Evidence of meeting #21 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Let's finish up with you, Ms. Peters. You actually have a physical location. Is it 50,000 or 80,000 square feet?
Vice-President, External Relations, Communitech
As of about four weeks ago, it's now 80,000 square feet.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Okay. What do you do in that location? Do you have companies in there?
Vice-President, External Relations, Communitech
It's a mixed-use space. There are about 120 companies that physically live in the space with us, and many more come to use the facilities and for training workshops, events, and programming.
The space is divided into three neighbourhoods, if you will. There's a start-up neighbourhood, in which both Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo run a campus accelerator program. So there are many start-up companies there. Our start-up services team at Communitech runs a women-in-technology accelerator and a revenue-focused accelerator. We offer “Google for Entrepreneurs” programming. There's a lot of different stuff.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You expanded because...? Was there a need? Were you full?
Liberal
Vice-President, External Relations, Communitech
It really varies. Communitech is a not-for-profit. Our funding comes from a lot of different sources. It's a mix of public sector and private sector funding, roughly equal in proportion.
Liberal
Vice-President, External Relations, Communitech
We do. In the case of the companies that work out of the University of Waterloo Velocity space, the university pays for that space; the companies themselves are subsidized by the university. Other small companies pay rent. We also have these large corporate partners, like the GMs and the TD Banks, which rent corporate innovation labs, and they pay a premium on that so we can subsidize the start-ups.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
They might be in line with one of your companies. Is that what I understand?
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Yes, it might come through Futurpreneur, and it might also come through Startup Canada.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Is it fair to say that you, as an ecosystem, are working together? Or would you like to work together more or less?
