Well, that’s how I might have worded it if I had Industry Minister Tony Clement’s job; waving my fist like Lennin. As textbook economics go, countries move through transitions from relative serfdom to primary resource extraction to manufacturing and industrialisation, services, high technology and higher order services, and then finally to a blogging and SEO based economy (kidding).

Canada, though home to many promising and innovative technology and software companies is still very dependent on resource extraction and services. Our economy has not transitioned fully to a robust and globally competitive IT based model. So earlier this year, leading CEOs from Nortel (hanging in there) and Research In Motion (CEO obsessed with buying a hockey team) met with Steven Harper, Tony Clement and several other leading high tech executives to discuss the future of Canada’s economic growth and how the technology sector will play a vital role.

We may move on from, car parts, uranium, smoked salmon and oil yet. Not fully, but perhaps our technoloy sector will helpe to diversify our economy enough so that we can escape the branch plant capitalism label that has been hung on our collective economic identity. While what happens in Alberta is quite different than what happens in southern Ontario and from what happens in BC, we still have a national identity that we sometimes overlook. And national leadership on this issue I dare say might help.

In this bloggers opinion, it is essential that the government of Canada form a strategy to assist economic development at the local and provincial level to foster job creation and innovation in the IT, software and greentech sectors. The meeting earlier this year in Ottawa, hopefully illuminated this point to the conservative government who haven’t taken much initiative to create a strategy to support and foster our high tech sectors. Vancouver’s Green City Action Team and Monthly Greentech Forum at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre campus illustrate the leadership that mayor Gregor Robertson (our best looking mayor yet) has shown regarding transitioning Vancouver’s economy into a global high tech and specifically a green tech leader. Other organizations like the Vancouver Economic Development Commission have also put research into how government policy might better encourage growth in these sectors as Vancouver positions itself to become dominant in high tech development, design and services. I love my city, I just want to give it a great big hug. I always get like this around the time of the Vancouver Pride Parade.