No More CANADARM Propaganda?

[TCBF]

You know, the Robotic Space Arm as it is known by the rest of the planet?  The one with the Canadian Flags painted on it that American TV cameras never seem to find?  Well, SPAR Aerospace is long gone, and it's current owners have moved company HQ south of the 49th because it is hard to get NASA/DoD contracts these days as a Canadian company.  They claim that 1,000 jobs will remain in Canada, but companies always say that when they buy our companies that were kept afloat with our taxpayer's dollars.

If I was a Canadian building Robotic Space Arms, I would not quit my night job delivering pizza.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/01/08/mdasale.html

 

[paganmystic]

Good work TCBF

The story of our High Tech Industry reads more like an epitaph. Do you like my picture the AvroArrow. on that blog site I have pics of Canadian Technology triumphs that weren't. I guess the Canadarm is another   lol  MDA also developed a satellite as well I just found out about. Apparently the most sophisticated mapping satellite created. Right now I'm wondering what else got sold off in that deal

 

[Flip]

This is a long standing Canadian problem.
You can't blame American corporations for taking advantage of an opportunity.

For many many years we have been willing to sell off our best and brightest
even to the degree of being demonstrably against our best interests.

Remember when trains had cabooses?
There was a company in Edmonton that started the R&D for the transponder units
that now hang on the last car in a train.  My little company did some subcontract
work for this larger subsidiary of CN.  After about a decade the technology was ready
for commercialization. The punch line was that Mulroney came to power at about
the same time and the R&D firm was sold off to an American company.
About 30 high tech R&D jobs evaporated forever................

Idacom was another Edmonton success (and another of my clients).  They made
protocol analysers.  Idacom was scooped up by Hewlett Packard and a few years
later moved to Australia.  Another 100 high tech R&D jobs gone.

Then CDC moved to Calgary and is now gone........ I could go on....and on....

We have seen the enemy - and he is us.
For some desperately perverted reason we think foreign ownership is a good thing.
The other burden we bear is that High Technology gets almost no support
from banks and the venture capital crowd. The Canadian business community
are very reluctant to support technology business.

In Alberta there is a spin-off cycle that has gone on forever.
The key to success in Oil-related technology is to start a little company
that becomes enough of a thorn in the side of major corporations that they
buy you out and swallow up your little enterprize.  Technology people are lucky
to get a decade of steady employment in this environment - there is migration.

It's sad, but it's how Canadians have made it. 

 

[paganmystic]

lol  that reply is soooo true ... If it wasn't so painful to think about it would funny (sorry the bad pun). I've never been in the military but I wonder if in high stress situations could shoot your foot off ... well, Canadians I suspect are the only people in the world, as a nation, that could understand this concept as a fact of life ... now that's sad  probibly back to Dieffenbaker, this condition pre-dates me. 
  thank you for the reply I've aways believed that if you don't discuss things; you cannot effect change .... disscuss away my friends

 

[retiredgrunt45]

Or you can look at it this way. Our companies are very good at what they do and foreign companies see this and buy them up, after all why reinvent the wheel when there is a perfectly good one sitting right here in Canada.

Perfect example is the Canada-arm, why would the Americans spend billions on their own arm, when we have the Cadillac, tried tested and proven. They would just offer an obscene amount of money for ours. Good business.

I can say with all honesty that if I owned my own business that offered something that a foreign investor wanted, that I wouldn't sell the farm for the right price either. Happens everyday. In todays global market, most companies in Canada, small to medium or specialized in some way, get either bought out, merged or taken over by some giant ofshore or American conglomerate

 

[Flip]

RG45,

On the face of it and in isolation, I agree with you completely.
The quality of Canadian education and institutions has a lot to do with
our innovative and creative capacity.

However,  In the real world there are such things as strategic and national interests.
In just about all other countries there is some reluctance to sell off some types
of business.  We also have to recognize that there are industry subsidies and
special support for strategically important industry.
So, in a real sense "globalization" is not nearly the level playing field we think it is.
In Canada we embrace this "we are the world" view disproportionately and I find it
naive and dangerous.

For example; I cannot buy the raw materials for printed circuit
boards for what the Chinese sell the finished printed circuits for.
This is the result of a long standing government initiative in China
to move into technology business first. (even before they have decent roads)
The net result, Even printed circuits in CF equipment are made in Asia.
I don't (think) this is permitted to the same degree in the USA.

