The technology sector is all about achieving firsts.
For B.C.’s tech ecosystem, this year marks the first time the province has been handed an A grade compared with other jurisdictions in the country.
That’s up one full letter grade in the BC Technology Report Card since the BC Tech Association and KPMG issued its last assessment in 2016.
The report card released on November 22 highlighted employment growth of 24% since 2006 and annual compound tech-sector revenue growth of 7.3% from 2011 to 2016.
“B.C. has two major areas for growth: alleviating our talent shortage and investing more in policies and programs that support more of B.C.’s anchor tech companies to achieve scale-up success,” BC Tech Association CEO Jill Tipping said in an email to Business in Vancouver.
While the province also scored an A for economic performance indicators, it made no progress in sector input indicators since the B minus it received in 2016.
The report card noted a persistent talent gap – most notably at the master’s and PhD levels – while innovation as judged by research and development and intellectual property has grown minimally.
The B minus “is a clear call to action for more targeted initiatives related to talent and scalability, and, in particular, increased collaboration with policy leaders and educational institutions,” Tipping said.
She said B.C. needs to at least double its number of tech anchor companies in the province.
For Ali Pourdad, CEO of financial technology firm Progressa, the province still seems to be struggling, relative to other jurisdictions, to attract startups.
His Vancouver-based firm opened a second office in mid-2016 in Toronto, where he travels to frequently for business.
“B.C. has not taken the right steps post-NDP coming in to nurture our tech industry. The problems existed prior to them coming in, to be honest,” he said, adding that payroll taxes are creating additional burdens for upstart companies.
Pourdad said cities like Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton have been more aggressive at offering incentives to startups and encouraging new hires.
“Those things are definitely making things a lot worse and are certainly not business friendly [for B.C.],” Pourdad said. “Our hand is weakened significantly.”
