CVCA's budget pitch to Ont. Premier McGuinty

With a provincial budget on the horizon, the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association has made a formal request on Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to bring to bear some new tools to help the start-up and venture capital ecosystem get up off the floor.

As you’ll see from the letter, many of the asks were quite straightforward, such as supporting the CVCA’s efforts to get the most basic of attention with the powers that be in Ottawa (see prior post “CVCA letters to Messers Flaherty, Clement and Ignatief” December 26-08).

Other suggestions require a bit more thought on the Premier’s part:

• doubling Ontario’s commitment to the Ontario Venture Capital Fund (to $200 million from $90 million)
• creating a tax incentive for large Ontario corporations to invest in VC funds – in essence giving them the same tax deductibility for LP investments that they would get from internal R&D

The CVCA offered last November to work with the provincial government as they designed the next stage of their Innovation Strategy for the 2009 budget. With that consultation window now closed, hopefully there is still time to stimulate their thinking via cvca-letter-march-16-2009.

The Ontario Government put $30 million into the V-8 engine plant in Essex, near Windsor, Ontario to preserve 300-572 jobs.  According to ITAC, 700,000 Canadians work in the information technology and communications technology sectors.  Throw in the biotech and lifescience folks, and you are close to 1 million jobs. That would mean in excess of 400,000 in Ontario.

I’m all for “Green” V-8 engines, but what about the Innovation Economy?

MRM