Could tech startups hold the key to Canadian tariff resiliency?

Tech companies could play a big role in Canada’s resiliency to tough U.S. tariffs. CTV’s Krista Sharpe reports.

With U.S. President Donald Trump continuing to threaten Canada with stiffer tariffs, some experts think focusing on the country’s technology sector could provide some economic resiliency.

“Symbolically, it will be important for Canadians to have some corporate flags to rally around,” said Ann Fitz-Gerald, director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. “Economic security and national security are indistinguishable.”

Southern Ontario is sometimes referred to as ‘Silicon Valley North,’ a nod to the southern San Franciso Bay area of California known for attracting global technology titans such as Apple, Facebook and Google.

Waterloo Region hosts some its own tech giants, including Blackberry, Google, SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Square, OpenText and McAfee.

According to the Region of Waterloo’s website, more than 1,570 tech-related businesses call the area home.

“Waterloo Region’s business environment offers a survival rate of first-year information and communications technology (ICT) startups at almost double the global industry average. This is supported by the lowest [research and development] tax and corporate investment tax rates among the G7 [countries],” the region’s website read.

Startup Genome, an innovation ecosystem development organization, listed the Toronto-Waterloo corridor as one of its top global startup ecosystems. Startup Genome defines an ‘ecosystem’ as a cluster of startups and related entities that draw from a shared pool of resources within the same general area or region.

Officials with Communitech, an innovation hub dedicated to supporting founders, believe tech companies could help strengthen the local economy.

“Entrepreneurs are already stepping up and helping our economy,” said Joel Semeniuk, Communitech’s chief strategy officer. “We work with municipalities, or anybody that has to do with municipal innovation, to find big problems. Then we work with startups to solve those big problems. We do the same thing in healthcare.”

Industry experts worry what the future could hold for a wide variety of Canadian companies, but Semeniuk believes tech companies may hold the answer.

“Solutions that can address supply chain management and supply chain diversification and automation, to help with productivity and cost savings, and using data to see around corners or to help model out potential solutions,” he explained.

But it begins with being proactive.

“Canada is fairly risk averse,” Semeniuk said. “We wait for these companies to be successful abroad before we start adopting them here at home. That’s generally the theme that we see across the board. I think we just need to do a better job at really adopting our own stuff much earlier.”