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CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - MAY 2014
to boost small business and entrepre-
neurialism?
We have some of the most cre-
ative and bright people I think in the
world. Yet with all of these entrepre-
neurs there are two problems: they’re
unable to find capital, and there is a
lot of funding that goes into the cre-
ation of knowledge but into things
that never actually make it to market.
We heard that many times on the road
when visiting businesses.
However, while traditional routes
for funding for entrepreneurs has been
available (banking programs etc.),
I wasn’t happy with how fast those
routes worked. So we came up with
our own initiative: Investing in Busi-
ness Innovation. We wanted to help
entrepreneurs and that was the foun-
dation of the initiative: if an entrepre-
neur could convince an investor to
invest, we would match the funding
up to $1 million. To date, contributions
through this initiative have leveraged
private-sector investments of $196 mil-
lion in angel and venture capital in 86
high-growth start-ups in southern On-
tario.
FedDev Ontario also offers ser-
vices to SMEs through Canada Busi-
ness Ontario or CBO, which provides
free business information and can help
businesses navigate through govern-
ment programs that are available to
them.
CBO also offers a Secondary Mar-
ket Research Service at no cost. This
service can help SMEs start or expand
their business by providing them with
information about business associa-
tions, manufacturers, suppliers and
competitors. Businesses are also pro-
vided information on business and in-
dustry trends, international trade data,
as well as Canadian consumer spend-
ing statistics and demographic data.
This service has the potential to save
a small business thousands of dollars
and a lot of time and effort.
How does FedDev Ontario help
existing businesses?
We have another initiative for
those existing businesses in Ontario
that need assistance named the Invest-
ing in Business Growth and Productiv-
ity Initiative. This initiative is one of
four Southern Ontario Prosperity Ini-
tiatives. For more information regard-
ing the full suite of initiatives available
through FedDev Ontario, I encourage
you to go to
We want to provide that envi-
ronment where businesses can grow.
We want to provide incentives for
businesses to put on a uniform, under-
stand the new global game, and play it
to win it.
To do this, FedDev Ontario acts as
a co-investor through its programming
and there are certainly benefits to the
confidence that a federal investment
in projects can bring— we are able to
help businesses leverage dollars from
private sector and other sources that
may not have otherwise taken the risk.
FedDev Ontario is also a con-
venor focused on bringing the right
people together at the right time to talk
about the right things.
