Fastest growing (and shrinking) Southwestern Ontario communities

Just when I thought I was finished with census numbers...

The next batch of data from the 2011 census was released yesterday—populations across the country broken down by age and sex.

I filtered the data for communities in Southwestern Ontario (population of 5,000 or more) to see which were the fastest growing and declining since the last census in 2006. I had to do this manually, so it's possible that someplace got overlooked, but here are some graphs taken from that data, with an emphasis on what Statistics Canada calls working age—the 15 to 64 group.

For these lists, I included communities in Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent, Lambton, London-Middlesex, St. Thomas-Elgin, Stratford-St. Marys-Perth, Huron, Grey, Bruce, Oxford, Norfolk, Haldimand, Brant-Brantford, Waterloo Region, and Guelph-Wellington.

At the top of the list, it's a sweep for Waterloo Region with all four top spots, and Cambridge also making the top 10. Guelph is in the top ten, as are communities in Bruce (Saugeen Shores), Oxford (Woodstock), Middlesex (Middlesex Centre) and Huron (Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh).

The Blue Mountains in Grey County had the largest population decline in the working age category. Windsor-Essex took three spots in the bottom 10 and Chatham-Kent also showed a significant drop.

To round off the lists, here are the fastest growing communities for children and seniors. Woolwich, Wilmot and Wellesley score well across the board:

Final census crunch: Immigrants and visible minorities in Southwestern Ontario

One last look at some census numbers for selected Southwestern Ontario regions (selected because—other than Waterloo—they comprised the area I was covering for the Ministry of Research and Innovation's Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) program), this time looking at immigrants and visible minorities and the concentration of each across these regions.

Much has been written about the vital role of immigrant entrepreneurs—particularly in Silicon Valley (for example, Vivek Wadhwa's "How the Indians Conquered Silicon Valley"). Within Southwestern Ontario, you'll find many regions looking to be more attractive to immigrants as part of an economic development strategy—in Chatham-Kent, for example, where it was mentioned just last week by mayor Randy Hope is his annual state-of-the-municipality-style adddress.

EcDev guru Richard Florida and his enthusiasts have been high profile proponents of the idea that the level of immigrants and visible minorities are either a component of or a proxy measure for tolerance and openness to diversity, which they believe are key drivers of the vitality and economic prospects of a region.

Being Toronto-born and raised, this was one where I wasn't expecting to see impressive scores in Southwestern Ontario and certainly not from Waterloo. More than a couple of times over the years, I had people from Toronto come to Waterloo for meetings and remark in hushed tones on the apparent lack of diversity in the city (once you're off the UW campus, anyway). Coming from Toronto, it's hard to miss.

And no area I looked at in Southwestern Ontario comes close to matching the GTA (actually, the Toronto CMA which is most of the GTA) for immigrants and visible minorities, but that much was a given. What was suprising to me was how well Waterloo scored relative to every other area.

It's no surprise that the large urban areas and their regions are all at the top of the lists and there's a chasm between them and the small urban and rural regions. Among these Southwestern Ontario regions, Waterloo is a clear leader in both immigrants and visible minorities, with London coming not far behind in immigrants.

When you look at recent immigrants (people who have immigrated in the last five years), Waterloo scores very well, even making up some ground on the Toronto area—the only region I looked at that did so.

If immigrants are a key component of building an entrepreneurial base and culture, then the small urban and rural areas are clearly at a major disadvantage. Waterloo, on the other hand—at least by Southwestern Ontario standards—is a downright mosaic. Would never have guesssed that two years ago.

This is continued from: "More census crunching: Income and housing expenses in Southwestern Ontario" and "Education and age differences across Southwestern Ontario and implications for 'innovation' support." Also see "Adapting innovation programs to small urban and rural areas," the first post in this series.

More census crunching: Income and housing expenses in Southwestern Ontario

A couple of more items from my round of census crunching. The last post discussed age and education, and this time I'll look at income and housing expenses. I'm not sure this has much effect on innovation support programs, but I found it interesting. It also reveals one other dimension in which the City of Waterloo is a clear outlier (along with being off-the-charts in university education and in the presence of residents in their 20s).

