Author: Mark Mann

The Short Report, December 11, 2019: Wexit spooks Wattpad; Montreal’s swelling video-game sector; North promises better next time

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The Toronto-based e-publisher Wattpad has chosen to open its second headquarters in Halifax rather than Calgary, due to concerns about Western separatism and the elimination of Alberta tax credits supporting companies in the innovation economy. Five business tax credit programs were cut, including the Investor Tax Credit introduced by the previous NDP government, which provided a 30%…

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General business support programs don’t work. Instead, focus on competitive tax policies, manufacturing institutes, and opportunity zones: Policy paper

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The Ontario government spends approximately $5 billion a year on business support programs, many of which don’t stand up to cost-benefit analysis, according to Jamison Steeve and Sean Speer in a new paper published by Ontario 360, a public policy research group housed at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

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The Short Report, December 4, 2019: The next wave in nuclear innovation; more (worse) jobs with tech; richer than the Canadian government

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The premiers of Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have signed a memorandum of understanding that will see their provinces collaborate on the research, development and building of small modular reactors (SMRs), in order to help them meet their emission-reduction targets and move away from coal. Ottawa has called SMRs the “next wave of innovation” in nuclear energy technology,…

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The Short Report, November 27, 2019: African researchers denied entry; open science gets easier; Big Oil moves into the cloud

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Canada refused visas to dozens of African researchers seeking to attend the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS) in Vancouver next month. The visas were commonly denied on suspicions that the participants would not leave Canada once the conference was over. The issue is recurring: last year, more than 100 attendees were denied visas to the…

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Scaleup Q&A: SOTI CEO Carl Rodrigues on growing a global tech powerhouse through constant fine-tuning (EXCERPT)

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SOTI may be the homegrown tech titan that most Canadians haven’t heard of, but other countries are paying attention. With 17,000 enterprise customers in 178 countries, the Mississauga-based provider of business-critical mobility solutions is frequently courted by world leaders, and for good reason: SOTI boasts 98 consecutive quarters of profitability, all without ever taking outside…

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Canada punches above its weight in research. So what?

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A common refrain in Canadian innovation circles holds that Canada “punches above its weight” in research strength. While this is certainly true, we still lag other OECD countries on productivity and innovation. What’s the point of punching above our weight in research if we’re still getting clobbered on commercialization?

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The Short Report, November 20, 2019: Sidewalk Labs, public-private partnerships, Alberta layoffs

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Sidewalk Labs released a new 483-page document that does “a good job of satisfying the information we need” to evaluate the technological innovations planned for the Quayside development in Toronto, says Kristina Verner, Waterfront Toronto’s vice president of innovation. The evaluation is due to be completed by March 2020. – SaltWire Ontario is introducing a new policy to…

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