You can't toil in the high-tech trenches without regularly climbing a mountain of studies, observed The Globe and Mail’s John Kapica Dec. 5. That included a study sponsored by the Benchmarking and Metrics Team of the Canadian e-Business Initiative, a division of Industry Canada, which stated that Canadian small-to-medium enterprises (SME) lag way behind their US counterparts in Internet adoption. CeBI's finding that 28.4 per cent of Canadian SMEs had "no intention" of adopting Internet-based business systems, which study director Prof. Ron McLean of York University's Schulich School of Business regarded as a "disturbing statistic."
Martin faces ethics minefield
Paul Martin, former federal finance minister, has a fortune worth an estimated $50 million – which could put him in more real and potential conflicts of interest than any of his contemporary predecessors, reports the National Post Dec. 5. "He's going to need really, really good advice from an independent ethics commissioner, hopefully one with real experience in looking at the kinds of complex assets that Mr. Martin owns," says political science Prof. Ian Greene, Faculty of Arts.
Sheltered York U. students should be ashamed
"These York University students should be ashamed of their immature remarks to Lt.-Col. Pat Stogran of the Canadian Armed Forces," writes Steve Shand in a letter printed Dec. 5 in The Ottawa Citizen. He was referring to students heckling Stogran during a recent speech the commander gave at York praising Canadian troops he led in Afghanistan. "It is easy to criticize from a safe and free environment such as York University."