The median income for "married-couple families" (which I selected from the many different income categories only because it's one I fall into) shows a ranking that probably doesn't come as much of a surprise, with the large urban areas—or regions including large urban areas—all grouped together at the high end of the range:

But while the order didn't surprise me, there were a couple things I hadn't expected. The first was just how much of an outlier the City of Waterloo is for income. It's not just ahead of the pack, it's way out in front. (And remember these are median incomes, not averages, so half would come in above this number and half below.) Waterloo is about 20% above the provincial median and nearly that much above the City of London and the Toronto CMA. That's a much bigger gap than I would have guessed.

The other thing I found interesting was—Waterloo aside—how little difference there was between all the other areas, with the exception of Huron County which is clearly trailing the pack. Every other region shows a median income in this category between $71K and $78K, and that includes everything from the Toronto CMA and London to the small urban and rural counties. Lambton County median income was just barely below that of the Toronto area. (I wouldn't read into this that particular jobs aren't higher paying in Toronto, because I think they definitely are, but this is balanced by more lower paying jobs so that the median is about the same).

The census numbers for median mortgage and rent payments (technically, it's "payments for owner-occupied dwellings" and "payments for rented dwellings") are about what you'd expect as well, again with the large urban areas together on the high end and Toronto being clearly the most expensive:

One final number that surprised me: when you look at the median income of "all private households"—much broader than married couple families—the City of London falls to near the bottom of the list, while the other urban areas remain together at the top:

Not sure what to make of that one. (The City of London scores very highly in the percentage of dwellings that are rented—way higher than all the others, even the Toronto CMA—so the explanation is probably that there are more people with income below the median who are living on their own—or even with others, with a combined income below the median. This could be an example where the stats look negative but the underlying reality isn't bad.)

One more to come on immigration and visible minorities, then back to innovation and entrepreneurship.

This is continued from: Education and age differences across Southwestern Ontario and implications for "innovation" support. It continues with: Final census crunch: Immigrants and visible minorities in Southwestern Ontario.

Education and age differences across Southwestern Ontario and implications for "innovation" support

One of my pet peeves over the last few years has been over-reliance on "macro" analyses, or as I call them, "people sitting in their offices playing around with spreadsheets crunching aggregated numbers downloaded from StatsCan and other sources with almost no understanding of the underlying components and drivers of those numbers and jumping to "conclusions" which say almost nothing that would be of any use in effecting change." I guess "macro" is a handier name. Just about all of the studies relating to productivity in Canada/Ontario fall into that category, and I've been happy to see lately that others are starting to express the same frustrations (Drummond Report, for example).

None of that stopped me recently from grabbing a bunch of census data from StatsCan and building my own spreadsheets, with the hope that the numbers might raise questions about how to support innovation in small urban and rural areas, particularly in Southwestern Ontario.

The numbers I've used are all from the 2006 census, which means they're about as stale as census numbers get. Comparable 2011 census numbers will be released soon, and we'll be able to look for any significant changes when that data comes out. The areas I selected are somewhat idiosyncratic—I included Strathroy-Caradoc because that's where I live (part of Middlesex County) and the City of Waterloo because 1) that's where I used to live and 2) one of my questions is how much we can expect approaches that worked for us in the City of Waterloo can be applicable to other areas.

I'll split this into a couple of posts and start with education and age.

EDUCATION
I included the numbers for university graduates in my last post, but I'll put them here again along with the numbers for the percentage of the population age 25-64 who don't have a high school diploma.

Not surprisingly, the "no diploma" rankings are pretty much the reverse of the university degree numbers, with the larger urban areas at the bottom of the list. Lambton County—home of Lambton College—also scores pretty well, and then the numbers for the other rural areas jump to the 20% range. That means there are nearly twice as many people in those areas without high school diplomas as there are with university degrees. The City of Waterloo is weighted about 5-to-1 in the opposite direction.

Some questions that come to mind in looking at this data:

• Do we need to broaden our view of "innovation" to ensure we don't make it so university-centric that large regions are put at a disadvantage in supporting innovation in their region.
• Is the type of entrepreneurship we see in a region skewed by educational background? If it is, then Waterloo and Toronto (and London) will likely be outliers and programs designed to be effective in those areas-which are heavily dependent on the involvement of university graduates-may not be optimal in other regions.
• On the other hand, even if we believe that certain kinds of entrepreneurship are more likely to be found among university graduates, how much should we read into these numbers when even Huron County—at the bottom of the list—is still home to thousands of university grads. Within any single region, it doesn't take many additional entrepreneurs successfully competing on innovation to make a big difference, and you can find those numbers in every region.

