SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
Readers responded to Kevin Carmichael’s column about the need for Canadians to start more businesses if this country is to have any hope of growing the job market ( bit.ly/bizStart).
“The government needs to get out of the way then,” commented Sean Downey on Facebook. “Entrepreneurs and small or mediumsized businesses are the key to a prosperous economy. Governments, however, craft burdensome regulations targeted at large businesses (because big = bad apparently). The large firms for whom these laws were crafted have the financial resources to either relocate or take advantage of a regulatory loophole. Meanwhile, it is small- and medium-sized business, the lifeblood of the economy, that get snared by these regulations because they do not have the financial resources to legally circumvent them. Am I saying wholesale deregulation? No, of course not. Regulations are needed, but we need to prioritize what regulation (the useless ones that are only there to serve as cash grabs) can be scrapped and what can be streamlined.
“Couple these regulations with economically crippling policies such as Ontario’s energy policy and bailouts for the big guys and you get an economy that is rigged against the smalland mid-sized businesses. Since these businesses are by and large geographically bound, more of those dollars will stay in local economies.”
WHO STAYS?
People had passionate views about Mike Moffatt’s blog post about Canada’s muddled policies on granting permanent residency to international graduates of Canadian colleges and universities ( bit.ly/WhoStays).
“I agree that we should be trying to recruit the most talented people who are capable of producing innovative, creative products,” commented John on CanadianBusiness.com. “This is a key factor in the success of companies such as Google. However, attainment of a university degree—even if it is at the master’s or PhD level—is not proof that the individual is genuinely capable of doing highly innovative, creative work. We have greatly expanded our university system and a much higher percentage of Canadian-born students now receive a university education. We are at the point where allowing every international student to stay in Canada after graduation and recruiting large numbers of university educated immigrants will simply result in an excess of university educated people looking for work. We need to be more selective but the hard part is determining which jobs truly require exceptional people, versus situations where a corporation is trying to recruit international students or immigrants as a way to drive down wages and acquire a more compliant workforce. To use an IT example, the majority of IT workers would not be capable of developing a complex software application, though they may do a fine job of providing support, system administration and so on. Thus companies that are trying to develop complex, leading-edge applications really do need to be able to recruit internationally. But it should be possible to fill most IT positions with Canadian-born graduates.”
“The key point isn’t about whether [grads] are talented,” wrote Yong. “In fact, university students often don’t even have a platform to prove their skills. As an international student, I have been in Canada for eight years, but I have only been working for a year and a half. Now what? It feels like the government is ignorant of our humanity.”
“Too bad their in-store experience is always THE WORST.” – AGATA LARHA, ON FACEBOOK, OFFERED A SKEPTICAL TAKE ON CANADIAN TIRE, WHOSE E-COMMERCE AND DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORTS WE PRAISED IN OUR ANNUAL “CANADA’S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES” LIST ( bit.ly/TheTire)