Canada’s High Tech Leaders

If you ask most Americans, or Canadians, for that matter, where Canadian high tech is concentrated, they will point you to the great metropolitan centers of Toronto and Montreal. But in reality the real centers of tech growth in Canada are concentrated elsewhere.

One particular standout is Ottawa, the nation’s capital. Over the past decade, Ottawa’s image has evolved from a drab and even stern city to that of a conurbation displaying major demographic, social, cultural and economic diversification (Culturally and socially, Ottawa is now on par with other North American cities of equivalent size).

Although the public service sector remains prominent, the economy of the national capital has undergone major changes. Since 1990, the high-tech sector has grown at such a pace that in 2000, according to Mallet (2002), 80,000 individuals were on the payroll of knowledge-economy businesses, almost as many as in government offices. And Despite the sector downturn in 2001, Ottawa still ranks in the top ten North American cities where a high percentage of people holding university (bachelor and Ph.D.) degrees. This same pattern can be observed in the capital region of the United States as well.

Table 1. Percentage (%) of the workforce in professional, scientific and technical services in the United States and in Canada (top 20).

Source: Statistics Canada (2001) and US Census (2000).

Indeed in the search for Silicon Valley North, Ottawa ranks close to the top by almost every measurement --- jobs per capita, skilled workers, and high-tech growth. Ottawa may seem less than ‘hip and cool’ to most outsiders, but it outperforms its more vaunted Canadian counterparts in terms of tech growth. Overall if any area is to be considered the ‘Silicon Valley North’ it would be the Ottawa region.

Table 5. Science and engineering employment shares for the top 30 North American cities, 2000 and 2001.

Source: Canadian Census (2001) and U.S. Census (2000).

The other major high-tech centers in Canada are Calgary and Toronto. But even here some of the results are surprising. If you look in detail at Toronto region you find that most of the high-tech growth has been clustered not in the city, but in the sprawling suburban regions around the area, particularly in places such as Kitchener. Similarly in the greater Montreal area, much of the high-tech growth is clustered around the City of Laval, an independent municipality north of the Isle de Montreal.

What does this tell us about high-tech in Canada? For one thing it shows that places that have low crime rates, a family friendly atmosphere tend to be the best places for technology companies --- very much like the pattern in the United States. Although Canada is a very different country, the fertile ground for tech companies remains very much the same both sides of the border.

Rémy Tremblay is Canada Research Chair on Knowledge Cities, Université du Québec à Montréal