[b]Canada moves into to knowledge-based economy

Canada moves into to knowledge-based economy

The Jakarta Post's journalist Ardimas Sasdi along with six
journalists from Asia visited Canada's cities of Ottawa,Toronto,
Victoria and Vancouver on a tour involving more than 20
universities, colleges, institutions and government agencies in
charge of education on the second and third week of November. The
following are his reports on the two-week education tour.

In a response to new, tough challenges ahead in education and
economy, the Canadian government has embarked on an ambitious
program to prepare the country's shift from a resource-based
economy to a knowledge-based economy.

The program is an integral part of Canada's grand vision in
facing a challenging environment for the successful development
and implementation of a national vision for digital inclusion and
innovation in Canada.

Initiated by the Federal Government, the program includes the
integration of the former Ministry of Communications into the
Ministry of Industry and the development of the World Wide Web,
which utilizes a new generation of information and communications
technologies and tools to support a shift from "passive" to
"active" learning.

"Putting the right policies, application programs, and
networks in place to promote innovation has served to accelerate
the knowledge transfer process needed to empower individuals and
promote organizational change. The focus on capacity building,
starting with youths, has been a critical factor towards
furthering Canada's national vision for digital inclusion and
innovation," said Basil Crozier, director of the Office of
International Partnerships of the Information Highway Application
Branch at the Ministry of Industry.

Technology literate, the Ministry of Industry acted as a
catalyst among other government departments, the private and non-
profit sector in leading the "Connecting Canadians" agenda. In
April 1994 the ministry first established an Information Advisory
Council to engage Canadians in a dialog on what the Government
must do to develop the information highway.

"The result was a political will and public consensus that
catalyzed new partnerships between the government, private sector
and civil society towards a shared vision regarding the use of
information and communications technology for development as our
Prime Minister said "a plan for brain gain not brain drain" based
upon the new cornerstones for sustainable development: an
information society; a knowledge-based economy; and good
governance," said Basil.

Capacity building is a key element that runs through each one
of these.

The next step taken by the ministry is the networking of
people and organizations to enable them to actively share
information and knowledge, accelerating the technical, cultural
and managerial innovation processes through the placement of over
360,000 refurbished computers donated by the Canadian government
and corporations to primary and secondary schools. The program
seeded the introduction of eLearning. The number of computers
donated to schools has increased to nearly four times. The result
was Canada became the first country in the world to connect every
school and public library to the Internet in 1999.

The program was followed by the cooperation among the
government agencies, big corporations and private organizations
that led to the construction of an intensive network of 8,800
Internet community access sites (CAP sites) across communities in
Canada, which receives over 34 million visits a year. Many of
these sites are becoming local economic development incubators.

The CAP sites are mainly located in the communities where
majority of local residents experience barriers to accessing the
Internet, a safe and affordable route to access of information
and communications technologies. But access to CAP sites are not
limited to new residents, minorities, the poor, youths and
seniors who form 40 percent of residents who have no Internet
access at home.

"Those who have home access may also use public access because
their home access may be slow or incompatible with current
software," said Will Stacey, a public access coordinator from
Vancouver CommunityNet, which manages the False Greek community
Center on Granville Island in Vancouver.

In the Greater Vancouver area there are a total of 32 sites.
The sites typically have two computers with high-speed Internet
access, a printer and a scanner. Each computer provides users
with email, web browsing, audio/video and newsgroup reading
abilities with Internet access from 25 hours per week and up, and
assistance and orientation for users. Vancouver Community Network
(VCN) is also organizing free training sessions on computer
skills for CAP site volunteers and staff, who will then teach
those skills to CAP site users.

The workshops, arranged according to the needs of the
attendees, are divided into Basic Computer Skills Training which
involve subjects as general computer use plus other basics, using
windows, using a mouse, introducing the Internet and email and
user support skills training for people who are assumed to have
known all the skills taught in the first Basic Computer Skills
training session.

"Today, 75 percent of Canadians and 83 percent of our SMEs use
the Internet. These achievements are no small feat considering
that Canada is the second largest country geographically in the
world and has a population of just 31 million that extends into
the remote areas of the Arctic Circle", Basil said.

Canada covers an area of land mass of 9,970,610 square
kilometers, spanning across six times zones and has 10 provinces
and three territories. Its capital is Ottawa in Ontario and its
government is a federal parliamentary democracy with a prime
minister as head of the government.

In the field of education, a place given a premium by
Canadians, Canada is unique among developed nations in that it
has no federal office of education. Canada's Constitution vested
responsibility for education on the provincial governments. But
it would be naive to ignore the fact that the federal government
also plays a significant role in education.

Canada's grand vision to turn the country's economy from a
resource-based economy into a knowledge-based economy is
supported by pro-competitive telecommunications policy, a
universal access fund and the introduction of new services.The
vision is shared by Canada's 90 universities and 175 post-
secondary institutions such as Community Colleges, Technical
Institutes and University Colleges.

