Quote:
Originally Posted by LeftCoaster
Exactly. Tech clusters, not just in Canada but all over the world. Tech employers cluster, and so do employees. No one wants to go to a town where there's only one employment option and no one want's to be hiring employees where there's no existing talent base.
Mastercard was not going to open an office in Regina or London ON for the same deal, in fact there is almost no deal that would convince them to go there short of the entire thing being paid for.
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And this is why some members of the tech industry are concerned by the latest moves of the NDP government:
Name Change Casts Doubt on B.C. government’s Tech Priorities
By Tyler Orton | February 3, 2020
Amid a late-January cabinet shuffle in Victoria, there was another notable change afoot in Victoria: the Ministry of Jobs, Trade and Technology was chopping a few very key words from its name.
Instead, the ministry handling the technology portfolio would now be known as the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Development and Competitiveness, led by the previous energy minister, Michelle Mungall.
The province was already in the process of closing its trade offices in Asia – but why scrub “technology” from the name?
In response to a request from Business in Vancouver to interview the new minister, a government spokeswoman said it would be weeks before Mungall would be available to discuss the reasoning behind the name change or what it might signal to industry, or otherwise offer her thoughts on the province’s technology sector.
But a story from Postmedia shortly before the January 22 cabinet shuffle revealed some hints as to the province’s direction and where technology lands as a priority.
In a plan distributed to top provincial bureaucrats and select stakeholders, the government outlined its desire to spread economic growth throughout more rural parts of the province.
“Squamish, the Tri-Cities, Delta, Tsawwassen, Langford and others offer significant advantages for technology start-ups or satellite office locations, offering lower operating and housing costs, while providing employees the convenience of avoiding gridlock and the benefit of saving time and money while reducing their carbon footprint,” Postmedia quoted from the plan.
The framework also cited Interior communities experiencing “transformational growth” in the technology sector as workers seek out a lower cost of living while staying connected to work through high-speed internet.
Vancouver, however, remains the country’s third most desirable tech hub behind Toronto and Ottawa, according to real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc.’s November 2019 Scoring Tech Talent report.
The city has added 22,300 tech workers to the region over the past five years, a 42.6% increase to a total of 74,700.
“Tech in Vancouver is booming,” said Ray Walia, CEO of the Launch Academy technology incubator in Gastown. “But it’s happening despite the government, not because of the government.”
“When you are looking at it from a global lens, international tech companies or even just an engineer sitting in Romania doesn’t know Victoria, doesn’t know the Okanagan,” Walia said. “That’s what we should really be focused on, is building the brand of Vancouver as a tech epicentre.”
Walia, who spent much of the last year travelling throughout Asia to tout Vancouver as a tech hub for international players, is also lamenting the shuttering of the province’s trade offices across the continent.
The province is folding them into embassies and consulates led by the federal government, but Walia said he’s lost many of his contacts in Asia as a result.
“International trade takes a hit because those were the touch points, those were the connections B.C. companies had in those markets to expand and grow,” he said. “I’ve got to build my relationships with those people all over again.”
Full article here:
https://biv.com/article/2020/02/name-change-casts-doubt-bc-governments-tech-priorities
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