Industry Committee on June 16th, 2016

[Victoria Lennox]

That's right, because most of it already exists. It just needs to come together.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

If I was to compare it to, say, Futurpreneur, how would you be the same or different, or do you work together?

[Victoria Lennox]

We totally work together. So when people are saying, where do I start, or I'm thinking of starting up, and they have no idea where to start, they'll find Startup Canada. Let's say they're an entrepreneur in Medicine Hat. There's a great program at Medicine Hat College, and we'll connect them with Startup Medicine Hat, in order to access support and resources.

As well, as I mentioned earlier, only a small per cent are actually start-up companies with us. Many of them are mentors who are giving back, or folks who have retired and are looking to invest in the next generation. What we're about is the 2.7 million entrepreneurs in Canada who want to create a better future for the country. We're giving them a platform to do that.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

What are exactly are you doing to sell to UPS or these companies to get money?

[Victoria Lennox]

Ultimately, they have the exact same problem that the Government of Canada has, which is that nobody knows about the services they provide to the start-up community. We run digital events like start-up chats on Twitter, and webinars. We run podcasts. The Startup podcast is one of the top podcasts in the world in iTunes, right here in Canada. It really is about increasing the reach and awareness of the resources available across Canada, and including their offerings.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I've heard the statistics. Someone has talked about knowledge of programs, and more than half the companies knew about SR and ED. In the majority of the companies virtually nobody knows about all these little grants or opportunities.

[Victoria Lennox]

That's right.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So you're trying to collect that information and share it?

[Victoria Lennox]

We have the information and we promote it. Let's say, for instance, right now there's a trade group in Atlanta.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That's seven minutes already?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You talk too much.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Mr. Dreeshen, you've got five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

I'll probably allow you to go on to some of the interesting things you're speaking of, Victoria. You spoke of recommendations for procurement, attracting and retaining talent, and education. These are some of the first three key components you spoke about, but you also spoke about funding and the angel tax credits, the different things that businesses need, such a low business tax rate, and so on. These are important things, especially for start-up businesses.

I am impressed, and we've spoken before on mentorship and how significant it is. I'm wondering if you have enough people within your organization who are able to look at the disruptive technologies and are helping some of these new start-up companies prepare themselves for the possibility of quick change within the industries they're working with. Perhaps all three of you could speak to that.

[Victoria Lennox]

Do we have enough people in our community who can support the development or the quick pivoting of disruptive technologies? What's really great about accelerators and incubators and what can be leveraged further with them is just that, to be the place where these high-growth companies can anchor and get access to those talents.

I don't know if you've come across it in your discussions, but the work of the C100 organization in bringing that talent from Silicon Valley and connecting it with Canadian start-ups is absolutely crucial. I don't know if I can answer that question, do we have the right people? I've always found the right people. I haven't found the lack of right people. I find a lack of speed and access to these people.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Again, I suppose one of the key components is education. You have to make sure that the education system understands what is happening. Do you have people who are engaged in that area as well?

[Victoria Lennox]

As you can tell, Startup Canada is really scrappy. We work with the education ecosystem through our work with Mitacs in the community, but we also work with student clubs; that's how we do it. We have the Startup Campus network with student clubs across Canada that are connected to the Startup communities. The way we prepare the students to take their own initiative and to ensure that they have the skills is to have them participate in online courses and things like that, and to engage with the Startup community and attend events at places like Communitech. We find it's really effective to engage directly with the end- user rather than with the institution, because that takes time.

[Julia Deans]

We partner with Enactus Canada, which has business clubs on college and university campuses across the country, and through them we reach younger students who are maybe in high school. We have something called Unleash Your Inner Entrepreneur, and we do it right across the country to reach students in school.

We also do a lot of advocacy to get schools to adopt financial management skills and entrepreneurship training, sales training, and communications into the curriculum.

We're not going to do all that, but they need to know that without those skills our young people are not going to succeed as entrepreneurs. They're probably not going to succeed within any organization in the future. So we completely agree that's a huge topic.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Avvey, could you perhaps add a little on the global aspect of this, because some of these businesses we're looking at need to have that as we advance, as far as trade is concerned.

[Avvey Peters]

Talent is probably the number one challenge faced by all the companies we would work with—the shortage of the right kind of talent to fill their needs. Whether it's sales and marketing talent or technical talent, companies can only grow if they can get the right people. Our partners are working really closely with the colleges and universities in their communities to try to make sure there's that intersection between what industry needs and what those institutions are producing in terms of new grads.

Often if technology companies are seeking a very specialized type of technology talent, they look across Canada, and if they can't find it, the next challenge is how can they find that talent very quickly and bring it to Canada. Right now immigration is a huge barrier to that, meaning the length of time it takes to have a highly specialized set of skills come to Canada to help a business grow. Often those are individuals around whom a company can build an entire team of people, which means they're likely global experts in their field, implying as well that they've probably got job offers from all over the place.

One of the things our companies are telling us is that this ability to bring the right skills to bear on a business very quickly is of great significance to them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Arya, you have five minutes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Every time I get a chance, I like to point out that the national capital region has 1,700 knowledge-based companies. It's much bigger than any other part of Canada.

[An hon. member]

Still, Ottawa is a logic-free zone.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!