Canada: A partner in Homeland Security

William New

International Roundup: March 5, 2003 - As the U.S. government steers determinedly toward bigger expenditures on homeland security technologies, it is finding a friend in its closest trading partner, Canada. Officials form four Ottawa tech companies were in Washington this week to present their products.

The group included: PathMinder, a rising maker of optical turnstiles; EION which sells Internet protocol software for telecommunications and defense equipment manufacturers that can quickly upgrade systems for security, Reponse Biomedical, which develops detection systems for biological threats such as anthrax and botulism; and KOM networks, which offers leading-edge storage-management software solutions.

Representatives of the Ottawa Center for Research and Innovation and the Greater Washington Initiative also visited.

Small and medium-sized firms generally have a more difficult time entering the U.S. defense and security markets, and foreign firms face another layer of Difficulty, said David Nadler, a partner at the Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin and Oshinsky law firm who specializes in representing tech companies in U.S.

Government-contracting matters.

In his meeting with the Canadians, Nadler described the “two-headed monster” that new companies face. They must get the attention of the “requirements” people in government, technical people who decide what the government needs, and then they have to get to the people who do the purchasing.

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