The U of T’s University College renovation by Kohn Shnier Architects and ERA Architects.Handout
Neil Seeman is an author, Internet entrepreneur and researcher. He is the author of Accelerated Minds: Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain.
Academia is where hyper-specialists, or “moles,” tend to thrive. Moles are animals that burrow deep in one specific hole for most of their lives.
But universities have tended to ignore the opposite of moles: the “mutts,” animals of mixed background, who sniff around a wide swath of territory and accumulate working knowledge in many disparate fields. Mutts imagine the universe as vast and ever evolving, requiring a wide angle view rather than one-track expertise.
With respect to the mole/mutt dichotomy, industry has generally leapt ahead of academia. Today’s rising industrial stars have realized that moles need mutts. The requisite alignment is evident in technology; we see it currently in AI and biotechnology, and in a range of fast-growing sectors.
So what can be done to make Canadian higher-education institutions see the value of mutts?
We continue to face an acute talent shortage in the multidisciplinary industries where we have the highest demand for workers: information technology and health care. And it’s not just about coders and doctors; AI, for example, demands interdisciplinary talents, including linguistics, ethics, math and computer science.
Meanwhile, the Information and Communications Technology Council has forecast that, by 2025, Canada will need 129,000 skilled workers in digital health and biotechnology, with training in data analysis, biostatistics, machine learning and information visualization.
The Globe and Mail’s 2022 list of Canada’s fastest-growing companies suggests that company leaders whose firms rank highly are more multidisciplinary than mole-like in their careers.
The founder of top-ranked Orion Construction Ltd. of Langley, B.C., Joshua Gagliardi, studied economics at UBC prior to a career in construction.
The president of second-ranked Power Staffing Solutions, a staffing and recruiting agency for IT and health care, is Saye Sathiyakumar, who studied graphic communications management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Rebecca Kacaba, chief executive officer and co-founder of third-ranked DealMaker, a tech platform enabling firms to raise capital, pursued a degree in psychology at Western, followed by law at the University of Windsor. She rose to partner at an international law firm before starting DealMaker.
This success of mutts in industry puts a harsh spotlight on how they are neglected in academia.
Some surging business sectors, such as the Canadian video game industry, prize multidisciplinary people variously skilled in visual aesthetics, fiction and programming.
But among the top 50 undergraduate game design programs ranked by The Princeton Review, just two are Canadian: the Vancouver Film School and LaSalle College Vancouver. Many of the U.S. programs on the top-50 international list are now housed at that country’s top research universities, such as MIT and NYU, offering interdisciplinary scholarship and entrepreneurship training.
For innovation to blossom, we need to cultivate what some observers such as Marion Thain of King’s College London have called “radical interdisciplinarity” to redress the large societal post-pandemic problems we face, from social inequities to distressed health care to urban blight.
So let’s change the incentives. Imagine if interdisciplinarity were rewarded economically in the workplace. Publishing patents and academic papers that bridge disciplines could be a new path to the tenure track, more so than the number of scholarly papers in high-impact journals. CEOs of tech firms could award bonuses for new product launches that draw on inspiration from non-technical fields.
We can learn from Oxford University’s program in philosophy, politics and economics. Employers across the world readily recruit from the PPE program since its graduates are “Renaissance scholars,” an old term for mutts. And the PPE degree remains today among the most sought after by Oxford students, with a more competitive admissions rate than computer science or medicine.
Mutts are everywhere among us. But the biggest impediment to their ascendance in Canada’s work force is that moles, on the whole, don’t understand them.
My colleague, Diane Finegood, a specialist in systems thinking at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, explains that mutts can be perplexing to moles. Moles see the future as linear. Mutts see the future as an Einstein shape, aperiodic, containing infinite possibility.
Linear or aperiodic, for Canadian innovation to flourish, moles need to work together with mutts.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says wholesale sales, excluding petroleum, petroleum products, and other hydrocarbons and excluding oilseed and grain, rose 0.4 per cent to $82.7 billion in July.
The increase came as sales in the miscellaneous subsector gained three per cent to reach $10.5 billion in July, helped by strength in the agriculture supplies industry group, which rose 9.2 per cent.
