Learning from 2019
Welcome to the fourteenth issue of the Digital Policy Salon briefing.
We look back to 2019 in this issue with our perspective piece and our featured research. Part 1 of a blog series on 2019 examines the contribution that the digital economy made to Canada, while our featured research takes a close look at one of Canada’s cybersecurity hubs: the province of New Brunswick, and its industry’s search for skilled professionals in a highly competitive sector. Looking forward to today, ICTC’s new whitepaper (to be featured in next week’s issue) discusses the Canadian policy landscape and the steps we can take to return to the successes of previous years with better outcomes for the environment, SMEs, supply chains, and workers. Don’t forget to register for our upcoming webinar on this paper, which will break down these policy recommendations.
Underlining the challenges that we face before we reach economic and social recovery, our interview piece from Senior Director of Research and Policy Alexandra Cutean examines the labour impacts of COVID-19, including consulting and remote work. Our second piece, the latest in our Tech and Human Rights Series, speaks with a scholar who takes a high-level approach to modeling the risks associated with emerging technologies. Finally, we’re reading about urban living patterns this week, and thinking about the potential long-term restructuring of the cities we’ve grown used to. Stay tuned and check out next week’s issue for more discussion of Canadian policy and our economic rebuild.
- Tyler & Faun
Our Perspective
Digital Economy Annual Review 2019: Part 1
ICTC is pleased to present the Digital Economy Annual Review 2019, a report that explores broad trends over the past year in Canada’s digital economy with respect to economic impact, the labour market, technology adoption, and talent supply.
This 2019 review will be presented through a three-part blog series.
- Part 1: Economic Growth
- Part 2: The Labour Market
- Part 3: Talent Supply
The report utilizes historical data starting from 2009 through to 2019.
To invoke a term from agriculture, 2019 was a “bumper year” for the Canadian ICT sector. Transformed by technologies such as AI and 5G, the sector continued to see strong economic growth and a continuation of industry trends.
Canada’s tech sector grew to represent historically high Canadian economic output (GDP) of 4.8%. Surpassed only by the fledgling cannabis sector, the ICT sector was the second-fastest growing of 13 major sectors in 2019. The growth of the ICT sector in 2019 was higher than any year since 2009. Tech growth outpaced the growth of the wider Canadian economy (1.6%) by over three times. Within the Canadian ICT sector, the services subsector increased its share, growing by 5.2%, and accounted for 96% of the total sector. In contrast, the ICT manufacturing subsector shrunk by 2.4% and saw its share of the total sector decrease to 4%.
In 2019, Ontario remained by far the largest contributor to Canadian tech, generating more than twice the output of Québec, which was the second-largest contributor. Following Québec, British Columbia and Alberta were the third- and fourth-largest provincial economies for ICT. In total, these four provinces accounted for over 90% of Canada’s ICT output.
Special Events
Join Us For a Virtual Panel
Monday, June 29th, 2020–1:00–2:00 PM EDT
Exploring potential policy levers in support of a green, more inclusive, and digital-based economic recovery in a post-COVID world.
You’re invited to join President and CEO Namir Anani along with ICTC’s research team as they take the audience through a deep dive into their recently released white paper, Economic Resiliency in the Face of Adversity: From Surviving to Prospering. The paper and webinar explore potential policy levers in support of a green, more inclusive, and digital-based economic recovery in a post-COVID world.
Canada’s low Debt-to-GDP ratio, stable fiscal and political landscape, and strong academic and talent base sets the stage for a post-COVID economic recovery that is greener and more resilient. However, bold and strategic policy choices are needed.
You will have the opportunity to directly engage with our speakers on this content through an online chat. Click the link below to secure your registration today.
