Thank you very much, Chair.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
With me today is Dr. Bruce Archibald, the president of FedDev, and Clair Gartley, vice-president, business, innovation and community development. As well, on my right is Richard Dicerni, deputy minister, and Kelly Gillis, chief financial officer for Industry Canada.
As many of you know, Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched FedDev Ontario with a $1-billion, five-year mandate to deliver economic development and growth to the region by addressing the unique needs and priorities of workers, our businesses, and our communities in southern Ontario.
The global economic recession has had a significant impact on every region of Canada, including southern Ontario. As Canada's most populous region, it has been hailed the engine of our national economy since the 19th century. But the recession was very difficult, and we are now at a crossroads in our history. The economic downturn hit our manufacturing sector particularly hard, forcing plant closures and widespread layoffs. We were challenged by the impacts to a greater degree than other regions throughout the nation.
With the establishment of FedDev in 2009 our government set out to work with the communities, businesses, and residents of southern Ontario to help reshape the region's economy. Although economic recovery is clearly under way, the economy still remains fragile. We have been working hard to position the region once again as the backbone and driving force of the Canadian economy, and we've accomplished a great deal so far.
We began providing immediate assistance by launching the southern Ontario development program to address short-term, immediate realities by making long-term investments. Through Canada's economic action plan we introduced programs to give families, businesses, and communities a much-needed boost.
I'm very pleased to tell the committee that we have committed more than half a billion dollars in economic funding, which has resulted in some considerable successes in all of our communities. These include support for local arenas and small businesses, and improvements to roads and sewers.
For example, in Windsor, a region hit particularly hard by the recent economic downturn, we helped bring to life a state-of-the-art MediaPlex for St. Clair College. This project has created approximately 250 jobs.
In Guelph, with our help Melitron Corporation, a leading supplier of advanced manufacturing solutions, has implemented lean manufacturing processes, and Hammond Power Solutions has expanded its operations developing leading-edge technologies.
And we've reached out to our communities, our families and children by supporting renovations at the Boys and Girls Club in East Scarborough, as an example.
I could, Mr. Chair, go on literally for days citing examples of the positive impact that FedDev Ontario is having on the southern Ontario economy.
Now, thanks in part to our government's economic action plan, some 240,000 more people in Ontario are working today than in May 2009. While the economy in the region and across Canada is doing better than many other countries, we realize that it isn't just about numbers. It is, in fact, about people. It's about our families, our businesses, and their financial security.
As the economy grows stronger in southern Ontario we are expanding our focus on creating better, longer-lasting, better-quality jobs. We are building on our accomplishments so far by investing in innovation, projects that will help businesses increase their productivity and production and reach new markets here in Canada and around the world.
Our goal now is to develop the right tools to make sure that our businesses and communities can continue to innovate, to grow, both now and into the future. To do this, ladies and gentlemen, we are working right now on what we call the southern Ontario advantage. To ensure regional growth, attract the smartest minds, build and bring to market the most promising ideas, we are now focusing on four key areas.
First is our people advantage. Ladies and gentlemen, you will agree with me that the people of southern Ontario are indeed our greatest asset here. They are knowledgeable, experienced, and talented. But we continue to face pressures from an aging population. We have fewer workers in the skilled trades and we are struggling with the need to retrain employees to use the more technologically driven products to fill those more technologically driven jobs.
While we have a world-class post-secondary education system in southern Ontario, indeed across the country, we fall far behind compared to other OECD countries in degrees that foster innovation. These are degrees in sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
We are building our future talent pool of scientists, engineers, and business leaders through training and mentorships. We're helping graduates prepare for their first interview and at the same time giving local business access to the technical skills and knowledge of these students who can help fuel their innovation capacity.
We are also developing the skills and potential of our people by turning their ideas into products that are competitive in a global marketplace. This is what we're accomplishing through, for example, our new scientists and engineers in business initiative. We are working with not-for-profit organizations and post-secondary institutions that support skills development for recent graduates of sciences or engineering to improve their success at starting up new companies.
The second pillar of our southern Ontario advantage is the knowledge advantage.
Canada, ladies and gentlemen, is ranked 16th among the OECD countries in business expenditures on research and development, as a percentage of our GDP. We recognize this, and there are a number of reasons for this. Mostly what we are hearing around the province is that businesses, small businesses for example, just do not have the research capacity on-site nor the skills to bring innovative products to the marketplace.
We are addressing this through our applied research and commercialization initiative. This is a recently launched $15 million project that will help post-secondary institutions, our colleges and universities, bring new innovations into the marketplace by building partnerships to use their research capacity with our small and medium-sized business sectors.
We are also working through another new program called the technology development program, designed to further bridge the gap that exists between research and commercialization and put in place the conditions where ideas can be nurtured and high-quality jobs can be created. It encourages greater collaboration among post-secondary institutions and not-for-profit groups to bring advanced technologies with commercial potential to the marketplace.
The third pillar on the southern Ontario advantage is wrapped around our entrepreneurial advantage. Our stakeholders have been very clear with us that we need to provide entrepreneurs with access to proper funding to support their ideas and foster a renewed confidence and commitment from the investing world.
We responded to this great need with the launch of a new $190-million investing in business innovation initiative. This is designed to help start-ups bring new products, processes, and practices to market faster, by leveraging angel and venture capital investments in southern Ontario.
But we're also focused on the big picture, the overall picture, of what it will take for Ontario to be competitive with the Chinas and the Indias of the world. This is why we invested up to $210 million to launch the new prosperity initiative. This initiative is designed, of course, to create jobs and strengthen the economy in southern Ontario, but it is doing so by giving our businesses the tools they need to expand into promising new areas, generate opportunities for communities to diversify their existing economies, to help families and individuals as well as small business.
Mr. Chair, I have had the opportunity and pleasure to hear about the challenges facing businesses, industry, and community leaders throughout southern Ontario. Over the last year and a half I think it has become very clear that FedDev Ontario is committed to continuing to respond to the needs that we see around our provinces and build on the initiatives that we now have.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and colleagues, for this opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.
