International Trade committee  Members of the committee, I am very proud and honoured to be here today, so thank you very much. Canada's technology triangle is an area that is geographically known as Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge and the townships that surround it. It's a unique community that has grown to 550

International Trade committee  We're actually looking at that through comparison to a community called Eindhoven, Holland, which is considered the number one innovative community in the world according to Forbes. They came to visit with us and they believe we have a highly competitive environment in Canada. Th

International Trade committee  In the IT sector, we have 30,000 now and we believe that should grow, because competition and partnership will grow at both ends. I think the biggest issue is how we retain them if we want to try to keep them in a particular community. That's an issue all of our communities are t

International Trade committee  Absolutely, I think we have the opportunity to showcase our communities around the world. By showcasing them as centres of excellence, as we have at the accelerator in the Communitech Hub and so forth in Waterloo, we know that people will come and be a part of it. Whey want to be

International Trade committee  Absolutely, I can tell you right now. I mentioned this organization of alliance of Canadian cities called Consider Canada's City Alliance, CCCA, that works with Invest in Canada. It has a website and you can see each of those cities across Canada, 12 of them signed up right away.

International Trade committee  You're misreading what our organization's about.

International Trade committee  Canada's Technology Triangle Inc. is a public-private partnership made up of the municipalities, the colleges and universities, and the private sector that make up the Waterloo region. We aren't a technology company. We are a public-private organization not very different from In

International Trade committee  We haven't actually had any kind of focus group at this stage. At this point, we're just interested in learning more. As I said, we will be holding our first regional economic development strategy over the next year. We've hired a staff person now to undertake that strategy for

International Trade committee  At a local level, we will have focus groups and—

International Trade committee  You're asking at a very early stage.

International Trade committee  In some industries it is.

International Trade committee  In. When I've travelled to India, China, and other places like that, some of the companies.... This not just for the Waterloo region. I used to be the head of Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, and that issue was raised a number of times by companies that have branch operations

International Trade committee  There are three cities and three mayors. There's one per city.

International Trade committee  Are you from London?

International Trade committee  Absolutely, and as I mentioned, we already had a meeting with what we call our ambassadors, our local ambassadors, who are mostly SMEs. We have a target in Germany; we have other regions of Europe we work with. With this committee, a structure of ambassadors, we've taken this n