BY JENNIFER CAMPBELL
WHEN PRIME MINISTER MARK CARNEY announced that Canada would step up and exceed its NATO commitments by devoting five percent of GDP spending to defence by 2030, it was not just a fiscal target, it was a nation-building imperative.
So says Sonya Shorey, President and CEO of Invest Ottawa. “It is about sovereignty, Arctic security, military modernization and building a resilient economy,” Shorey says.
And Ottawa will be central to this initiative in the city’s bold move to be Canada’s innovation hub in everything from defence to AI. Ottawa’s Area X.O has been selected as the location of a new NATO defence innovation hub and that complements the thriving defence industry already headquartered here.
“Ottawa-Gatineau is where national defence strategy meets commercial innovation,” Shorey says. “It is founded on a combination of unique assets, strengths, expertise, infrastructure and proximity to federal agencies in a combination that does not exist anywhere else in this country and that cannot be replicated anywhere else in [Canada]. To me, there has never been a greater moment in time where we have this opportunity to bring those strengths to bear as a community and harness that potential.”
Shorey says her vision of Ottawa as Canada’s innovation hub is not about a single facility, asset or source of knowledge, but rather its broad ecosystem. Ottawa is home to 330 defence and security companies with a total of 10,000 employees. It is home to Canada’s largest technology park. It is where the Department of National Defence (DND), Defence Research and Development Canada, the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Communications Security Establishment Canada, as well as 65 federal labs, 134 embassies and four NATO test centres are located. Complementing those is Area X.O, Ottawa’s state-of-the-art R&D complex for emerging technology. Ottawa also boasts ONE9, the only defence venture capital and innovation platform.
Invest Ottawa and partners, including the Ottawa Board of Trade and the City of Ottawa, asked the federal government to designate Area X.O a special economic zone to serve as Canada’s flagship defence innovation facility and industry showcase. They also asked it to commit a defined share of new DND hires to the region as Ottawa faces disproportionate economic risk in the face of a 24 percent reduction in public service budgets. Finally, they asked that the government establish a sensitive compartmented information facility where government, the Canadian Armed Forces and industry can collaborate on defence, aerospace and space technologies R&D.
Meanwhile, Ottawa’s innovation ecosystem is already “advancing technologies that will define the future of defence, [Canada’s] economy and our world,” Shorey says, including AI, machine learning, quantum physics, cyber-security, drones and uncrewed systems, advanced robotics, semiconductors, and autonomous and connected systems.
Also bullish on Ottawa as an innovative hub for defence is Kelly Daize, Executive Director of the Kanata North Business Association.
“At this moment, with what’s going on with the world, there’s a massive opportunity [in defence and security], and there always was well before that,” Daize says.
Innovation for the Nation
Shorey asserts that Ottawa can be the centre of an innovation nation thanks to its more than 1,900 technology firms—a mix of multinational giants such as Nokia and Ericsson, unicorns such as Shopify and Kinaxis, and startups that eventually make it big. The city also boasts 96,500 technology workers. Indeed, Ottawa has the highest technology talent concentration in North America at 12.3 percent of its total workforce, putting it ahead of Silicon Valley for the sixth year in a row. Ottawa’s strengths are broad, and include AI, machine learning, SaaS, drones, advanced robotics, quantum, advanced networks, digital health, the Internet of Things, AR/VR and 5G.
That’s a lot to work with, and on top of that, Ottawa has Canada’s most educated workforce, with 65 percent holding postsecondary degrees and 91,675 citizens holding a master’s degree or higher. That statistic is poised to stay strong as there are eight post-secondary institutions in the National Capital Region and of the 168,000 students enrolled in Ottawa alone, 28,000 are in STEM fields.
Asked whether Ottawa can be an innovation hub for Canada, Daize says: “Absolutely.”
In addition to the number of technology companies here, and the fact that it’s home to Canada’s largest technology park, which has 540+ companies that make a $13-billion contribution to GDP, Daize notes that more than 90 percent of the telecommunications research and development has always been done in Ottawa.
