top-notch quality of U of T's chemistry department. She is satisfied with her research here, but was surprised that in Canada "there is nowhere close to the amount of technology as in the States, where many more companies are technology-based. In the chemistry department we produce a lot of first-rate chemists, and while many of them would prefer to stay here, they get amazingly good job offers [from] the south. The U.S. has strict rules about immigration, but Canadians are passing through all that because their skills are needed there."
Says Haig Farris, president of Fractal Capital, a Vancouver-based venture-capital company, "One of the first who got away was Cecil Green." A Canadian born near the turn of the century, Mr. Green trained at the University of British Columbia, then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to complete a master's degree. In the 1920s, determined to return to Vancouver, he drove back across the continent with his wife. But he was turned down repeatedly in his search for work or a business opportunity. Finally, defeated in his efforts to stay home, he moved to the United States where, in time, he founded electronics giant Texas Instruments Inc. of Dallas.
The loss of Mr. Green enrages Mr. Farris. "One of my bugbears is that it's individuals who do things in life. It's important to keep such individuals in the community."
Mr. Green, now in his 90s and still active, has generously supported Vancouver's scientific and academic institutions, but nowhere near the extent to which he has endowed American universities and charitable organizations with gifts, says Mr. Farris.
Hindsight, of course, is perfect and perhaps if Mr. Green had stayed in Canada he might have missed out on the opportunities that led him to his spectacular success. Still, there are probably budding Cecil Greens around today, and experts fret that Canada is letting them slip through its fingers. Mr. Farris cites the example of software whiz kid Don Mattrick, who in a B.C. high school was already inventing computer games, founded a thriving Vancouver software company, then merged it several years ago with an American company that made him an offer too good to refuse. Today, Mr. Mattrick still keeps in touch with Vancouver, but he is focused on Silicon Valley. "Don is a business and marketing genius and a wonderful motivator of people. You can't lose people like him to other areas and expect us to have the powerful high-tech community that we need," laments Mr. Farris.
Mohan Mathur, dean of engineering at the University of Western Ontario in London, says cutbacks in Canada in general and in Ontario universities in particular have made it difficult to retain top-ranked professors, who in turn attract top students, who become top knowledge workers. Two faculty members left Western over the past year, says Dr. Mathur, including a Canadian who had been working in the U.S. and who joined Western because he wanted to return home. "He found that after one year he could not make ends meet in Canada . . . in the U.S. salaries are much higher."
When James Dean, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., finished his doctorate in economics at Harvard nearly 30 years ago, he gave no consideration to staying in America. Since then, though, wages have increased in other countries and shrunk in Canada, and free trade has made it easier for Canadians to work Stateside. "I would think completely differently these days," he says. "I tell most of my students to go to Asia. That's where the highest academic salaries are; they're at least double those anywhere in North America." Several of his colleagues are working in Hong Kong and, because of lower tax rates and subsidized living costs, making the Canadian equivalent of $400,000.
Chemist Michael Smith moved to Canada from Britain in 1956, a time when Vancouver was considered a place where quality research was possible. He was also attracted by the government's equitable system of research funding, in which proposals from individual scientists are selected in a national competition, rather than doled out by heads of institutes. Throughout the career that led to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Smith felt there was enough funding for basic research. Now, he says, "the dollars available to start young people out are not adequate."
There is one unassailable factor to the brain drain that Canadians cannot remedy: Our population is so much smaller than America's that we'll never be able to compete.
Roberta Bondar, Canadian astronaut, scientist, medical doctor and photographer, could take her undeniable talents anywhere in the world. Yet when she wanted to set up a research program looking at how changes in the bodies of astronauts might shed light on diseases on Earth, she initially found Canadian universities were reluctant to adapt their programs to accommodate her.
Her research, which she is now conducting at the University of Western Ontario, is supported by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. But she believes Canada could do much better in science and science-based business by adopting a different mind-set. "If you don't support a scientific base you're cutting your child's possibilities of a job by 50 per cent," she says. "If you wanted to move to a country where life is lower-tech and civilization more day-to-day, you might not need as much science to survive. But we have to have a longer-term vision."
