'Secret sauce' is bringing together York Region's technology firms

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 6, 2017
By Lisa Queen

York Region's technology sector is waiting to exhale.

The industry has been holding its breath since July, looking forward to an imminent announcement from the federal government.

Mulling over more than 50 bids, Ottawa is looking to provide $950 million in seed money to five "supercluster" groups developing bold technologies that will elevate Canada's profile and supercharge their regional economies.

In York Region, the bid is being led by Markham-based regional innovation centre ventureLAB.

ventureLAB has pulled together more than 50 public and private organizations, which contributed more than $300 million, to submit their advanced microelectronics bid.

Microelectronics is the design, manufacture and use of microchips in "all kinds of cool devices," ventureLAB chief operating officer Melissa Chee said.

"So, for the farmer that's sitting in Stouffville, it means that his farming equipment gets to be cooler and faster," she said.

The future development of driverless vehicles, artificial intelligence, medical devices and more are all microchip-dependent and York Region is a central player in the Canadian sector, Chee said.

"We have lots of these big, multinational technology leaders here in York Region, which makes us very unique in terms of the ecosystem across Ontario and across Canada, because we have all of these big players that spend an enormous amount of R and D (research and development) dollars in this region and it percolates across the country," she said.

The "secret sauce" is getting traditional competitors to come together to work on this project, Chee said.

Winning the bid would help rekindle Canada's leading place on the technology world stage, which was diminished following the demise of Canadian multinational telecommunications giant Nortel, Chee said.

"If we don't continue to reinvest and find our way back, we will be reliant and dependent on foreign innovation," she said.

"We would rather be dependent on ourselves, and be able to look at ourselves and say we are able to provide that for the world."

York Region could join a handful of areas around the globe where technology superclusters boast a thriving technology community whose buzz fuels their economy, said Dan Gordon, board chair of Colleaga - a non-profit organization building innovation communities, as well as a member of the ventureLAB bid.

"We're trying to get there. That's what the whole point of this (federal) money is. We're apparently No. 15 in the world - and when you're No. 5 (for example) in the world, you're seeing tens of billions of dollars more in your economy; in your venture capital; in the number of companies that are formed," he said.

"And all the universities are hooked in, and they're generating more research dollars, and they're generating the training and education for the people who are coming in and are needed in these industries."

Winning the bid would boost the local economy, which employs 60,000 in the technology sector, ventureLAB president Jeremy Laurin said.

"When communities are thriving because their industries that employ their citizens are thriving, then you start to feel this spirit that spans everybody. It connects Main Street to the large corporations," he said.