Interviews in the Field
AI, Ethics, and Existential Risk
On March 9 2020, ICTC spoke with Dr. Stuart Armstrong as part of our Tech & Human Rights Series. Dr. Armstrong is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, where he focuses on the safety and possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and has worked with organizations such as Google’s DeepMind. In this interview, Kiera and Dr. Armstrong discuss the intersections of AI and ethics, and dive into topics such as existential risk, the safety and possibilities of AI, the ability to map humanity’s values onto of AI, and the long-term potential for intelligent life across the reachable universe.
Kiera:
How do you go about forecasting or modelling these risks, particularly for AI? It seems like a very difficult thing to do.
Dr. Armstrong:
It depends on the risk. We can look at two extremes. On one side, let’s take the risk of asteroid impact. Here, it’s fairly simple; it’s science: you’ve got telescopes, estimates for number of asteroids, estimates for how likely they are to hit the Earth, and it turns out the risk is quite lower than expected. At the opposite end is something like AI, which is so uncertain that it is very hard to get a decent estimate. The main thing that I’ve found is that the risk is not sufficiently low enough to be ignored. The numbers fluctuate a bit, but the risks are around 10–25% for a serious disaster this century (such as AI-enabled warfare), depending on the most recent data. Anything that is above 5% is sufficient to pay attention to it, so it doesn’t matter if it fluctuates. If the risk is sufficiently large, then I am committed to working on it.
Now, these are the two extremes — asteroid impact as a very scientific process, and AI, which has extreme uncertainties. In between these two extremes, there are a variety of other risks — for example, what are the risks of a war, the risks of economic collapse, what would people do after a supervolcanic eruption? These take a mix of hard science (for example, to estimate what a supervolcanic eruption is really like) as well as non-hard science (for example, trying to predict the future of politics or people’s reactions to these disasters). In predicting people’s reactions, we have some evidence for how people behave in actual disasters (which is generally a lot better than we stereotype — people tend to behave better than we think), but there is still no perfect sample to fit exactly what we would encounter. In these mixed areas, the ideal is to investigate the topic long enough to find whether either the probability is low enough that we no longer need to work on it, or that its high enough that we should shift more focus on it.
Read the full interview here 🎙
Consulting and Global Mobility in the Time of COVID-19
Recently, ICTC’s Senior Director of Research & Policy Alexandra Cutean sat down with global mobility veteran Audra Marshall to learn about how the consulting world is coping with COVID-19. Leading a practice rooted in compliance, policy, and planning, Audra supports businesses and individuals relocating to or from the US and around the world. From the comfort of her Bay Area home, Audra discussed the move to remote work, talent and training needs, and the international travel crunch that has added a new twist to the field of global mobility.
Alexandra:
On the topic of talent, while I know the current reality is still new, do you think that skill needs have or will evolve? Are there any new “must-have” skills that have come to light from this experience?
Audra:
Like other companies, the pandemic has caused us to really think about our practice and how we do business. In international assignment services, we deal with individuals across the globe. What the current reality has highlighted for me is two of RSM’s 5C’s as we call them — which are the five characteristics of a first-choice advisor — caring and critical thinking. I don’t think I’d be able to be to hire “just a numbers person” anymore. Yes, we do a lot of calculations, but many of our clients are now dealing with things beyond compliance and mobility. Some are facing revenue loss and worrying about how they will pay their employees. It’s become clear that we have to switch gears and say, “I need to be quiet and listen. If I can’t help, maybe I can find someone who can.” We need to prioritize listening to our clients, and even our colleagues who might be struggling. If I interviewed someone who didn’t seem up for that, I wouldn’t be able to hire them, regardless of their technical expertise.
Alexandra:
It seems like you feel the current reality has underlined the need for empathy in consulting — is that a fair statement?
Audra:
I definitely think that is true. Everyone has begun to see their roles differently, focusing less on tasks at hand, and more on the human at the other end of the conversation. The current reality is one that no one could have predicted. As dire as the consequences of it can be, the pandemic seems to have recalibrated some of our thinking and gotten us to be more creative and compassionate.