Support of the universities and colleges to the government's
grand vision of turning Canada into a knowledge-based economy is
strong and encouraging. They adjusted their curriculum and linked
communications science with the social sciences.

Some universities, including leading universities like Simon
Fraser University (SFU) have gone even further in the use of
communications technologies by offering distance education
programs. The university, through the Centre for Distance
Education (CDE) expanded its five distance education courses with
55 students in 1975 to an approximately 12,000 course enrollments
with 250 course offerings in the 2001/2002 academic year. Formal
academic programs include degrees, certificates and post-
baccalaureate diplomas in a number of fields.

Queen's University in Toronto and Royal Roads University in
Victoria established a long distance Master's of Business
Administration (MBA) courses. But Canada's most innovative
university in distance education in that all courses are
delivered through distance learning is probably Athabasca
University (AU). The university was founded in 1970 by the
Alberta provincial government with current undergraduate
enrollment of 21,500 students and graduate enrollment of 2,500
students. As of 2002 AU is the only institution in North America
and only one of five worldwide that confers a Master Distance
Education Degree.

The delivery of course materials and contacts between students
and lecturers in the distance education system or virtual
university are mostly held through video correspondence, Internet
and CD-ROM.

Subjects offered by the universities with distance education
programs include communications studies, arts, business
administration, journalism, English, psychology, sociology,
education and political science with the programs consisting of
diplomas, undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees.

More importantly, in endeavors to stay ahead, each Canadian
university and college aspires to become the country's best
educational institution possible in the areas of teaching,
research and community development through a number of ways.

"We want the best students and the best lecturers in order to
produce the best output, even though we cannot pay lecturers as
high as the American universities do. So, we offer incentives to
the best candidates to do research work (besides their main
teaching jobs)," said Michael Marrus, dean of the School of
Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto.

Big names, a prestigious reputation, a competitive edge in
communications studies and computer sciences along with a
welcoming environment in a multicultural society as well as
competitively-priced, high-quality education at publicly funded
institutions are the strong points used by Canadian universities
and colleges to attract foreign students from areas around the
world, including Asian countries.

The number of foreign or international students enrolled in
Canada's universities and colleges in the year 2000/2001 reached
45,000 of a total enrollment of 1.3 million, which consists of
558,000 full-time undergraduates and 88,000 full-time graduate
students, 230,000 part-time undergraduate students and 45,000
part-time graduate students and around 400,000 continuing
education students. The number of international students at
Canadian universities and colleges varies from one institution to
another.

Foreign students make a significant contribution to Canada's
higher education institutions in terms of the amount of income
earned and the colorful academic life.

Tuition fees paid by international students is almost three
times that of taxpaying Canadian students, but varies from one
province to another. The latest Undergraduate tuition fee figures
for international students at universities and colleges in
Newfoundland is C$4,250 (23.3 million), between $3,975 and $8,417
in Ontario, $5,325 and $6,350 in Quebec and $2,749 and $8,910 in
British Columbia. Higher fees are collected from international
students studying at the graduate level.

The large number of international students studying in Canada
can partially be attributed to aggressive promotion campaigns
launched by the universities and colleges and the Education
Marketing Unit, a marketing arm established by the Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The unit was designed to
assist the Canadian Knowledge Industry which includes public and
private institutions that provide secondary, post-secondary,
vocational and corporate education and training to promote and
export their products and services in international markets.

So aggressive was the campaign and efforts to force all elements
of university life into a business model that it caused fears
among Canadian scholars themselves that the trend would threaten
liberal education.

But a much larger, more significant amount of money earned by
Canada is probably from joint cooperatives between the country's
high institutions and dozens of foreign universities and colleges
as well as contracts on educational projects with a number of
countries.

Canada's government is not only benefited by financial gain
with the presence of international students but more importantly
by the 'brain gain' as many educated immigrants choose to stay
and become Canadian residents due to unfavorable work/religious/
political atmospheres in their home countries. Many of the
educated foreigners now fill key posts in Canadian universities
with a growing tendency among young Canadians to go straight to
work after the completion of their studies at the colleges.

Rafaat Mansour, an Egyptian professor of electrical
engineering, now heads Micro Electronic Mechanical Research which
produces computer chips at Waterloo University. Farhana Mathur,
an immigrant from India who has become a Canadian resident,
chairs the International Program Development at the University of
Toronto, and there are many more like these two.

The grand vision adopted by Canada's government to shift the
country's economy from a resource-based economy into knowledge-
based economy has not only been successful in view of shared
visions among Canadians on the importance of education and the
plan to prepare the country's smooth transition into a knowledge-
based economy, but also in reducing the technology divide among
Canada's rich and poor as well as a brain gain.