AGE

Here again, larger urban areas (or areas than include a large urban centre) are grouped together on the top of the lists with the rural/small urban areas on the bottom. The drop-off isn't as dramatic as it is with education, although there's a notable ledge in the 20s list between big urban and small urban (between the Toronto CMA and Chatham-Kent).

Youth out-migration is a big challenge for most small urban and rural areas. They know that a lot of young residents will leave the area—at least in the short term—once they're ready to go to university or college, or in many cases just to get a job. Lambton County has a college, but that wasn't enough to stop it from landing in the bottom half of both lists and near the bottom in thirtysomethings.

The City of Waterloo scores highly with both age groups, particularly with residents in their 20s, and its advantage there is probably understated since many students who spend most of the year in Waterloo would be counted in their "home" areas for the census.

London doesn't quite match Waterloo's numbers, but it's a very strong second with twentysomethings. Waterloo is ahead of London in encouraging and supporting youth entrepreneurship—certainly tech entrepreneurship—which is why I was excited when BizInc started. Not only is it needed in the community, it needs to be expanded.

We know that entrepreneurs and innovators come in all ages and there are different advantages and disadvantages to starting a company at any stage in life. We had a lot of success in Waterloo from reaching out to young entrepreneurs ... but in an inclusive way where they would also interact with entrepreneurs outside their age group. (I used to say that if I look around the room and just see a bunch of old guys, that's a red flag, but if I don't see ANY older people, that's not good either. Since I first said that, I've switched from one group to the other and am happy to find I still feel the same way.)

It's essential for the communities near the top of the lists to make sure they ensure that young entrepreneurs and innovators are encouraged and supported. But it's not just those areas. It's important in the battle against youth out-migration. It's not only younger people who don't want to be working for a company doing what it's always done in a way that it could have been doing it in 1995—or even 2005—but my experience is that dissatisfaction with complacency is highest among the younger crowd.

We've come a long way from the traditional image of entrepreneurs as old guys in suits, but it still exists and seems to be more persistent in regions with older populations. It sometimes feels like more resources are used in futile attempts to get established business to move to an area than in supporting new entrepreneurs. I the message here isn't to focus on the age range where your area is strongest, but to ensure that all ages feel included.

Continues with: More census crunching: Income and housing expenses in Southwestern Ontario. Also see Adapting innovation programs to small urban and rural areas, the first post in this series.

Adapting innovation programs to small urban and rural areas

Thanks to funding from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, I got to spend five months over the fall and winter focused solely on bringing (and figuring out how to bring) Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) resources supporting the commercialization of innovation to small urban and rural parts of Southwestern Ontario—specifically, the region from Goderich to Simcoe, excluding the City of London.

I've lived in a small urban area in that region for over a year now and spent a lot of time over the last five years travelling across Southwestern Ontario. We'd actually lived in Waterloo for more than a decade before cluing in that there was a whole world around us that we'd never seen. We quickly made up for lost time.

Connecting innovation and productivity programs to the economic development priorities of Southwestern Ontario became a priority for me and the last thing I did before leaving TechAlliance was create a project to reach out to the small urban and rural areas across the region. Since it was a personal priority more than an organizational one, there was never any discussion around lessons learned and recommendations, so that will be my theme across several upcoming posts.

I spent five months talking to companies and supporting organizations in seven counties or county-sized municipalities: Huron, Lambton, Chatham-Kent, Middlesex, Elgin, Oxford and Norfolk. Until I moved to Strathroy, the only places I'd ever lived were Toronto, Boston, and Waterloo—three internationally renowned innovation centres—and the strengths and challenges of the communities I was now working in were very different from anything I'd experienced.

But one thing was clear from the beginning. There was plenty of innovation going on throughout this region. When I looked through the disclosed NRC-IRAP contributions over the last few years, there were just as many (slightly more, in fact) companies in these smaller urban and rural areas that had received funding as there were in the City of London.

