This past week, Ottawa's Terry Matthews -- a serial entrepreneur and billionaire -- issued a dire warning about the tech industry. He said there are too many negatives facing Canadian firms and the problems in Ottawa should serve as a warning.

Should we listen to him?

Well, he has the credentials. Matthews has started up more than 80 tech firms. He sold one of them, Newbridge, for $7 billion. He's been savvy about using government funds to help many of his firms, and he's gone offshore when it's worked for him. Just a year ago, he spent nearly one billion dollars to make an Arizona company part of Mitel of Ottawa. He has accurately predicted the major trends in tech.

But he's not perfect. He thought the mighty dot-com crash would pass in six months to a year.

Matthews first spoke out about his concerns in the spring of last year in an Ottawa speech. He says three big problems are hitting every firm:

- He compares the high Canadian dollar to the so-called Dutch Disease of the 1960s. That involved the near collapse of the Dutch economy when natural gas was found and the Dutch gilder shot up in value.

- A lack of investment money of any kind is making it tough for a new company to get going.

- Offshore competition. In telecom, for example, Matthews says firms from overseas submit bids that are just a fraction of Canadian bids.

So what's to be done? Matthews offers up some 20 suggestions, but leading his list is something others have urged: That Canadian governments at all levels need to enact measures that help domestic firms.

Matthews admits he is something of a lone voice but he won't back down. In an interview with me, Matthews said, "It is very, very bad. Never have I seen an industry with so much upside and Canadian industry in such bad shape."

He added that if nothing changes "in 10 years we'll look back and say we used to have a great industry here."

Web site of the Week: 

Flashget.com .  This site offers free software that will help you manage all the other stuff you download from the web. It is handy for students to keep track of what they have stored on their computer.

This Sunday one of the stories on Tech Now will be looking at using GPS ankle bracelets on high school students who try to skip school.