The city of Ottawa and Canada as a nation don't put enough emphasis on technology, Nortel's chief technology officer charged Thursday as he spoke to a crowd of technology executives in Ottawa.

"There isn't a sense of urgency around economic development, around creating a stronger culture," said John Roese.

Roese says Ottawa just isn't keeping up with the rest of the world.

"I think there's a bit of complacency that we really maybe are not operating as fast as we should," he said.

Report card

His report card for the city of Ottawa included Cs and Ds and his overall assessment is that Ottawa just isn't aggressive enough.

Roese says the federal government is partly to blame. He says the government needs to buy Canadian and keep Canadian companies in the federal bidding process.

"Go look at who the technology providers are to the various governmental agencies and ask them if those companies are from Canada. And if they aren't, ask them 'Did you actually give those Canadian companies an opportunity to compete recently.'"

Sense of urgency

Roese says there is a sense of urgency to boost investment in Canada's tech sector because it offers long-term benefits.

"While the rest of the world maybe gets it a little better than we do and you can clearly see it in our economic ranking from dropping from top of the list down to the middle of the pack - that's not a very good statistic and it's a result of focus," he said. "You can reverse that very quickly by just refocusing on this space."

Many of the technology executives in the audience agreed with Roese's blunt assessment of the Canadian industry.

"I think it was pretty fair. I mean, I think we as Ottawa have been in a great position over a long period of time and maybe we've taken our eye off the ball a little bit," Gary Hannah, Chair of the Ottawa Centre for Research, told CTV News.

Others said Roese should re-examine Nortel's own buying practices.

"Their business with local and Canadian companies is actually declining," said Chuck Gaudreau of Macadamian Software.

Layoffs complete

On another front, Roese says he believes recent layoffs at Nortel are complete.

After a six month review, Nortel's next change will pinpoint where the company's research is conducted.

In a few weeks, Nortel will do a major shuffle of its research facilities and employees.

Roese wouldn't provide any details, but said Ottawa is in a good position to deal with the upcoming changes.

With a report from CTV's Paul Brent

EXTENDED COVERAGE: Watch portions of Nortel exucutive John Roese's speech.