What IT Wants From The Next White House

BARRY JOHNSON Bio: Manager of FrontierPC.com, a Vancouver, B.C.-based IT solution provider. Endorsing: Declined to state The Skinny: As a Canadian, Johnson won't be able cast a vote in this year's presidential election, but like many people outside the U.S. he's watching the proceedings with a great deal of interest -- not least because the next president's trade and economic policy will have repercussions well beyond American borders.

WHAT HE WANTS FROM THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION:

The Democrats have us extremely worried about tearing up NAFTA. The words I've heard on the news were that 'We're thinking about tearing up the free trade agreement,' which I think is just silly, because we really are one economy. All of us are saying, 'What the heck? What's going on here?'

We can see that the U.S. is having some trouble economically, and in Canada we're always nervous that it will follow because we're so tightly involved with each other. So we're expanding our business to an e-commerce division which we just opened up to help recession-proof us. So basically we're spreading our business from being regional to being national. So if one region, like Vancouver, happens to be really slow, we could be doing well in Toronto. There's a safety valve in having more regional plays.

Green IT is here to stay and government can do a lot to promote it. Our government has actually legislated recycling fees as well as tax cuts for green companies. On the environment, Canada's truly a leader. When you buy a PC you pay a $12 recycling fee. You have incentives for small, medium and large corporations, tax incentives for being green.