Canada shifts into new economy, narrows technology divide

The Jakarta Post's journalist Ardimas Sasdi along with six journalists from Asia visited Canada 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.

OTTAWA, Canada: 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 in the last 10 years 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, Basil said, 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 in 1999, Canada became the first country in the world to connect every school and public library to the Internet.

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, visible 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 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.

Basil attributed Canada's success in managing the change process toward an information society and knowledge-based economy and innovative public service to a combination of policy and application programs, focusing on capacity building.

"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, has two officials languages (English and French), and has a population of just 31 million that extends into the remote areas of the Arctic Circle".

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 and constitutional monarchy 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. It has attracted private sector investment in infrastructure and market innovation. The vision is also shared by Canada's 90 universities and 175 post-secondary institutions such as Community Colleges, Technical Institutes and University Colleges.

The shared mission should not be viewed as something which was coming from the top as it had taken a long period of time before it was implemented, and that the universities played a pivotal role in the birth of the vision, said Larry R. Sproul, director of International Liaison Office at the University of British Columbia.

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.

"We are proud to be part of an institution that has a long and respected history of providing opportunities for those looking for alternate ways to fulfill their academic goals," said Joan Collinge, director of the CDE.

Queen's University in Toronto and Royal Roads University in Victoria established a long distance Master's of Business Administration (MBA) course. But Canada's most innovative university in distance education in that all courses are delivered through distance learning is 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, history, 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.

Besides tuition fees, international students still have to pay boarding costs, health insurance, food, books, school supplies and personal expenses.

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. Indonesians intellectuals working in Canada were few, although there is at least one, Sarifuddin Madenda, a PhD graduate from the Sorbonne in France, who now works as a researcher at Universite du Quebec en Qutaouais.

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.