So the companies were there, the innovation was there, and yet these regions were clearly not the focal point of the provincial innovation programs. Yes, every area was assigned a Regional Innovation Centre, but they were almost all based in major urban centres and outreach was rarely a priority.

The key sectors of the programs were also not well aligned with small urban and rural needs. Unlike London, for example, these regions were generally not looking to digital gaming and medical devices as cornerstones of their future economic prosperity. Resources at the "regional" centres were nearly always weighted toward the innovation/technology priorities of their major urban centres. Medical device expertise is useful in the City of London, but not so much in Huron County. And the region I was covering has a population that's nearly double (1.8x) that of the City of London.

The provincial programs originally took a very narrow view of "innovation" and mostly used the word as a euphemism for inventions generated at universities. That's improved over the years, although there's still a long way to go. Some universities started out in small urban and rural areas, but all of Southwestern Ontario's universities are now in the largest urban areas. The University of Guelph has a good-sized campus in Ridgetown (part of Chatham-Kent) and a site in Simcoe, and Western has at least one research institute in Middlesex County, but it's mostly the colleges that have a presence in smaller urban centres. The colleges' share of innovation program resources has improved, but since they don't have a research focus, they don't play as integral a role within the programs as universities.

The university-centric view of innovation is a challenge for small urban and rural areas, which not only don't have university campuses but also typically have a smaller pool of university graduates. Here's a table taken from the last census showing the percentage of residents aged 25 to 64 with university degrees in selected parts of Ontario (the second number is the ratio of the percentage to the provincial average)—some of which overlap:

City of Waterloo	40.3%	1.55
GTA (Toronto CMA)	33.6%	1.29
City of London	25.6%	0.99
Middlesex & London	23.8%	0.92
Waterloo Region	23.2%	0.89
Lambton County	13.3%	0.51
Strathroy-Caradoc	12.5%	0.48
Oxford County	11.4%	0.44
Chatham-Kent	11.2%	0.43
Elgin & St. Thomas	11.0%	0.42
Haldimand & Norfolk	10.5%	0.40
Huron County	9.9%	0.38

(For the graphically-inclined, I turned this into a bar graph in my next blog post.)

The City of Waterloo—with its two universities—is off the charts and the other large urban areas all score well, and then there's a huge drop once you get past Waterloo Region. The difference is large enough to raise questions about whether an approach that works in Waterloo and Toronto and London will be as effective in the less urbanized areas.

Now that provincial innovation programs have been merged into the economic development ministry, and with the increased emphasis on productivity—which requires a broader view of "innovation"—there looks to be an opportunity to rethink some of the programs to make them more applicable to companies and regions outside of the major urban areas.

There are some interesting initiatives and approaches throughout the region as municipalities look to enhance their economic development through entrepreneurship and innovation. That's what I'll be looking at in some upcoming posts.

Continues with: Education and age differences across Southwestern Ontario and implications for "innovation" support.

Moving ahead in London: New vision and leadership needed to fill the gaps

I had a great time in Waterloo on Friday, attending the rebirth of LaunchPad$50K, now run by the GTAN angel group, which means there are real investors on the judging panel (and in attendance) making actual investment decisions, the lack of which is always my first lament about most business pitch competitions.

"How are things in London?" was usually one of the first questions that came up as I bumped into a lot of old friends—this was my first time at a Waterloo event since moving to Strathroy—and that reminded me that I've never said anything here about my London experience.

I stepped down from my role at TechAlliance last November after 13 months. I was affiliated with the organization for a few more months—managing a project I had initiated that focused on small urban and rural areas in Southwestern Ontario (more about that in future posts)—but that wrapped up at the end of March.

The point I made repeatedly on Friday is that I didn't leave because of a lack of confidence in London's potential as an innovation and technology centre. If anything, it was just the opposite.

London has a ton of potential—which is what motivated me in the first place to uproot my family and make what was only my second big move (the first was from Toronto to Waterloo when I was 28 and single). That potential is now beginning to transform into reality. London is now starting to get the vision and leadership that it's needed for years to make it happen.

Unquestionably, there are major gaps that need to be filled, and some of them probably should have been addressed years ago. But we can't step into a time machine and go back, so the best we can do is start now. And that's what I've turned my attention to.

