The federal government is investing $52.4 million in a growth and innovation platform in the Waterloo–Toronto–Ottawa corridor.
On April 16 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a “Scale-Up Platform” to be implemented by three top innovation hubs — Communitech, MaRS Discovery District and Invest Ottawa. The federal government says the Platform is the first of its kind in Canada, and that its support for innovative companies will create 18,000 skilled jobs.
Ottawa is committing $18 million to Communitech, $17.5 million to MaRS Discovery District and $16.9 million to Invest Ottawa.
Through the Platform the three organizations will pool their resources to help 30 Ontario companies scale up and achieve revenues of $100 million or more by 2024, while also providing services to thousands of others, including coaching and advice and greater access to capital, talent and global markets. It will also build partnerships with post-secondary institutions.
“Tech companies that generate more than $100 million in annual revenue will be Canada’s next generation of anchor firms,” said Iain Klugman, president and CEO of Communitech. “For the first time in decades, we have a crop of scale-ready firms that are on the path to $100 million. Our job—through the Scale-Up Platform—is to help those high-growth firms find the talent and capital to accelerate their growth. We need to pool our expertise, our networks, and our resources to help them compete globally and create good-paying jobs for Canadians.”
The Waterloo–Toronto innovation corridor currently ranks as one of the top 20 technology clusters in the world.
