Parties focus on tech sector jobs
Clark says B.C. can be ‘new Silicon Valley’ but Horgan points to previous LNG promise
B.C.’s technology sector is hoping that all the attention from political parties during the election will lead to some key improvements on investment, talent and markets for local companies.
B.C. Tech Association CEO Bill Tam said the past few years have been good for the sector, with lots of startups, interest from entrepreneurs and companies being formed. There are now more than 106,000 people working in high-tech in the province.
But as political parties campaign on their visions for how to increase well-paying B.C. tech jobs, Tam said the industry wants a plan that give students the skills required to work in the field, while also encouraging global talent to immigrate here.
“We have seen growth, but also acute talent shortages,” said Tam, both in “technical and creative staff who can build next-generation technologies, but also growth talent in the form of sales and marketing that are needed for companies to grow.”
Liberal Leader Christy Clark spent Wednesday campaigning in Burnaby and Coquitlam, where she visited a clean energy company and a virtual reality firm to highlight a sector important to her re-election bid.
“British Columbia can be the new Silicon Valley,” she said at General Fusion in Burnaby, where 65 workers are trying to design a new clean, efficient energy source. “It has to be, because we want our kids to have great jobs.”
Technology fits well into Clark’s election themes of economic growth, jobs and clean industry. But her centrepiece election promise from 2013 on liquefied natural gas has failed to materialize. Clark promised she’d develop a lucrative LNG export industry with multiple plants, 100,000 jobs and a $100-billion prosperity fund to erase B.C.’s debt and lower taxes.
Four years later, no LNG export plants have been built. Clark said Wednesday it’s taking longer, because of market conditions, but LNG companies are nonetheless spending billions and hiring thousands in preparation.
Clark said her party is best positioned to capitalize on the tech sector, because it has created an $87-million B.C. Tech Strategy, added computer coding to the primary school curriculum and announced plans for an “innovation hub” space at Robson Square in Vancouver.
The Liberal platform also calls for more than 1,000 new graduates in science and technology disciplines, a doubling of co-op placements and an “innovation network” to link B.C.’s 25 public post-secondary institutions with the tech sector.
The February budget also expanded the interactive digital media tax credit to virtual reality firms. The tax credit is important for the industry, said Ryan Peterson, whose company Finger Food Studios in Port Coquitlam hosted Clark for a demonstration Wednesday.
Peterson said Finger Food started as a video-game company in 2009 and survived largely on the government tax credit program. Now it’s grown to include augmented reality and employs 200 people with an average salary of above $100,000.
The NDP’s tech strategy, released last month, calls for $100 million in additional innovation in tech training, as well as a “chief talent officer” to help government focus on growing the workforce. Horgan mocked Clark Wednesday. “I think that Christy Clark is trying to pretend LNG never happened,” he said. “And now she developed the Internet, and computers, and I think the public understands it’s the ingenuity and innovation of people who are coming to British Columbia that make that sector so dynamic and great.”