At 13.3 per cent, the city has the highest concentration of tech talent in North America.
By Jennifer Campbell
IT IS HOME to Canada’s largest tech park, has the highest concentration of tech talent in North America. The city boasts a 1,850-acre futureplex that allows secure research and development into everything from autonomous vehicles and drones, to smart cities and smart farming, in weather conditions that range from 30 Celsius to -30 Celsius, complete with sleet, smog, snow and sun.
Ottawa’s technology sector has come a long way since the federal government funded Northern Electric and Bell-Northern Research (the company that became Nortel Networks) to make sure the country had home-grown technology parts. On the heels of this came Denzil Doyle, CEO and founder of Digital Equipment Canada, who bought 56 acres of farmland in Kanata, west of Ottawa, with a view to building a technology park there one day. It was all the advance seeding that would become strong roots in the telecom sector, part of which came with the arrival of Mitel, founded by Michael Cowpland and Terry Matthews in 1972.
Two decades later, more than 90 companies were firmly planted in the tech sector and, while the implosion of Nortel in 2009 should have slowed the growth, it didn’t because the area was now home to a rich resource — talented innovators, many of whom were ready to start new ventures.
Today, the National Capital Region hosts a big concentration of its tech sector on those 56 acres of farmland in Kanata, which is now called the Kanata North Business Park and is home to more than 540 companies that, according to the Kanata North Business Association, employ more than 33,000 people and together these companies contribute more than $13 billion to Canada’s GDP. The park includes a community space, run by the Kanata North Business Association, which has a co-working space, a next-door space for the L-Spark incubator, a room that hosts 1,600 meetings and events a year, and a neighbouring lab run by the University of Ottawa.
“We like the [presence of] universities because we’re making sure students get that co-op experience and are really connecting to the companies,” says Amanda Gordon, interim president and CEO of the Kanata North Business Association. “We know that if we can have a co-op student land here, even for one term, they’re appreciating what’s here. If they then go to another tech hub somewhere in the world, they’ve become brand champions for us. We also hope they may come back when they’re looking for affordable place to live and putting down those roots.”
Beyond Kanata, there are other Tech pockets across the city as well. Bayview Yards, headquarters for Invest Ottawa, the city’s lead economic development agency and a key player in the development of the region’s entrepreneurs, serves as an incubator and mentoring space for many entrepreneurs, whether they’re just starting out or taking the step of scaling their business. And there’s a budding tech sector in Gatineau, Que., just across the river from downtown Ottawa. The concentration of tech talent in the city sits at 13.3 per cent, the highest in North America, putting it ahead of even Silicon Valley.
The aforementioned futureplex, Area X.O, brings together Nokia, Ericsson, Blackberry QNX, Accenture along with Ottawa’s postsecondary institutions and all three levels of government to create what Sonya Shorey, Invest Ottawa’s vice-president of strategy, marketing and communications, calls “a $51-million R&D complex that enables the safe and secure development, testing, validation and implementation of a multitude of smart mobility technologies.” Intelligent transportation is a stronghold, with 100 organizations contributing to the development of vehicles of the future. But the test space also sees innovation at its 100-acre smart farm, with “producers looking at food safety and security solutions that allow farmers to achieve greater productivity, performance and profitability, [while] using less fertilizer, less water, generating 33 per cent increase in yield and reducing by 90 per cent their carbondioxide emissions.”
Building on those deep roots, the Ottawa region is home to innovative startups, stratospheric success stories and monster multinationals that continuously choose Ottawa because of its access to rich technology talent and its dynamic ecosystem, which includes several incubators, including programs at Invest Ottawa, the Industrial Research Assistance Program at the National Research Council and L-Spark, an incubator that sits in the heart of the Kanata North Tech Park. The ecosystem also includes many angel investors who are looking to support other ventures. Ottawa is also home to more than 130 embassies with all of the ideas they bring, and four educational institutions that are training the next generation of tech talent.
