Call it the Brain Gain.
Canadians toiling in hotbeds such as Silicon Valley and Seattle are starting to look north again as Alberta’s high-tech industry kicks into competitive gear by selling itself as a low-tax, high-quality-of-life destination for skilled workers.
Strategies like the recent visit by Alberta Innovation and Science Minister Lorne Taylor to Silicon Valley to drum up interest in the province’s growing tech community appear to have struck a cord with several former Canucks.
Lindsay Blackett, 39, is riding a new wave of Canadian tech workers who have either moved to Alberta or are considering re-locating here from the United States to help develop the new economy in Alberta.
“The bottom line is I don’t think people went to the States because they figured living in the U.S. was a better place to be. A lot of it was financial,” says Blackett, a field sales representative for Wiley Electronics, which distributes semi-conductor components to clients including Motorola and Texas Instruments.
Blackett moved to Calgary earlier this year after a five-year stint in Seattle. While he says he came to Alberta for the quality of life for his young family, the surging high-tech environment was also an incentive.
“When I got onto the Internet to research Calgary companies, I found out about companies like Wi-Lan and Cell-Loc, and I knew about Nortel from the days when I lived in Ottawa,” he says.
“I talked to some of my suppliers, and they said it was a big market for wireless and telecommunications.”
In Silicon Valley, former Albertans are also looking north. Systems designer Martin Nohr attended the recent meeting held by Taylor and says he’s considering moving back for both business and personal reasons after living in San Jose since 1986.
“Everything is cyclical,” including the current boom in Silicon Valley, says the Rimage Corp. employee. “My guess is although we are in a current bubble right now, I don’t think it’s going to stay that way for more than a couple of years.”
While San Jose offers an attractive climate and working opportunities, the quality of life and cost of living can’t compare to Alberta, says Nohr, who estimates an average three-bedroom bungalow can cost anywhere between $400,000 and $900,000 US, depending on the neighbourhood. Other negatives include 24/7 traffic, the high cost of living and the crime rate.
Greg Niven, 31, left Alberta after graduating from the U of A with a degree in engineering physics, with a speciality in lasers. “I left primarily because of my career — there was no place to work there,” says Niven, who works in business development for Coherent Inc. in San Jose, which supplies laser-based solutions for medical, scientific, commercial and telecom markets.
“But even down here, people are starting to look for places to expand to. And I think Alberta is actually emerging as a legitimate opportunity, which in the minds of people here, was previously a completely unthinkable thought. It was not even on the map.”
Rainer Iraschko and his wife have set their sights on moving back to Canada and starting a family after three years in Silicon Valley. “Our goal is to return to Alberta and settle in Calgary. It’s just a matter of when,” says the senior system and network architect for ONI Systems, which sells optical communications networking equipment.
“I don’t know how to say it in such a way that I don’t put down Silicon Valley, but people here are very aggressive and business focused,” says the 32-year-old. “It’s a great place to work for a while, you learn a lot. But it can get on your nerves and burn you out in a hurry.
“I like the outdoor lifestyle of Calgary where people work hard, but they play hard when they get to the mountains. It’s kind of a theme that runs through almost everyone that lives in Alberta.”
According to a report released Thursday by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Calgary, about 140,000 people are expected to be employed in Alberta’s telecommunications industry in 2010, with most of the workers living in Calgary.
For Alberta to succeed in the brain gain — attracting skilled workers and needed venture capital for local companies — it must develop strategic niches, says Alberta Innovation and Science Minister Lorne Taylor.
“We need to develop niche areas where we’re the best in the world, instead of trying to be broad-based,” Taylor says.
He agrees it’s difficult for Alberta to compete on all fronts of advanced tech research and industry with places like Ontario, which has more than 20 research-based universities. But the province can attract worldwide status by focusing on specific areas such as wireless telecommunications, or life sciences like bioinformatics, an information science in which computers help to manage, visualize and analyse genetic and biological information.
Taylor predicts Nortel Network’s completion of its new wireless lab, the $4.6-billion takeover of Clearnet Inc. by TELUS, and the expansion of Wi-Lan and other Calgary companies will help make this city the wireless centre of North America within five years.
As reported in last week’s Business Edge, the minister is also recommending the installation of a high-bandwidth fibre-optic network linking every Alberta community, and connecting this province to Silicon Valley. Taylor notes that in 1985, oil and gas made up 40 per cent of Alberta’s GDP.
“This year, they will be 19 per cent,” he says. “It says our economy is growing . . . and its make-up is a knowledge-based manufacturing, high-tech industry. It’s a different climate now.
“Ten years ago, we didn’t have any industry mature enough that it would require all these people. Our industry is now maturing. The time has come, we need these people.”
For returned Canadians like Blackett, there’s no place like home.
“We wanted to come back to Canada. We are Canadians,” he says. “We wanted our kids to grow up in a system that was much more global thinking, outward looking as opposed to egocentric.
“When I went to Seattle, it was just starting to peak, just starting to lift off in terms of the marketplace. And I think Calgary is at that point. I think there is still tremendous room for growth.”
