We are honoured to sit down this month with Ontario's lead economic representative for California, Consul and Senior Economic Officer, Ms. Chelsea Peet, to learn more about the work of her team in connecting Ontario and California together for trade, investment and innovation collaborations. Ontario is the 7th largest economy in North America by GDP, and if it were a country, it would be the 3rd largest trading partner of the U.S with California representing Ontario's second largest U.S. export market.
Thank you for taking the time for this interview, Chelsea. Would you describe your role at the Ontario Trade & Investment Office in the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco for our readers and the services your office offers Ontario and Southern California-based businesses?
Thanks for having me Stephen – I’m happy to – I’m the Consul and Senior Economic Officer representing the Government of Ontario, Canada, and leading our Trade and Investment Office here in California, though we also cover Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.
Our office is part of a network of 16 trade and investment offices co-located in Canadian consulates and embassies around the world – we report to the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, and we’re here to support Ontario’s business interests abroad.
This means we promote the benefits of doing business with Ontario – encourage new investments and job creation, facilitate connections to support business expansion deals, and intensify exports. Our services are confidential and free – from market intelligence to curated introductions, we’re here to help and to be a bridge.
For our readers in Southern California, can you profile for us at a high-level the size of Ontario and its economy?
Fun fact on size – Ontario is larger geographically than France and Spain combined. It’s more than double the size of California. My own hometown of Sioux Lookout is almost a 24 hour drive northwest of Toronto – all still in Ontario. Ontario is big, and there are big things happening there.
The province is in the heart of North America and is the economic engine of Canada. We’re the 7th largest economy in North America by GDP, and are home to 39 percent of the country’s population and GDP.
What are some of the leading business sectors within Ontario?
Ontario offers opportunities in diverse sectors – with historic strengths in more traditional industries like forestry, manufacturing and mining, we’re also a place where the “new economy” has emerged in full force.
From information and communications technology and financial services, to automotive, environmental technologies and life sciences, our province is innovating across industries – Ontario is where financial services are broadening into fintech and revolutionizing the way we invest, it’s where artificial intelligence is leading to safer, cleaner connected transportation, and where stem cell research is leading to a world where we can cure and prevent deadly diseases.
Given its geographic size, can you help us understand some of the key regions within the Province and their respective sector strengths?
I think Ontario can largely be seen as four regions, each innovating in different ways.
The Greater Toronto Area - or GTA, offers a mix of services and sectors. From financial services and life sciences, to tech, entertainment and manufacturing, there’s something for everyone here.
Eastern Ontario has strengths ranging from telecommunications to cyber security, aerospace and defense, to digital media and clean tech. Ottawa is increasingly also an all-weather test hub for connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AV).
Southwestern Ontario is notably home to agricultural, automotive and manufacturing industries. For example, Windsor, right across the border from Detroit, has the largest virtual reality cave in Canada, which specializes in testing C/AV and cross-border technologies.
The North, which geographically represents about 90% of the province only makes up a small percentage of the population. This is where you’d find more natural-resource based industries like mining, forestry and logging, manufacturing, etc. That said, these communities are increasingly expanding in the knowledge economy too – Thunder Bay is home to a leading teaching and research hospital, and a regional research institute that is driving growth across the life sciences manufacturing cluster.
What are Ontario’s economic ties with the United States and California, and Southern California in particular, and how close are our economies linked together?
Big picture – Ontario and the United States are incredibly important partners and markets to each other, and numbers speak for themselves. If Ontario were a country, it would be the third largest U.S. trade partner.
We are the number one or number two export destination for 28 U.S. states – nearly 9 million American jobs depend on Canada – U.S. trade and investment, and nearly 1 in 5 jobs in Ontario depend on trade. So it’s significant.
Not surprisingly, the California-Ontario relationship is a key part of this overall picture – more fun facts, in preparation for speaking with you, I learned that Ontario, Canada and southern California have had a close connection since at least 1881, when a Canadian engineer traveled to southern California and bought land for a settlement he would call “Ontario”.
And we still see these strong ties today – both people-to-people and economic – there are more than 300 business establishments in southern California that are headquartered in Ontario, and those businesses employ more than 18,000 people. There is more investment from Ontario into southern California than any other Canadian province.