 

[paganmystic]

[However,  In the real world there are such things as strategic and national interests.
In just about all other countries there is some reluctance to sell off some types
of business.] & [In Canada we embrace this "we are the world" view disproportionately and I find it
naive and dangerous.] I don't know how to work the quotes: Thank you Flip

Flip is absolutely correct I have been fighting in my small corner of life, to get some (any recognition) for triumphs that came about because of Canadian innovation and creativity. Today I can buy a titanium/steel framing hammer, being a carpenter, how many just said, so what? Well, if it were not for a little project in Canada, i guess it was between '48 and the late 50's called the AvRO Arrow. Titanium, would likely still be unknown, but is now a main stay for strengthening soft metals without the weight of steel because of this
revolutionary fighter/interceptor. Everyone has talked about the cost, we only have a small market it was a waste of money, etc...
we all know the augments. No one has ever talked about the fact AvRO had to buy mining and smelting operations in aluminum and titanium in order to create the alloy for the Arrow. Which incidentally never existed. At the speed the Arrow moved it was impossible to control the aircraft, the need for an on-board computer was not simply a good idea, it was mandatory... as a result the micro computer had to be created. Is that Canadian ingenuity for one project... I think not lol    Orenda, a division of AvRO created a new engine, rather than the 3 chamber system used the the US (pratt and whitney) and the french we designed a 2 chamber system for a jet engine. it was far more efficient as a result more powerful( the Iroquois) engine. The Americans at that time created to sparrow ii missile. They couldn't get the guidance system or propulsion working correctly AvRO bought the missile. Guess what the primary weapon system was going to be the sparrow ii missile. We not only fixed the propulsion system but also got the guidance system working as well. So we can flush Canadian innovation right, just prior to the Arrow project being scrubbed the United States Space Administration attempted to launch several rockets into space, very disastrously when the project ended the Arrow design team lead by Chamberlain went state side soon after the US space program really flew. Gee I wonder way.
        Sorry about the rant    rofl.

Back to the company that developed the Canadarm. What was not mentioned with that sale was the world's most sophisticated mapping satellite. Both in definition and high resolution clarity.

 

[Exarecr]

The Canadarm sale is the tip of the iceberg. Canada is losing manufacturing jobs and suffering plant closures or relocation's to 3rd world locations where employees live on 5 dollars a day. Quebec's manufacturing sector is in disaster mode right now as they scramble for options to stop the flood. Ontario is just starting to experience the same economic dislocation and nobody seems ready to do anything. We are talking about the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs within the next few years along with the plants themselves. Our biggest mineral and precious metals Corporations are all majority owned by the likes of an aggressive China(this should be unacceptable)hungry for resources at any cost. It really is like we have this built in self-destruct gene peculiar to those who say "EH". Every time Canadians hear of the sale of another Canadian icon, the event conjures up the typical sheepish shrug of the shoulders as we surrender another chunk of our history. How sad we have become.

 

[Flip]

Every time Canadians hear of the sale of another Canadian icon, the event conjures up the typical sheepish shrug of the shoulders as we surrender another chunk of our history.

That about describes it.  China is the one that scares me most.  It's not like Canada is
an partner, allie or friend.  We're entering into a new imperial age (I think) and I
worry that we have lost control of some of our best levers.

 

[TCBF]

We haven't lost control of anything unless we give it away.  The government can still determine where and in what form those resources end up.  It would take a panicked Parliament no time flat to pass a "Strategic Natural Resources Act".  They need merely to do a read of similar legislation in China, Russia, USA, etc. and wedge their phrasing into our bill.  Complaints could be met with a smirking "Golly, all we did was copy your legislation!"

 

[paganmystic]

I'm at a lose everyone ... even the CBC our national network won't even respond to my letters and emails if its in our national interest its not news and our tax money supports them. The CRTC in their mandate. They have to reply to your properly directed complaints within 10 days well for mine I'm still waiting July will be a yr. Licences for our natural resources are given to the highest bidder (usually the US) even though the Canadian bid was close to par and then when our primary processing plants are close and reopen south of the border and pacific rim. I don't know suggestions anyone.