Communications Research Centre Canada

                                                      Iconic Canadian R&D Institution on Death's Door

The Shirleys Bay Campus
The large building in the centre is the CSA's David Florida
     Laboratory, recently closed. This facility performed pre-flight
testing on most of Canada's satellites before space launch.

While shopping recently I bumped into Lynell Wight, a former work colleague at the Communications Research Centre (CRC) who always has the scoop, and she asked me if I had heard the latest news. Now retired, she spent her whole career working in senior administrative positions including for the Director General (before there was a president), and for several of the research vice presidents. What she told me was shocking, but not unpredictable. Our old employer is in the process of axing another 100 positions and those who are still in their jobs must compete for 17 of the remaining 25 jobs. Only eight of the current staff are confirmed to remain in their existing positions

Based at Shirleys Bay just east of Kanata, for most of its existence CRC was the best example of any federal government laboratory that focused on applied research for the benefit of Canadian companies. I worked there from 1993 until 2012, at which time I was declared surplus and elected to take the early retirement package at age 55.

Thirteen years later the federal government is shedding another 30,000 to 50,000 positions. The last time around Industry Canada, our home department, assigned most of its cuts to CRC, eliminating 120 positions in 2012. That wiped out half of the research programs, the Technology Transfer Office, business incubator program, Creative Visual Services, Microelectronics Lab and Model Shop.

Originally dedicated to applied research and development in satellite communications and to radio and television broadcasting, it later expanded to include photonics, broadband networks, and wireless communications, among others. The CRC will shortly be reduced to a tiny research rump in support of spectrum management at what used to be called Industry Canada.

In 1969 the Communications Research Centre was created as an agency of the newly formed Department of Communications, taking charge of the Shirleys Bay site management from the Defence Research Telecommunications Establishment. It was the era of Canada's shrinking military significance, with increased government emphasis on civilian R&D that was focused on telecommunications services delivered via satellite.

In the beginning more than 400 people worked at CRC, which at that time had responsibilities for Canada's space program. The CRC's down-slide began with the formation of the Canadian Space Agency in 1989, resulting in the transfer of significant budget resources and positions to the new agency based in Saint-Hubert on the south shore of Montreal.

When I arrived on the scene in the early 1990's, Industry Canada was experimenting with a program to provide more autonomy to CRC in an effort to make it more aligned with industry needs. A private sector board of directors was established and Industry Canada granted the lab the authority to retain revenues from technology licensing and contracting-in with companies, allowing the funds to be reinvested in the organization. Research staff were also paid a portion of the royalties earned on inventions that were licensed to companies, further driving entrepreneurial effort at the lab.

CRC had a robust patent portfolio and specialized proprietary software which it licensed widely to companies. During my time in the Technology Transfer Office, the lab was generating two to three million dollars a year in revenues from companies and outside entities that sought our world-leading expertise and lab facilities. We were also generating plenty of media attention. CRC was the only lab in the Government of Canada to win an Emmy for technical achievement in broadcast engineering.

I'm grateful for the opportunity I had to work with my boss Jeet Hothi for the better part of a decade. He led our team and was the impetus for us winning several federal awards in technology transfer prior to our disbandment in 2012.

The lab had always been a technology transfer leader, but the pace accelerated under the new organizational model. A study conducted by Doyletech, a high tech consulting firm, calculated that CRC over a forty-year time span through technology transfer, and ex-employees leaving to form start-up companies, resulted in the creation of hundreds of companies generating thousands of jobs.

Despite this commercialization success, Industry Canada decided to deeply cut the research institute in 2012, which spelled the beginning of the end for what was once a leading laboratory in applied research with an over-sized impact on stimulating jobs and growth in the Canadian economy.

Our Technology Transfer Office team with
     an achievement award in recognition of our work 
     From left to right - Kevin Shackell, Laura Cashen,
   Trudy Krysinowski, CRC President Veena Rowat,
Sheryl Dupuis, Jeet Hothi and Amira Coja

This building formerly housed the CRC

Innovation Centre, a high tech  business

incubator I managed at the end of my career

I went back to the Shirleys Bay campus the other day to take a few pictures for this blog post. It evoked  many good memories on my years of service to CRC. Almost all of this sprawling campus consisting of lab buildings and outdoor test ranges, has reverted to the management of the Department of National Defence, which has had a presence on the site dating back to the Defence Research Board during the Second World War.

It's ironic that Industry, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the name of the department responsible for the once iconic Communications Research Centre, is the ministry responsible for dismantling what was once a dynamic innovator, huge jobs creator, and internationally acclaimed scientific research institute.

CRC will be gone in all but name, and maybe that too will be erased in coming years -- leaving nothing but a footnote in Canada's telecom history. For now the name is still on the sign at the entrance to the campus in case you want to take a look for the sake of posterity before it's gone. You'll find the site across from the 19th Tee on Carling Avenue.