Engineer General
Connecting Political decisions to Technology – the Engineer General of Ontario
Imagine living in Ontario without electricity, the Internet or cell phones. These are a fraction of the technology that now exists that is growing at ever faster rates. We cannot run a new world state without connecting our technology gurus to our political masters. It is simply moving too fast.
C.D. Howe, Engineer and Cabinet minister in the WW2 era, showed us how to drive our economies with innovations from applied science and engineering. We must have such a Cabinet ‘Minister of Everything’ today who can drive our Technology Strategy to inform and support an Industrial strategy for Ontario. We now have neither. We need to change this.
Many Chinese politicians are engineers. In contrast, almost no Canadian politicians are engineers.
Our governments need to have trustworthy and persistent technology advice on how to best develop our natural resources to create high value finished goods. Canadian engineering has a proven track record at the leading edge of communication, transportation and energy systems. Canada began with close connections between our engineers and politicians allowing us to build the trans Canada railroad and highway; to build the St Lawrence Sea Way; to invent the telephone, digital communications and the cell phone; to develop public power with the world’s first AC generators at Niagara Falls.
Today, we have advanced technologies coming from our Universities and Colleges among the best in the world, but, the growing gap between technology and politics means we do not fully benefit from our talented applied scientists and engineers.
We are calling this CD Howe surrogate, the Engineering General. Please advance Ontario by supporting the creation of this ministry.
Thank you,
Engineers For the Profession Inc.