Read the full interview here 🎙
What We’re Reading
Urban Living Might Just Survive Coronavirus
(CityLab)
Early data from real estate websites suggest cities haven’t lost their allure, even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. “How will cities survive the coronavirus?” a New York Times opinion writer recently asked. “Can New York avoid a coronavirus exodus?” the Financial Times chimed in. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many have predicted the demise of U.S. urban living — where physical proximity is the norm, social distancing complex, and lockdowns in sometimes cramped apartments decidedly uncomfortable.
A new report by City Observatory researcher Joe Cortright, made available as an interactive dashboard, suggests that such hand-wringing may be premature.
Talking Points:
The past few months I’ve felt very grateful to live well outside downtown Vancouver, a sentiment I might not have expressed when commutes were still a part of daily life, and social distancing was not. Anecdotally, colleagues and friends are making moves to find more spacious living arrangements, closer to nature and further from urban centers, but CityLab goes over some early data suggesting that numerous people (and 25–34 year old college graduates in particular) are still eyeing apartments near a central business district despite coronavirus fears. A Canadian discussion piece in Global News echoes the sentiment that it’s too soon to tell, while monitoring real-estate interest further afield from Toronto. Either way, the potential reorganization of urban life, prestige, and proximity is something to keep an eye on over the next year. — Faun Rice | email
Research Visualized
Across Canada and in New Brunswick, numerous industries employ cybersecurity professionals, but many businesses still see myriad barriers to hiring cybersecurity personnel. In a Canada-wide survey (Statistics Canada, 2017), businesses that did not hire any cybersecurity personnel reported two main reasons for this: (a) using external consultants rather than their own staff, and/or (b) not feeling that cybersecurity was a high enough risk to their business. Cybersecurity consulting comprises a significant portion of the cybersecurity sector, and many organizations use consultants if and when they do not have the resources or perceived need to hire their own dedicated staff members. The two main reasons that respondents gave for not hiring cybersecurity personnel are broken down by industry in the chart below.
Our Research
Searching for Hidden Talent: Experience and Expertise in New Brunswick’s Cybersecurity Community
The demand for cybersecurity expertise continues to climb in New Brunswick, which is recognized as a significant cybersecurity hub in Canada. ICTC’s new research report, Searching for Hidden Talent: Experience and Expertise in New Brunswick’s Cybersecurity Community, explores the demand for cybersecurity personnel in New Brunswick, determines whether the province is facing a cybersecurity labour gap, traces trends in cybersecurity employment, and identifies the most needed skillsets.
According to pre-COVID-19 forecasts, a global cybersecurity labour shortage of 1.8 million people is expected by 2022, with a corresponding North American shortage of 265,000 people by the same year.
Searching for Hidden Talent: Experience and Expertise in New Brunswick’s Cybersecurity Community highlights New Brunswick’s well-networked tech ecosystem and its dedicated organizations playing a hands-on role in workforce development.
The province has relative advantages (public sector investment, large industry players, and a high quality of life) — and some disadvantages (remoteness and high unemployment). Overall, however, New Brunswick outperforms other provinces in important metrics such as the cybersecurity jobs-to-population ratio, workforce development, and training institutions.
“As firms continue to transition their value chains to digital-first solutions post COVID-19, cyberthreats will represent a significant risk to these new business models. Cyber talent will play a critical role in the future in building the necessary safeguards and maintaining operational resiliency in this increasingly connected landscape,” — Namir Anani, ICTC President & CEO
Searching for Hidden Talent: Experience and Expertise in New Brunswick’s Cybersecurity Community also explores the complex issues of the province’s workforce gaps, finding highly skilled cybersecurity expertise, high cybersecurity salary expectations, the lack of a clear career paths for recent graduates, and the lack of diversity in cybersecurity.
Twitter Highlights
Talk to Us 💬
Send your comments, questions, and tech policy insights to:
- Tyler Farmer 🚀 t.farmer@ictc-ctic.ca
- Faun Rice 🦌 f.rice@ictc-ctic.ca
