Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to discuss the issue of maximizing jobs in Canada. I'll make a brief statement and then I'll answer questions you might have afterwards.
I'm the co-founder and chief executive officer of Startup Canada, which is a grassroots, entrepreneur-led movement that brings together, celebrates, and gives a voice to Canada’s entrepreneurship community.
In 2012 we completed a cross-country tour during which we visited 20 cities and received input from 20,000 startups and entrepreneurs, from mompreneurs and artisans to manufacturing and high-growth tech entrepreneurs. With the feedback from these entrepreneurs we launched an entrepreneur connect strategy to improve entrepreneur access to support, mentorship, and resources and to help entrepreneurs communicate and connect experiences as they grow their ventures.
We have become a voice for entrepreneurs over the last two years and now are the go-to social media site for entrepreneurs in Canada. We have piloted startup communities across the country to strengthen community support for entrepreneurs and to share best practices. We're in Fredericton, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, York Region, London, Sault Ste. Marie, Winnipeg, Calgary, Nanaimo, and other communities.
We've heard from entrepreneurs that it's difficult for them to know where to go to access support for their businesses. Essentially what has been missing is an umbrella organization to connect the entrepreneur support infrastructure in Canada.
This is where Startup Canada plays a role. Startup Canada connects accelerators, incubators, colleges, universities, co-working hubs, entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and the necessary elements that foster an entrepreneurship culture and community in Canada. We have a mission to create jobs on an entrepreneurial basis.
We know that the rate at which we produce major entrepreneurial successes is directly correlated with the presence of a strong entrepreneurship community and culture. That's why we submitted a budget submission to this committee to ask for a partnership of $15 million over three years to help us reach more entrepreneurs.
Our Startup communities are led by entrepreneurs with a mandate to drive economic activity through entrepreneurship in their communities. They identify weaknesses and strengths in their communities and fill gaps as needed.
Many rural communities simply don't have the resources that urban communities have. For example, earlier this year Startup Smithers launched a venture fund with the local forest council to support entrepreneurial investment and retention in Smithers.
The communities across Canada are interconnected. They can leverage resources from each other and learn from each other. For instance, the strength of Waterloo in the high tech sector can benefit the strengths of the resource sector in Calgary.
Connecting entrepreneurs to this wealth of knowledge and these connections can help in creating jobs and innovation in Canada. We currently have 20 Startup communities in Canada. If we're successful in our budget submission, we will launch more than 100 Startup communities in urban and rural municipalities. This is the first pillar of our strategy.
The second pillar of our strategy is called Startup Connect. This is an online website that provides a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs to quickly and easily find and access support, space, finance, mentors, talent, events, news, and opportunities to grow their startups and grow jobs. Startup Connect helps entrepreneurs to easily identify and access support within and outside of their communities. We are already in talks with NRC concierge service to position Startup Connect as a communications vehicle and lead generator for federal government services for entrepreneurs.
The third pillar of our strategy is the installation of 1,000 community connect points across Canada. Community connect points are business support kiosks equipped with local community resources and online access to Startup Connect installed in business, economic development, and academic community spaces across Canada, including rural Canada, where support systems may be less accessible.
Together, Startup communities, the Startup Connect website, and physical access points across Canada will go a long way in building the foundations to connect Canada's entrepreneurship infrastructure and improve entrepreneurs' user experience of it.
In the past five years alone, the Government of Canada has invested billions of dollars to support innovation, commercialization, small business, and entrepreneurship. The Canadian accelerator and incubator program is a good example of this. However, investments to date are made in individual organizations, programs, industries, demographic segments, and regions, which while strengthening the individual nodes fails to connect entrepreneurs into these nodes and connect these nodes to each other.
I want to highlight that this failure is not government's alone, but also the private sector community's. We believe that by working together we can connect Canada's entrepreneurship ecosystem to ensure that every dollar invested is maximized to its fullest potential. A strong entrepreneurship ecosystem will only generate more economic activity, and this will create more jobs.
As closing remarks, we support any investments or measures that foster an entrepreneurship culture in Canada. We believe that cultivating a better ecosystem for entrepreneurship will lead to better and more jobs for Canadians.
Thank you.