The big guns
In October 2022, Finnish communications and IT company Nokia announced that it would turn its existing Ottawa facility into a $412-million research and development technology centre that would create 340 new jobs in the 5G wireless technology industry while also expanding the company’s capacity in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning.0
In April 2023, Swedish wireless networking and telecom juggernaut Ericsson followed suit by announcing it would partner with the federal government and invest more than $470 in creating 5G and 6G networks, creating upwards of 1,500 jobs in Ottawa, where its existing facility is already the company’s biggest research and development office on the continent.
Between those two companies, and several others, 90 per cent of telecom industry R&D in Canada takes place here, Shorey says.
“Ottawa is also recognized as a public safety and security centre of excellence,” Shorey adds. “We have many, many defence companies that are doing incredible things with technology — from startup to SME to multinational.”
Ottawa, she says, is also distinguishing itself as a centre of excellence for smart cities.
“Our private track [at Area X.O] is not only done to spec, but it also has a variety of connected infrastructure elements that allow us to test different types of building infrastructure, street infrastructure and ways of keeping vulnerable road users safe,” she says, adding that projects have included low-speed automated shuttles, safe and smart intersections and safe railway crossings.
Recent success story Shopify was founded in Ottawa and also benefited from the tech talent that surrounds the city. Purveyors of an all-in-one commerce platform that allows people to start an online business, it was ubiquitous throughout the pandemic with its stock price topping $200 a share in 2021.
A pair of recent successes
About 14 years ago, Kyle Braatz was graduating from the University of Ottawa. Now he’s the founder and CEO of Fullscript, an online dispensary of professional-grade supplements that also connects patients with their health practitioners so both parties can track their progress. He founded the company 11 years ago, and in 2023, he was projecting revenues of $750 million. The company grew organically to $40 million in revenue and then it merged with one of its biggest competitors, accelerating growth to $300 million. Another merger and more growth helped move the company to where it is today, with its more than 400 brands and 20,000 SKUs that it stocks across North America, as well as 85,000 health practitioners on the platform. The practitioners like it because they no longer have to stock the supplements and neither practitioner nor patient have to pay for platform use.
Solink is another success story. It provides cloud video surveillance systems to restaurants, retailers, warehousers and financial organizations at 18,000 sites across 32 countries. Its customers include many Fortune 500 companies that use its services for security and loss prevention.
Launched in 2010, Solink started as a consultant company that created solutions for ATM fraud. In 2015, it pivoted to mobile and cloud services and landed Tim Hortons as a customer in 2016. The company grew 100 per cent year over year in the early days and in recent years, it continues to grow 80 per cent year over year.
“When there is more risk in the economy, you typically have more dishonesty, more crime, and as a result of more crime. We need more investment around security” says Mike Matta, CEO and co-founder of Solink. “The last [18 months have] actually been a huge catalyst for us.” Matta says his company benefits from Ottawa’s rich history in technology and the talent that exists in the city.
“The city has helped build some pretty influential foundations around communications and infrastructure,” he says. “There’s also the benefits of being close to the federal government. We’ve had a ton of support from the Industrial Research Assistance Program at the National Research Council.
Tech and the city’s symbiotic relationship
Shorey says the tech ecosystem benefits from the city’s expertise and talent and Braatz says the city benefits from having a number of entrepreneurs who see the world in non-conventional ways.
“For most entrepreneurs and technology companies, part of their DNA is thinking differently and having unique and different perspectives,” Braatz says. “Having really strong independent thinkers as leaders in the business community only contributes right back to society, because we look at what’s going on around us and say, ‘This doesn’t make sense. How do we how do we make it better?’”
Ben Morris, vice-president of technology strategies at the global investment management firm Wesley Clover, says the tech sector has a strong foundation and a dynamic landscape — now it has to figure out how to help its companies grow, scale and stay.
“We have many incredible Canadian startups that are acquired,” Morris says. “How do we maintain the Shopifys and Fullscripts to stay in Canada? We’re a G7 country and with that comes incredible conditions from a research perspective and yet that dynamic is challenged — are we a government town or a tech town?”
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