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Canada is falling behind on true green innovation
June 21, 2010
Tyler Hamilton, Toronto Star
A new portrait of Canada’s green entrepreneurs is both encouraging – and worrying
What does Canada look like to the world leaders and foreign press who will be converging in Ontario at the end of the month for the G8 and G20 summits?
Before they arrive, they will surely carry images of Canada as a massive country with an abundance of natural resources – forests, fresh water, fossil fuels, minerals and farmland. From an economic and trade perspective, they will likewise see Canada as an exporter of oil and natural gas, wood products, metals and grains, as well as a destination for tourists not accustomed to such natural beauty.
The controversial fake lake in Toronto’s G20 media centre suggests that Canada aims to highlight, as we always have, these impressive resources that we have not created but have creatively exploited.
We’re lucky in one sense. “Many of these countries do not have the natural resources to fall back on that Canada does,” writes venture capitalist Andrew Heintzman in his latest book The New Entrepreneurs, out this week.
But Heintzman laments that Canada continues to depend so heavily on its natural resources, going so far as to call it a “curse” that prevents us from investing in new innovations or creating – not just talking about – bold new policies that will create a vibrant green economy in Canada.
