You may be right that the next generation of technology will come from the engineers, but the corporate structure itself, and those patents are important to the development too.

The patents available today allow for either lower licensing costs for the LTE handsets that RIM would like to make, or allow for revenues (if properly exploited) that help pay for the research that will develop the next generation technologies. Telecommunications is not like software in that the next big thing is very hard to develop out of a small company with limited resources. 2 guys in a basement can develop the next big social media sensation, but the testing equipment and laboratories needed to test ideas in the wireless (and the optical) networking fields put this sort of research in the hands of the big players.

The reason you want to keep the head office in Canada is that big research projects are not send to far off research labs so much as they are given the lab next to the head office. If we want the jobs associated with cutting edge telecommunications we may need to keep a head office or two.

Why exactly was the NSN bid better than Ericsson? Nokia Siemens Networks talked about picking up 850 employees vs. 2500 from Ericsson.

Don't worry, all funding to her riding will be cut soon.

Surrey and Burnaby are essentially suburbs of Vancouver. I'm a bit surprised that Toronto's suburbs weren't included. I would have loved to see how well (Mississauga) and poorly (I'm guessing Vaughn) would have fared.

umm.... tell you what Ed. If the concern is what are we going to do when the orphanages are empty, let's just agree that we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

We'll never come to it.

Actually, if she did resign she shouldn't qualify for EI. If she didn't resign and was terminated instead, she still shouldn't get EI because it was termination for cause.