Thankfully, there are others who have also been working on filling those gaps. Two initiatives in particular—BizInc, the student business incubator at Western and Fanshawe, and UnLondon, which (among many other things) created the UnLab hackerspace—have shown how much can be achieved in a short period of time when you have that vision and leadership and drive. I quickly became a big supporter of both, and whenever I was asked what exciting things are happening in London, those were the first two I'd mention.

There are other grassroots initiatives in town that also hold a lot of promise, and some impressive new companies like Cyborg Trading Systems, Big Viking Games and Carbyn (now part of Synacor), among others that I'd better not try to name one-by-one. BizInc is connected to Western and Fanshawe—two fantastic resources that the city had never really tapped as a source of startups. The local office of NRC-IRAP deserves to be singled out as having done an outstanding job, particularly in the years when it had extra funding and was unmatched locally in its support of early-stage innovation-based companies. As well, there's a solid core of supporting services and infrastructure in London, which is becoming an increasingly vibrant and creative city (something I also got to see in Waterloo).

I had the opportunity to see firsthand where these exciting new initiatives were happening—who was looking ahead and who was looking back. Who was rowing the boat and who was coasting, or even rowing in the wrong direction.

I saw the potential and I also saw why London had fallen behind other cities in building an innovation and technology business centre. It was one thing to cede dominance to Waterloo Region, but we're now seeing other Ontario communities catch up. Even Waterloo wasn't that far ahead of London just a few years ago, but the gap has widened every year. It took Hamilton about nine months to surpass what it took years to build here—again, proof of what can be done in a short amount of time (it did take them a long time to get something going, but once they got it going, it really went). Guelph been making huge strides as well. We've been too satisfied for too long with mediocre results.

Vision and leadership matter. Being in touch with your industry matters too. Complacency is a killer.

And that vision and leadership exist in London. You'll find it in the people who brought us UnLab, PodCamp London, StartupCampLondon, Geek Dinner, Hello My Game Is, Lean Coffee London, Seed Your Startup, and the 100+ projects that BizInc has worked with. These are the kinds of forward-thinking initiatives London needs, and there's lots more to be done—and people eager to do it.

It would be great to see resources reallocated to these initiatives that are actually making big things happen. There are people at a grassroots level accomplishing a lot on shoestring budgets. Shoestrings only get you so far, though. They deserve our support.

I've been talking with many of those people over the last several weeks. There's frustration, but also an ambition and desire to make things better. The raw material has always been here but for too long we've had administrators where we need leaders. I hope what we're seeing now is a sign that a change has started.

After spending more than 10 years working to build the Waterloo tech community, I came to London with high hopes. Those hopes are still there and I'm looking forward to being part of the changes ahead.

Path looks clear for the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund

Quick takeaways:

• Looks like the Bill that creates the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund will pass
• No big changes in committee, although there will now be a standalone corporation managing the fund
• SWEA and Invest Ottawa were among the presenters at the public hearings
• I like a lot of SWEA's vision for the fund, except its reliance on commercial lenders
• That's sounding like the old Michelin Development fund in Waterloo Region, which may be an achievable model, but not one I'd prefer

We're down to the homestretch at the Ontario Legislature for Bill 11, the proposed legislation that would establish the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund and continue the Eastern Ontario Development Fund. The NDP seem to be on board with the governing Liberals—and had the run of the place when the bill went to committee in April—while the PCs remain opposed. That means that, barring a late surprise, the bill should have enough votes to pass third reading [UPDATE: Had enough votes? Probably. Third reading vote? Never happened. See "No Southwestern Ontario Development Fund ... for now, anyway," June 21.]

Most of the details that will be of interest and debate are going to be in the regulations rather than the bill itself, which avoids such messy issues as which areas are eligible and ineligible and how the fund will actually operate.

Clause-by-clase amendments
Since the details are in the regulations, the clause-by-clause consideration by the Standing Committee on General Government mostly dealt with higher level issues. The PCs supported every amendment the NDP proposed, so all of them passed and became part of the bill. One amendment—which the NDP said was modelled after the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund—will require the creation of two new corporations to manage the SWODF and the EODF. Each will have its own board, consisting of the minister and at least seven other people, who must be residents of the area covered by the fund. The board will establish a local advisory committee that "must reflect sectoral and sub-regional interests" in the region.