Meanwhile, California and Ontario two-way trade also made up the lion’s share of Canada’s trade with the state last year at $26.6 billion – California is Ontario’s 2nd largest export market in the U.S. and is a large source of our imports as well.
What are some of the types of incentives that Ontario provides to attract inbound investment? And for a Southern California business interested in expanding into Canada either through trade, direct investment, or partnerships & collaborations, why should they consider Ontario? There are other parts of Canada that are closer to our state.
The Ontario Trade and Investment Office regularly works with companies that are looking to expand their international footprint – a few key reasons for “why Ontario”:
A highly skilled workforce – at 69 per cent, more people in Ontario have completed post-secondary education than anywhere else in the OECD. We’re home to 44 colleges and universities, and we graduate over 42,000 STEM graduates every year.
A diverse, inclusive and welcoming business climate – Ontario is a place where more than 200 languages are spoken. In our provincial capital of Toronto, more than 50 per cent of residents are foreign-born. We’re proud to be diverse and have great programs to access international talent like Canada’s Global Skills Strategy, which is a fast-track immigration program that expedites work visas for highly skilled workers in as little as 10 days.
Innovation – there are significant research and development cost savings through programs like the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit, or more sector-specific programs like Ontario’s Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN), to name a few.
Lower business costs – on top of savings afforded to U.S. companies as a result of R&D programs, the foreign exchange rate and competitive corporate tax rates, our publicly-funded healthcare system means employer healthcare costs are also typically 30 per cent lower than the U.S. average.
These trends highlight that Ontario is committed to ensuring job creators have the best possible conditions to succeed – and it’s having an impact. In a recent Global Trends Analysis report, Ontario was found to be the #1 jurisdiction in North America – number one – for job creation resulting from foreign direct investment, with the creation of over 10,000 jobs last year.
Beyond trading with one another, what stands out in terms of notable examples of Ontario sourced investment in the Southern California?
Here I should give a shout out to the Canadian Consulate in LA, and partners like MAPLE, that commissioned a report this past year that gave us great insights on these kinds of questions.
Of the 10 Canadian companies with the largest investments in southern California, seven are headquartered in Ontario – Manulife, the Royal Bank of Canada, Onex Corporation, and Constellation Software are just a few examples.
There are other great investment stories too – home-grown Ontario companies like Blackberry acquired Cylance software in Irving in 2018, resulting in strong AI security solutions that benefit companies around the world.
What are some examples of California-based businesses that have come to Ontario and what has been the result?
I think even 10 years ago, you’d hear a lot of Canadians voicing concerns about the Canadian “brain drain” – where skilled talent was heading to places like California and elsewhere, to the potential detriment of the Canadian economy.
Increasingly though – especially in the last several years as Ontario and Canada’s tech market has really boomed – we’re seeing more of a “brain chain” – meaning a greater two-way flow of talent and ideas, which is a wonderful thing.
You’ve got home-grown Canadian tech companies like Blackberry and Shopify employing people in California; dual-headquartered companies like Faire – a tech company that supports the retail industry – that have big operations and decision makers in both Waterloo and San Francisco; and we’re regularly seeing more and more California-based companies open offices in Ontario – Uber, Netflix, Silicon Valley Bank, Nextdoor, Google…and entrepreneurs who are leveraging their experiences in California to start and grow their own companies in Ontario – like Ritual.
I think the impact overall has been a richer, more collaborative environment, and economic growth across both our jurisdictions – which is exactly what we want to see.
Can you comment on the state of the tech sector in Ontario and what are some of the key trends that growing tech companies in California should be aware of?
Ontario’s tech sector is definitely having a moment – there’s so much happening that’s really exciting.
Just this month Google announced that it is expanding its Canadian presence in Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal to support up to 5,000 employees. This is a huge testament to the tech ecosystem in Canada, and I think highlights an important point about Ontario and Canada generally – that our strength is our people.
