Canada's 11 largest cities, dubbed the C-11, have come together to launch a new bilingual website aimed at attracting new foreign direct investment and trade across the country.
Economic development executives from the C-11, including Lee Malleau, director of business development at the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, met this morning in Ottawa to promote the launch of ConsiderCanada.com and CanadaEnTete.com.
The website, which was initiated by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, includes success stories about foreign direct investment, promotional videos, digital brochures and PowerPoint presentations.
In an interview with Business in Vancouver on Tuesday morning, Malleau said Vancouver is Canada’s western gateway to some of the biggest trading nations on the planet, including China.
However, she added that Vancouver is relatively weak in certain economic categories such as export productivity and average wages.
“One of the things [Vancouver] needs to get better at is international trade,” said Malleau. “And the best way to do that is to work with existing companies and help them access international markets.”
She noted recent efforts to promote Vancouver internationally during the 2010 Olympics and during Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
Malleau said collaboration between Canada’s largest cities has never happened before on this scale.
Among the key topics the C-11 is discussing is generating healthy “co-optition” between cities to benefit the nation as a whole.
“Cannibalizing business from each other doesn’t generate any economic net gain for us nationally,” said Malleau, adding that Canada has a relatively small international business footprint to begin with.
Each city in the C-11 invested $5,000 into the ConsiderCanada program, with the federal government matching those funds.
Among the success stories on the website is one about Vancouver-based natural gas engine maker Westport Innovations for capitalizing on the growing global market for alternative fuel vehicles and for attracting global partners Cummins and Volvo Powertrain.
The Westport case study goes on to promote Canada’s strong manufacturing base, where tariffs on manufacturing inputs are set to fall to zero by 2015.