Editorial Mining is high tech’s best customer

Not everyone on hand at the Association of Professional Engineers’ annual awards presentation heard Winegard make that remark. The Globe & Mail did, however, and its readers across the country are once again being misled about the nature of this business.

The main thrust of Winegard’s speech was not aimed at disparaging the mining industry. Speaking as the recipient of the APEO’s gold medal for his years of service in the profession, Winegard was urging the association’s members to do what they could to improve the quality of science education in the country. “I think our future standard of living and prosperity hang s in the balance,” he said.

But for someone in his position to refer to those in the natural resources fields as somehow requiring less brainpower than other sectors is preposterous, no matter how offhand the remark may have been made. It is not just misleading or unfair; it is simply wrong.

There’s no doubt that the country should pursue high technology research. What many seem to forget, including, apparently, those in the highest positions, is that high tech is not an end in itself. Its real value is ultimately measured by how it improves our lives by increasing the nation’s wealth.

Creating a better software package for lawyers or accountants to do their billing will not create wealth for Canada. What will create wealth is producing more nickel, copper or zinc and using those metals to manufacture goods that can be sold abroad.

In other words, high tech industries will never replace those wealth-creating industries it seems so fashionable to forget, whether it be steel making, pulp and paper, copper smelting or gold mining. What it can do is make those “dirty” industry jobs less dirty, less hazardous and more productive.

That is the kind of high tech strategy we should be pursuing, research that will allow us to produce more goods of better quality more cheaply than we have in the past. That is how we have already put high tech research to work. In fact, we excel at it.

Jack McOuat, a consulting engineer and active member of the APEO, says flatly that “mining is the highest tech industry in Canada.”

He — and just about anybody in mining — can provide an almost endless list of innovations in the industry that can only be classed as high tech. What’s more, our technology — from satellite remote sensing to geophysical surveying to computerized quality control in mill processing — is sought internationally.

“I could give him a list of our high tech uses that would knock his socks off,” says McOuat.

Winegard and many others have fallen into the trap of seeing the pursuit of high tech industries as an either-or proposition, as if one could only pursue high tech by giving up natural resources. That is the only known model, they seem to say, so it must be the only viable course of action.

The truth, however, is that Canada is uniquely positioned to enjoy a synergy between the two sectors of which others can only dream. The wealth generated by exploiting the natural resources we were blessed with permits us to fund high tech research, and the success of that research in turn allows us to improve the industries that are based on our natural resources and to expand upon them.

No one wants this country to revert to being merely a source of raw materials for others. But neither should we neglect our strengths in our eagerness to emulate the Japanese. We can learn from others, to be sure, but the industrial strategy we pursue should be one that arises from our past experience, one that is made in Canada, by Canadians and for Canadians.

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