Ontario is home to North America’s second largest tech cluster after California. Last year, Toronto hired more tech workers than the San Francisco-Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, DC combined! Ottawa was ranked as the top momentum tech market in North America, while also laying claim to having the highest concentration of tech workers. And Waterloo continues to be a rising tech superstar city – engineering talent coming out of the University of Waterloo is among the most highly recruited in Silicon Valley. These are some stats to be proud of.
I think for southern California-based companies, the key takeaway to share is that there are big, exciting developments happening in Ontario’s tech sector, and we’d love for even more people and companies to come be part of it.
Since we are at the start of a new year and a new decade even, what are some of the priorities that you and your department have with respect to the economic ties between the Province of Ontario and Southern California?
We want to continue to build on our relationship with markets like Southern California – and we’re truly fortunate to have a solid foundation in place because of organizations like MAPLE that have fostered those connections.
As a government, we are committed to making it easier for people to work and innovate in Ontario. We know the next great breakthrough can come from anyone or anywhere, and we want Ontario to be a part of it.
A key lynchpin of this strategy is to ensure the world – including southern California – knows that the province is “Open for Business” – that means open for jobs, open to trade and open to investment. Whether through the elimination of outdated regulations or by fostering an ecosystem that allows businesses and people to thrive, Ontario is working to ensure job creators have the best possible conditions to succeed.
For businesses interested in getting to know more about the opportunities for them in Ontario, what recommendations can you give them on how to get started?
Reach out to us! We’re complimentary, confidential and happy to help however we can.
We can help gather data and intelligence to support business expansion decisions, support traditional matters like incorporation, taxation, immigration, recruitment, real estate, and more, and can help facilitate conversations with important stakeholders like government, municipalities, universities, and private sector partners.
We can also organize visits up to Ontario so that companies can experience first-hand the opportunities for them in the province.
Similarly, for an Ontario business seeking to explore opportunities in Southern California, how do you work with them?
The Ontario Trade and Investment Office is here to be a resource to Ontario companies looking to grow in California – every day, we’re working to build our network of U.S. based contacts so that we can make it easier for companies on both sides of the border to connect.
We support this in a variety of ways – by providing data and intelligence on the market, collaborating with partners to deliver incoming and outgoing trade related missions, and by facilitating pre-qualified meeting for contacts and companies.
Are there any key events coming up later this year that Southern California businesses might want to consider basing a visit to Ontario?
Definitely - I think it depends on your sector focus, but a couple to consider are Collision – North America’s fastest growing tech conference, which attracts more than 25,000 attendees from over 120+ countries and will be hosted in Toronto from June 22-25th.
On the life sciences / health tech side, companies could consider Health Innovation Week from March 30th to April 1st, which is Canada’s largest gathering of the health ecosystem, including start-ups and investors. Another option is MedTech from October 5-7th, that is being held outside of the U.S. for the first time.
What might most surprise a California business about living and working in Ontario?
Beyond the sheer size and diversity of Ontario, which I’ve talked about, I think a lot of people might be surprised to know how much of a leader Ontario is in artificial intelligence (AI) – we have a long history of supporting AI research, and are now home to over 300 AI-based companies and institutions. We’re also investing to support continued growth in this area – through organizations like the Vector Institute in Toronto, or the Waterloo AI Institute, which are leading research and commercialization efforts in AI in Ontario.
Finally, as an Ontario transplant to California, what do you most enjoy about your new home?
I mean, it’s hard to beat the weather – sorry Canada (smiles). In all seriousness though, because California is such a destination for the outdoors, there’s a part of me that feels that Canadian connection here, and it’s been great to explore.
Chelsea, thank you for sharing your perspectives and providing a window on Canada’s most populous province. And thank you for becoming part of our cross-border community recently!
Chelsea Peet may be contacted at The Ontario Trade & Investment Office in San Francisco at chelsea.peet@international.gc.ca
With MAPLE members in Ontario and in Southern California, we have a wonderful opportunity within the MAPLE network of members and partners to grow our economic ties further. In fact, MAPLE will be hosting two receptions in Ontario in March. Our ‘IP Procurement and Protection’ roadshow with IP law firm and MAPLE member organization, Knobbe Martens, will include receptions in Toronto (March 24) and Kitchener-Waterloo (March 25). For more information, please visit maplecouncil.org/events.