BDO LLP | INTERNATIONAL TECH HUB
06
WHERE ARE THE KEY TECH HUBS LOCATED? Today there are good tech companies right across the country. While there are still some specialised concentrations, in the past 20 years the requirement to be in a particular geographic area in order to develop a good software company in Canada has significantly reduced. In some cases, it can be a positive advantage to be in a geography that’s outside of the main centres. That’s not to say that there aren’t clusters, and they do tend to be in the bigger cities. Toronto has the biggest concentration of tech companies, followed by Vancouver and Montreal. And then you have Waterloo, which has always had a historical focus on technology through the world renowned University of Waterloo. Vancouver has long been known for gaming and electronic media, while Montreal has some very significant players in the AI space. Toronto has always been strong on mobile and software development. All the major banks and finance institutions have a strong presence in Toronto, so it’s no surprise that there is a strong fintech sector here too. HOW EASY IS IT TO ACCESS TALENT? Canada offers a rich pool of tech talent. A key reason for this is the country’s immigration system. Recent federal budgets have offered some administrative relief that’s geared to getting tech-type employees into Canada and streamlining the whole visa process. The other key factor is that the US has tightened up some of its entry requirements. This means that you have a lot of highly skilled coders and developers and skills – just the sort of people that emerging tech companies need – who might once have headed to Silicon Valley and other tech hubs stateside but are now drawn to Canada instead. In addition, we’re seeing job traction in the tech market from some of the big tech companies that are looking to move into Canada and setting up in key geographies like Toronto,
Vancouver and Waterloo. This can be a double-edged sword, of course, because the big players have the power to pay bigger salaries and attract some of the high-value talent away from the start-ups and emerging scale-ups. But on the other hand, their very presence adds to the influx of highly skilled workers, increases demand and helps to expand the whole tech ecosystem in each area. In terms of geography, we can’t overlook the importance of Canada’s proximity to the United States, which has always had a big impact on how our business world operates here and how we see our relationship with other countries. Because we have access to such a huge trading partner, we are naturally an export focused country, with the US always the first choice.
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