The food, beverage and tobacco subsector added 1.7 per cent to total $15 billion in July.
The personal and household goods subsector fell 2.5 per cent to $12.1 billion.
In volume terms, overall wholesale sales rose 0.5 per cent in July.
Statistics Canada started including oilseed and grain as well as the petroleum and petroleum products subsector as part of wholesale trade last year, but is excluding the data from monthly analysis until there is enough historical data.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VICTORIA – British Columbia is forecasting a record budget deficit and a rising debt of almost $129 billion less than two weeks before the start of a provincial election campaign where economic stability and future progress are expected to be major issues.
Finance Minister Katrine Conroy, who has announced her retirement and will not seek re-election in the Oct. 19 vote, said Tuesday her final budget update as minister predicts a deficit of $8.9 billion, up $1.1 billion from a forecast she made earlier this year.
Conroy said she acknowledges “challenges” facing B.C., including three consecutive deficit budgets, but expected improved economic growth where the province will start to “turn a corner.”
The $8.9 billion deficit forecast for 2024-2025 is followed by annual deficit projections of $6.7 billion and $6.1 billion in 2026-2027, Conroy said at a news conference outlining the government’s first quarterly financial update.
Conroy said lower corporate income tax and natural resource revenues and the increased cost of fighting wildfires have had some of the largest impacts on the budget.
“I want to acknowledge the economic uncertainties,” she said. “While global inflation is showing signs of easing and we’ve seen cuts to the Bank of Canada interest rates, we know that the challenges are not over.”
Conroy said wildfire response costs are expected to total $886 million this year, more than $650 million higher than originally forecast.
Corporate income tax revenue is forecast to be $638 million lower as a result of federal government updates and natural resource revenues are down $299 million due to lower prices for natural gas, lumber and electricity, she said.
Debt-servicing costs are also forecast to be $344 million higher due to the larger debt balance, the current interest rate and accelerated borrowing to ensure services and capital projects are maintained through the province’s election period, said Conroy.
B.C.’s economic growth is expected to strengthen over the next three years, but the timing of a return to a balanced budget will fall to another minister, said Conroy, who was addressing what likely would be her last news conference as Minister of Finance.
The election is expected to be called on Sept. 21, with the vote set for Oct. 19.
“While we are a strong province, people are facing challenges,” she said. “We have never shied away from taking those challenges head on, because we want to keep British Columbians secure and help them build good lives now and for the long term. With the investments we’re making and the actions we’re taking to support people and build a stronger economy, we’ve started to turn a corner.”
Premier David Eby said before the fiscal forecast was released Tuesday that the New Democrat government remains committed to providing services and supports for people in British Columbia and cuts are not on his agenda.
Eby said people have been hurt by high interest costs and the province is facing budget pressures connected to low resource prices, high wildfire costs and struggling global economies.
The premier said that now is not the time to reduce supports and services for people.
Last month’s year-end report for the 2023-2024 budget saw the province post a budget deficit of $5.035 billion, down from the previous forecast of $5.9 billion.
Eby said he expects government financial priorities to become a major issue during the upcoming election, with the NDP pledging to continue to fund services and the B.C. Conservatives looking to make cuts.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the debt would be going up to more than $129 billion. In fact, it will be almost $129 billion.
NANAIMO, B.C. – Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says he’ll be advising the Liberal party to flip some the challenges posed by an increasingly divided and dangerous world into an economic opportunity for Canada.
But he won’t say what his specific advice will be on economic issues that are politically divisive in Canada, like the carbon tax.
He presented his vision for the Liberals’ economic policy at the party’s caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C. today, after he agreed to help the party prepare for the next election as chair of a Liberal task force on economic growth.
Carney has been touted as a possible leadership contender to replace Justin Trudeau, who has said he has tried to coax Carney into politics for years.
Carney says if the prime minister asks him to do something he will do it to the best of his ability, but won’t elaborate on whether the new adviser role could lead to him adding his name to a ballot in the next election.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she has been taking advice from Carney for years, and that his new position won’t infringe on her role.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
:format(jpeg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/E5GZNP23WNBU3BVLZAKUZHODII.JPG)
