$12.6M for Windsor airport tops Q1 FedDev contributions

Southwestern Ontario received the biggest FedDev contribution in the first quarter of the 2014 fiscal year, with $12.6 million awarded to the Windsor airport—Your Quick Gateway (Windsor) Inc.—through the Prosperity Initiative program. The funding closed in April.

Across the region, most of the FedDev fundings in the quarter were for municipal infrastructure and the annual funding for the regional CFDC offices. There was no direct funding for any other businesses.

The other funding of note was $367,500 to Guelph-based Bioenterprise through the Scientists and Engineers in Business program, which has now committed all of its funds. That program helps STEM grads build business skills and launch startups.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can Windsor use a non-snub to energize a focus on innovation?

OMG, did you hear? There's a new $100 million "Innovation SuperCorridor" initiative from the province introduced in the budget ... AND WINDSOR'S BEEN SHUT OUT! Snubbed! All that money and Windsor need not apply.

Well, that was the story in the Windsor media, anyway—led by the Windsor Star, which rang the alarm bells, soon followed by other media outlets. The president of the University of Windsor, Alan Wildeman, wrote a rebuttal, but to little effect. Apparently, the chamber of commerce is now preparing a lobbying campaign to make sure Windsor gets its fair share of the funds.

Which will be a challenge, since there actually is no $100 million initiative. Either the Star invented it or they cribbed it from someone who did, because it certainly wasn't in the budget.

It's true that the budget described an area it called the "Innovation SuperCorridor"—it "extends from London and Waterloo region [sic] in the west [I'm pretty sure one of those is…
Read more

Zero to One: Some useful insights in a sea of dross

Many people have said good things about the Peter Thiel (with Blake Masters) book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, and there were several parts I found worthwhile, but I can't add it to the recommended reading list for startup founders.

There's nothing particularly objectionable about the major theme—have a bold vision and a plan to get there—but there's very little in Thiel's underpinning for that theme that's going to be of much value. It's heavy on personal ideology—which may be enjoyable to read if you share the same views—but not so useful as a guide for startups.

I'm sure I could pull a dozen good tweets from the book (and will do, below ... 10 of them, anyway), but I found the first half to be largely a waste of time. Thiel's recollections of the late 90s dot-com boom are very different from mine. He looks back with nostalgia at a golden era characterized by big visions that he rarely sees these days. I remember the pe…
Read more

Fastest growing (and shrinking) Southwestern Ontario communities

Image
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…
Read more