A second amendment will require every funding agreement to include performance standards and that payments received by companies be paid back to the fund if they don't satisfy the standards agreed to. All funding agreements would be available for public inspection, with any commercially sensitive information removed. Nothing particularly dramatic, and those were the two biggest changes.

Public hearings
Public hearings were held two weeks before the clause-by-clause review. There were fewer requests than expected to speak to the committee, so there was only one day of hearings instead of the two that had been pencilled in. One of the groups appearing before the committee was SWEA—which MEDI Minister Brad Duguid identified as the main instigator for the creation of the SWODF, with support from SCOR, SOMA and the Western Ontario Wardens' Caucus (all groups I had the opportunity to meet when I was overseeing Ontario Network of Excellence outreach in small urban and rural areas across much of Southwestern Ontario). Other groups to present included ONE member Invest Ottawa, the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corporation (WEEDC), and the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce, along with representatives of Durham Region and the District of Muskoka. Two businesses and an individual also gave presentations.

Durham and Muskoka were concerned about falling through the cracks of the three regional funds that would exist if the bill is passed. They aren't in the north, east, or southwest. There may be several others in the same boat once all the definitions are in. There'd better be, because there isn't enough money in the three funds to cover everyone. Even so, if I'm an oddsmaker, I think the coverage for SWODF will be broader than I'd prefer.

Even Invest Ottawa was mostly trying to get in on the action, since the urban parts of Ottawa are currently excluded from the EODF. Invest Ottawa CEO Bruce Lazenby (who mentioned growing up in London) told the committee that Ottawa has "hundreds of companies that will not succeed because they can't get $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $75,000, that little bit which is going to tip them over into the next phase." He said Ottawa is "on the cusp" and will either succeed or "get beat up" over the next couple of years.

The role of commercial lenders
SWEA has consistently been advocating for a fund that is both loan-based and integrated with commercial lenders—and Harry Joosten from Libro Financial Group was part of its delegation, along with chair Dan Mathiesen and president Serge Lavoie. Much of what SWEA has recommended is compatible with my preferences—a low ceiling on the funding received by any one company, a low threshold on the number of jobs any single company is required to create, an emphasis on what Lavoie called "a grassroots approach to building small business" and a specific reference to startups (Lavoie was the only presenter who explicitly refered to business startups, although they were implicit in Lazenby's presentation as well)—all of that was great for the committee to hear.

But I'm still skeptical of the commercial lender-focused approach. The model described by Joosten would have companies first go to a bank, credit union, or other qualified lender and "go through all the normal credit assessment procedures." Companies would have to complete this assessment before being evaluated by a committee from the fund. They would then get credits at the end of each year for each job created (smaller amounts in the second and third years), and could use those credits to repay their loans.

Joosten undoubtedly has a rosier view of the value of commercial lenders to growing companies—particularly early-stage ones—than my experience has provided me. Above all else, this fund is supposed to be a tool for regional economic development, and I don't agree with Joosten that "the expertise is there" within banks or that they've shown themselves to be sufficiently progressive in working with high-potential companies that I would make them the gatekeepers for the fund.

The SWEA vision for the fund doesn't sound very different from the Michelin Development fund that we had in Waterloo Region a few years ago—although the banks would be even more hands-on in this case, which I don't see as a positive. I was on the review committee for the Michelin fund for about a year. It made some good loans (Miovision was one of the recipients), but had a hard time dealing with companies without hard assets and overlooked many promising companies. As long as companies met the credit worthiness check, it was mostly a superficial matter of dividing the loan request by the number of jobs they were claiming to create and seeing if they met the threshold. There was no consideration for regional economic development—which wasn't Michelin's mandate, so that was fine but I don't think anyone could say it had any kind of transformational effect on the community.

Maybe for $20 million that's as good as we're going to get with the SWODF—the Michelin fund was one-seventh that size and served a population about one-seventh as big (assuming the City of Hamilton isn't included in the SWODF). So that could be a realistic model, which is a sobering thought. Better than nothing, but I'm hoping for more.