Sometimes the brain drain simply occurs because people cannot find work in the field they trained for. Peter van der Heyden obtained a doctorate in geology and worked for six years as a research scientist for the Geological Survey of Canada. When funds were cut and his project terminated, rather than leave Canada with his family, Mr. van der Heyden started a decidedly low-tech business -- importing mangoes from Mexico. He is now considering taking a term position of several months as a geologist for a private mining company in Argentina. He considers his education and talents lost to Canada. "I bring money back, but we're not creating any new wealth in Canada."
Still, sparking Canadian interest in the knowledge sector is the popular acceptance of the fact that our economy has forever changed -- a harsh idea forced upon us by the bludgeoning of the national workforce. If scores of prominent thinkers are correct in saying jobs in traditional industries will never return and the only growth will be in knowledge-intensive industries, Canada's best hope for the future lies in fostering them. That's why, even as deficit-cutting remains popular, research scientists believe a restoration of government funding will occur.
This fall, the National Consortium of Scientific and Educational Societies, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Canadian Association of University Teachers banded together to lobby for government money, on the grounds that Canada's economy will falter unless research is on par with that of other developed countries. The three groups, in a report for the Commons finance committee, asked for federal money for such things as programs to educate researchers about the business world and a renewal of the Centres of Excellence program.
Health agencies, too, want more research money. Dr. Victor Ling, vice-president of research at the B.C. Cancer Agency, says federal spending for health-care research has declined by about 2 per cent over the past four years, while spending in other Group of Seven countries has increased by 5 to 8 per cent. "When you face a statistic like this, how can the government say it's interested in supporting a technology-based economy?"
Ironically, while public funding for basic research dwindles, there is more money than ever available to high-tech private companies. A recent report by the federal Business Development Bank of Canada suggests that more than 50 venture-capital companies will place a record amount of investment money this year ($390-million was invested in the first half of 1996), with three-quarters of it going into knowledge areas such as biotechnology, computers, electronics and communications. Meanwhile, last month the Business Development Bank of Canada announced plans to set up $100-million in seed money to help small technology firms get off the ground, while several banks have set up divisions devoted to investing in knowledge-based businesses.
One of the biggest gaps for knowledge workers is the dearth of competent Canadian managers to help high-tech companies grow. Says Mr. Farris, "One of the penalties we suffer in Canada is that companies get to a certain stage and they get sold. Largely, it's because we don't have management talent."
In a wicked Catch-22, a reason for this is that potential managers are lured away early in their careers, through the brain drain.
Says David Williams, the Canadian economist now gainfully employed in Chicago, "I miss certain things about Canada because it's home and I am a Canadian. But I see no reason to go back and forsake the promising job market here for only the hope of landing a job in Canada."
Deborah Jones is a Vancouver writer and contributing editor with The Globe's Report on Business magazine and Chatelaine magazine.
A READER'S GUIDE: The new planetary citizens
The Last Book You'll Ever Read by Frank Ogden, Vancouver-based futurist and writer of a syndicated column:
Productive knowledge workers "are developing the personal confidence to go almost anywhere on the planet and earn a [high] income. They are highly mobile, flexible beyond belief and not bound by nationalism -- they are truly planetary citizens. Every country needs them and the virtual corporations they create, and smart countries are out prospecting for them."
Shakedown by Angus Reid, chief executive offer of Angus Reid Group, Vancouver:
Work is either the kind that can be duplicated by a machine or that of knowledge workers, who comprise less than 2 per cent of the population.
"There's an unsettling similarity between the irrelevance of horses to 20th-century economies and the growing irrelevance of large numbers of humans to the labour forces of the 21st century,"
"All the Porsches and BMWs on the streets tell you that there are still many people making good money at their work stations . . . Knowledge workers help create new products, new services and new information to help people bet on what's hot and what isn't."
Shifting Gears: Thriving in the New Economy by Nuala Beck, a Toronto consultant:
"Everyone agrees that knowledge is the prized asset. The national preoccupation with raising the standard of education, the focus on training and retraining for workers already in the workplace and the boom in courses of every conceivable description attest to the awareness that new technologies and skills have replaced the old."
The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington: "Knowledge workers are a diverse group united by their use of state-of-the-art information technology to identify, proc information that makes up the postindustrial, postservice global economy.
Copyright Deborah Jones 1996
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