Canada must allow more foreign ownership of its telecommunications sector if the country wants to become more globally competitive, says an internationally recognized telecom and resource-management expert.

Current federal rules now prevent foreign firms from owning more than 46.6 per cent of Canadian-based companies.

But restrictions on foreign ownership tend to leave domestic companies "looking inside and not being as competitive as they should be," says Leonard Waverman. "Here we are worrying about international security issues, and I don't see (foreign ownership) as a major problem."

Waverman, a Toronto native who went to London on a sabbatical 10 years ago and wound up staying, says open telecom markets are "very useful at keeping firms on the edge."

Leonard Waverman is ready to roll up his sleeves at the U of C business school.

"If you look at U.S. foreign restrictions on airlines, a maximum of 25 per cent, that makes no sense either," he adds in an interview from his London home. "I think it's got to be a two-way street. The U.S. has lots of restrictions."

Currently the chairman of the London Business School's economics department, Waverman is heading back to Canada in the coming months to assume the position of dean of the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business.

At the U of C, Waverman will examine the impacts of computers, the Internet and telecommunications on economic growth.

He will expand on his upcoming academic book, The Network Computer, which he co-authored with a University of Toronto professor.

"It's really an economic, econometric book, but I want to bring in more of a management focus, which I've been looking at for the last few years as well," he notes.

As he does, he will examine why Canada's telecommunications productivity lags behind the U.S.

"It's about a 20-per-cent productivity gap," says Waverman. "In our research, about half of it is geared to the distance in computing and the interplay between computing and telecommunications between the U.S. and Canada.

"Most countries are behind the U.S., so it's not a particular problem to Canada. But given that we're next door, it's kind of an odd problem."

Part of the problem can be attributed to Canada's differently structured economy.

While the oil and gas sector is a huge computing power, "it could be that mining, pulp and paper, and forestry have yet to join the IT revolution in a big way."

Another reason, he adds, could be that Canadian managers don't reconfigure their firms to take advantage of everything that information and communications technology has to offer.

"An interesting example of a company that's done this is Cemex, which is the largest Mexican cement company," says Waverman.

"They're also the largest cement company in the world, and their revolution was to use ICT to have just-in-time cement production.

"The truck appears just at the moment it's supposed to, so they really are a logistics firm that happens to deliver cement and other building products.

"So logistics is really a key to savings on costs and being really productive. The question is: Are Canadian firms as logistically minded as firms like Cemex and (computer maker) Dell?" Some scholars and industry leaders have blamed at least part of the Canadian productivity problem on a shortage of skilled tech workers.

But strategy, or lack thereof, could be a more significant factor, says Waverman.

"My research looks at the firms that do best in using ICT," he says. "Skills are not simply IT professionals. It's really a skill, I think, in terms of redeploying the firm's assets, re-engineering processes.

"It's that kind of leverage of ICT that works. So I don't necessarily see it as a skills problem, that you can't hire good IT folks. I think it's a deeper skills issue.

"One way universities can help is doing best-practice case studies and showing how it can be used and then working with industry associations to diffuse this kind of best practice. That's one thing I see Haskayne as potentially doing. Calgary is certainly a computing-rich environment. It's not just an oil and gas sector."

There are aspects of the Canadian telecom industry that are already very successful, Waverman says. "We have a higher fixed-penetration rate. Firms like Rogers and Telus and Bell are first-class companies. What one would gain (from allowing more U.S. ownership) is further economies of scale on purchasing.

"If they're willing to pay a large premium and to buy up the shares, then they must have synergies or something better they can do with those assets than what other managers can do," says Waverman.

Tight restrictions on foreign ownerships also limit the performance of capital markets, he notes, because investors can't spend money on projects that they're quite willing to invest in.

Waverman's current research probes the social and economic impacts of computer and mobile phone use in Africa and other emerging markets. Much of his future research will likely have a strong connection to the oil and gas industry.

For the last five years, he has sat on the board of the Gas and Electricity Market Authority. Structured like a private company, GEMA serves as the U.K.'s energy regulator.

Each month, the group makes policy decisions and determines price formulas. He was a member of the advisory committee introducing competition in Ontario's electricity system in 1995-96 and was a part-time member of the Ontario Energy Board.

He says his central role as Haskayne's dean will be to "pull the school together and grow it and put it more on the global map."

Vern Jones has been acting as Haskayne's interim dean since January of 2006 after former dean Michael Grandin decided to return to his post as president and CEO of Fording Canadian Coal Trust.

Waverman hopes his high profile will help attract other talented educators, but he doesn't feel recruiting will be a problem - thanks to Calgary's global reach, created largely by the oil and gas sector, prevalence of information technology and livability.

"It's a clean place to live and it's an exciting environment," says Waverman. "Academics love to live in a nice place and they love excitement. They want to be relevant and important and to set policy - and I think we can do that in Calgary."

Waverman's wife Eva Klein, a psychologist, will also join Haskayne as an adjunct professor of organizational behaviour.