“We tend to get the deep R&D people here. [They aren’t] quite as vocal as some of the other firms and other districts, but we’re working very hard to change that.”
Daize also notes that Ottawa is strong on less sexy buzzwords.
“We say ‘compound semiconductors’ and people tune out, but what does AI need, it needs light, and to go back to the Internet 1.0, which Canada led in building, especially in North America,” Daize says. “We need to go back to less copper and more light. And when you think of Ottawa, photonics and optics have always been our key areas. [They were some of the] more critical assets that Nortel had and that still exist here today in Ciena, and Ranovus and InPho—and on and on.”
Daize was recently told by the CEO of InPho that more than 50 percent of the photonics talent in the world lies between Quebec City and Toronto.
“It’s always been Ottawa, and that’s what I mean by saying we have to be more vocal,” Daize says. “We have to be out there and talking about these topics, and we have to make them more palatable so that people can understand. Conductors are the brains of everything and Canada can own the world in photonics and compound semiconductors. We’re one of only three clusters in the world and my hope is that we are No. 1 in the very near future.”
Daize adds that though the tech sector is extremely strong, partners need to do better at talking about it. She notes that multinational Nokia, the largest employer in her business park has located its global centres of optics and photonics in Ottawa. Ciena, another big employer in the Kanata North Business Association, acquired all of the optical assets from Nortel. She adds that a bunch of former Nortel employees and senior managers are still running data centres in Kanata. Ciena, the second-largest employer in the park, acquired all of the optical assets from Nortel, and Nortel alumni run many of the technology companies in the Ottawa area. Ericsson and Cisco are also large employers.
“The Internet 2.0 is Ottawa—100 percent,” she says.
Other companies of note she mentions are Shopify, Calian, MDA Space, InPho, Hyperlume, “and I could go on and on.”
Why Ottawa?
Tunch Akkaya does most of his business in the U.S., but he’s based in his hometown of Ottawa because of its supportive ecosystem. Akkaya identified a need for video replay when he was playing university football and set his sights on doing what other tech companies do for the NFL, but instead targeting the high school and university markets. Today, he provides his system to 1,000 football and hockey teams across North America and has an annual revenue of $2 million.
“My whole team has access to sales advisers, marketing, HR, and leadership that we can access for free,” Akkaya says, speaking at Invest Ottawa’s GCXpo preview night. “And then there are all kinds of companies—Rewind [Software], Noibu, Welbi—we can lean on for advice. For me, Ottawa is an awesome place to innovate.”
Solon Angel, founder of Mindbridge AI and now owner of Remitian AI, spoke to CAPITAL from his offices in Ottawa.
“Ottawa offers so much, and I’ve benefited so much from being in the Ottawa ecosystem,” he says, adding that he has to be in Florida for sales much of the time, but he’s set up 60 percent of his team in Ottawa.
“In my business, which is a compliance-driven, high-sensitivity business, the workforce [in Ottawa] offers nonquantifiable assets like trustworthiness, caring about your neighbour and following the rules. The other thing is Ottawa people have a sense of wanting to be sure. There’s a bit of cowboy mentality in California, but there’s a lot of value in wanting to double-check everything.”
The members of the venture capital (VC) community are fewer and more conservative than Silicon Valley, but they’re also very approachable and kind with their time, Angel says.
Ericsson, which was also at GCXpo also sees real value in being in Ottawa and is doubling down on its investment here. CTO Tania Lettert notes that the company just announced a $630-million investment last year, and hires 600 interns a year in Ottawa on a rotating basis. Of its 3,200 employees in Canada, 2,100 are in Ottawa.
“At Kanata North, all the different types of business and the talent we attract from global locations [makes for] a fantastic [anchor.] Having that talent pool where you can bounce ideas around, and that diversity of thought and then attracting international talent are all really important ingredients to be able to get innovation off the ground.”
And that, Shorey and Daize would say, is what it’s all about in Ottawa.
