A new site called ConsiderCanada.com was recently launched by The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation and economic development groups representing 10 cities in Canada. Its focus is bringing tech investors to Canada.
The group named C-11, includes major cities that hope the new initiative will attract investment; Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, the Waterloo Region, Halifax and Saskatoon.
ConsiderCanada answers the question “Why would I invest in Canada?”
The site highlights and lists reasons why foreign companies would expand their business to Canada, reasons such as banking, economic growth, lower new business taxes and a lower R&D costs.
According to the World Economic Forum, Canada has the world’s soundest banking system and has had the fastest economic growth among G7 countries for 2011 based on data from IMF (International Monetary Fund).
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R&D advantages, success stories and videos from each of the C-11 cities are available on the site including a direct link to each of the cities economic development websites. By creating a streamlined organization, individual cities can work together to share best practices and compete globally, a message that Lee Malleau, CEO of Vancouver economic development says is “better delivered as a nation and collectively”.
Mailleau says one of the biggest obstacles is the perception that Canada is a highly taxed country. But according to Mailleau that’s just not the case and in terms of corporate taxes, she claims Canada is actually one of the lowest. We could see how people might get that idea, considering Canadian citizens pay a high rate of sales tax compared to other countries.
Over the last few years we’ve seen international companies such as Huawei, invest millions in research and development facilities in Ottawa and Huawei has in turn received over $6 million back from the Ontario government in form of R&D grants. And as Huawei conveniently stated within its latest press release, Ontario intends to invest $67 million in R&D over the next five years.
Canada is the home to a myriad of tech companies and research facilities like the Blackberry manufacturer RIM. If you’d like to learn more about Canada, check out ConsiderCanada.
We want to get a unified message out. To make sure that a company looking for a trading relationship or looking for investment (opportunities) is going to look at Canada. Nobody is going to pick you if they don’t know about you.” Mike Darch, executive director of The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI)
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