Thank you for having me.
My name's Victoria Lennox. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Startup Canada. Startup Canada started in 2012 to unite Canada's entrepreneurship community. We now have over 200,000 entrepreneurs in our network, covering more than 50 start-up communities in 100 towns, cities, and villages across Canada. Our whole goal is to create a Canada for entrepreneurs to build an environment and culture for entrepreneurial success and to connect entrepreneurs to decision-makers so that, together, we can build an innovation nation and make Canada a beacon for entrepreneurship globally.
We're very excited to be here today and to begin to contribute to this conversation. I see it as just the beginning. Thank you to those of you who participated during Small Business Week last week with Startup Canada down on the Hill, where we had 2,000 entrepreneurs come to the capital. Thank you for hearing their voices.
This is a really exciting topic. It's all about e-commerce and Canadian businesses online, and when you connect it with trade, there's huge opportunity for Canada's entrepreneurship community. More than anything, Startup Canada is here for every entrepreneur—2.3 million entrepreneurs in Canada. We know that we're investing in superclusters as a nation, but we also know that e-commerce is a great equalizer for every entrepreneur, particularly when we have high-speed broadband access so that every entrepreneur in the north and rural and remote communities and indigenous communities can have access to a global market. Startup Canada and our entrepreneurs believe e-commerce is a fantastic equalizer and creates a more accessible economy for every entrepreneur.
In terms of Startup Canada and what our entrepreneurs are looking for when we start to look at e-commerce as well as its interconnection with trade, it is how it connects with culture, and how, when we're bidding for Amazon and Facebook and working with our Shopify colleagues, we're empowering our entrepreneurs through e-commerce to access global markets.
We're starting to see a bit of a skills gap, and I'll speak to a number of studies that we've recently conducted and launched. In addition, we're having a difficult time with digital adoption, particularly amongst our senior entrepreneurs, and the opportunity for cross-mentorship when connecting with trade commissioner services to see what resources are available, particularly for online companies, and really creating those growth opportunities that we can build into our bids for major multinationals as they look to position themselves in our cities.
Ultimately, our entrepreneurs are looking for Canada to have a culture of entrepreneurship, to be connected to the support that they're looking for, and to have supportive communities, but they're also looking for customers. How can we build our entrepreneurs and e-commerce start-ups into the global supply chain?
At Startup Canada, our stats on the topic are a little different from those of other organizations. Our entrepreneurs are predisposed to start up online. The majority—93%—of our entrepreneurs at Startup Canada have an online presence. As the world's economy moves to digital first, Canada needs to ensure that all enterprises, regardless of size, industry, or sector, are supported with the tools, resources, and policy environment to benefit from electronic international trade. We need to be thinking beyond looking at our trade infrastructure for large companies. Our start-ups are starting globally from day one. They're competing with some of the best of the best. Therefore, how is our infrastructure set up to help accelerate entrepreneurs?
A lot of my comments are related to the trade commissioner services. I'll make a few key notes. SAAS, or software as a service, companies in Canada are the high-growth companies that are disproportionately creating the jobs in Canada. What we're starting to see, which is really cool, is that 64% of our SAAS companies at Startup Canada have actually begun.... They're socializing it to create global expansion officer roles in their C-suite executive suite. If we're seeing that our SAAS companies are looking globally and starting global, scalable companies, and they're starting to increasingly employ chief global officers, that's a really exciting sign.
Seventy-four per cent of our SBOs use digital technology, including software programs and mobile applications; however, women are 20% less likely to adopt new technologies than men in the Startup Canada network. Immigrant entrepreneurs are twice as likely to integrate digital technologies into their companies than those born in Canada.
Forty-four per cent of small business owners at Startup Canada say that the high cost associated with researching, integrating, and maintaining digital technologies is the main barrier to technology adoption. Seventy-three per cent of small business owners list digital skills amongst their top three priorities. Twenty-nine per cent of Canadian small business owners do not believe the current workforce possesses the right digital skills to start and grow their companies.
What can we do together? First, we have to get every business in Canada online, and we need them to see the opportunity in building up their e-commerce presence. The tools exist. They are free and they are available, so it's about education and connecting entrepreneurs with the resources they need.
We need to invest in digital skills and in supporting every entrepreneur, not just those based in the major cities in Canada but across Canada. What's really cool is that we can do this digitally with just-in-time training.
We also need to bridge the gap between the services available through the trade commissioner service and Export Development Canada to the entrepreneurs and meet them where they are at so that we can take entrepreneurs on that journey from starting up their e-commerce company to scaling to global markets with a seamless pipeline that can help to accelerate Canada's entrepreneurial success.
The Canadian trade accelerators across the world are some of the best models in the world at how to do it right and how Canada can lead. As we continue to scale our Canadian tech accelerators, both in the U.S. and globally, there's an opportunity to look at e-commerce and specialize one of the key pillars to help our companies in that area.
Ultimately, we need to make sure that Canada stays competitive. We need to reduce the internal trade barriers we have as a nation. We need to make sure our tax, other infrastructure, and regulatory systems are conducive to scaling great entrepreneurs. Remember, the Government of Canada can be one of the best buyers of new business products and services, so we need to get behind our companies.
Just in closing and echoing my colleagues' remarks, we really need to brand Canada as an innovation nation. We need to make Canada best in class as it relates to entrepreneurship. We need to attract the best entrepreneurs, investors, and multinationals to our country, and we need to do it now. Our regulatory and tax systems will be important to attracting the best and brightest to Canada.
Thank you for the opportunity.