I was once invited by the Canadian government to talk in several cities about the possibilities of Canada-Taiwan collaboration in the high-tech industy. The talks took me to Vancouver, Banff, Victoria Harbour, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and the nearby technology town of Waterloo. Asians account for a large portion of Vancouver's 40%, and Toronto and Waterloo are close to the Great Lakes region, which not only has a strong telecommunications industry.
Jordan Reeves, executive director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, has asked me how to accelerate bilateral cooperation. I said that business is business, and if possible, I would like to invite a group of Canadian auto parts manufacturers to Taiwan to participate in forums. I think more auto parts will come from Taiwan, and in the future, after the rise of the ASEAN and South Asian markets and industries, we will not turn a blind eye to the fact that Taiwan may be the gateway for Canadian manufacturers to enter the Asian market. As the industry transforms and diversifies, electric vehicle (EV) opportunities emerge, and decentralized production systems are slowly established, there will be opportunities for two-way cooperation.
In addition to traditional telecommunications and automobiles, Canada has world-class companies in the fields of smart health and artificial intelligence (AI), according to Reeves. Canada is a vast country, but new start-ups are still concentrated in a few large cities. Taiwanese companies can bring in more Canadian software and system integration services to be a bridge between Canada and Asia, while Taiwanese companies have the opportunity to sell more hardware products to their partners.
Canada has a modest population size of about 38 million, but it is also among the G7. Canada does not have the aggressiveness of a large country when seeking international cooperation, but it has the patience and warmth to try to understand the needs of its partners.
When Acer sponsored the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, I was invited by Acer founder, Stan Shih, to go along and see this world class event. When Canada won the gold in ice hockey, my wife and I joined locals to celebrate the victory in streets of Vancouver.
When I asked a gentleman for directions, he took off his scarf with the Winter Olympics logo on it and gave it to my wife: "Madam, it's cold, you need this scarf." That really sums up what I like about Canada.
