Ontario Canada

Facts, figures and firsts

Geography and people

• Ontario is one of the 10 provinces and three territories that form Canada.
• Ontario covers a huge territory – more than a million square kilometres – an area larger than France and Spain combined. It stretches from latitudes comparable to Copenhagen in the north and Rome in the south.
• Ontario’s population of 12.5 million people make up one of the most multicultural societies on earth. Roughly 250,000 people immigrate to Canada every year and about half of them choose to live in Ontario.
• Toronto, our largest city and provincial capital, is home to more than 90 ethnic groups. In addition to English and French, you will hear Chinese, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish, Punjabi, Ukrainian and Portuguese spoken throughout the city. In fact, the latest census records over 100 languages spoken in the province. Wherever you are from, in Ontario you will find a community where you’ll feel comfortable.

Government and quality of life

• Ontario is a democracy based on the British parliamentary model.
• Canada’s head of state is the Prime Minister. Ontario’s government is headed by the Premier.
• Our universal healthcare and first-class education systems are publicly funded.
• Ontario boasts 280 provincial parks, 40,000 square kilometres of protected wilderness and more than 600 golf courses.

Economy

• Ontario, Canada’s manufacturing and financial centre, powers the national economy. We generate about 42% of Canada's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Our provincial GDP, at more than €320 billion, has consistently grown at rates that outpace the world’s industrial nations.
• Ontario’s GDP is larger than that of many European countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden or Austria.

Life sciences

• Ontario scientists discovered insulin, T-cell receptors, the human progenitor blood stem cell and the gene carrying the defect that causes cystic fibrosis. The electron microscope was developed here, as were the pacemaker and the first implantable heart monitor.
• The world’s first remote robotic surgery service was established in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2003. The robot surgeon, named Zeus, is physically located in a hospital in North Bay – but controlled by a surgeon at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton some 400 kilometres away. The two communicate via Ontario’s high-bandwidth fibre optic network.
• Ontario is at the heart of Canada’s innovative biotech, pharmaceutical and medical devices industries. More than 42,000 scientists, engineers and technicians working at more than 800 companies and manufacturing facilities generate revenues of more than €8.6 billion annually.

Automotive

• The Ford Motor Company started manufacturing in Ontario in 1904, followed by General Motors in 1918 and Chrysler in 1925.
• Fourteen major auto assembly plants and more than 450+ auto parts factories operate in Ontario.
• For the second year in a row [2004 and 2005], Ontario produced more cars and light trucks than any other jurisdiction in North America. Our vehicle assembly and auto parts industries have grown to employ more than 135,000 people.

Information technology

• Ontario is a world leader in digital microwave transmission, satellite communications services, data distribution networks and voice, data and video telecommunications. We also produce more than a quarter of the world’s computer animation software products.
• More than 5,000 hardware, software and service firms do business here, including such world leaders as Nortel, IBM, Microsoft, Research In Motion (RIM), ATI Technologies, Alias, Open Text, and Corel. Clustered in the Greater Toronto Area, Waterloo Region and Ottawa, the sector employs more than 230,000 people and has annual revenues of more than €32 billion.
• Ontario’s IT expertise has helped generate a wealth of Canadian breakthrough services, from SchoolNet (the world’s first national online network of public schools) to QuickLaw (the world’s first computerized legal information retrieval system).

Aerospace

• The renowned de Havilland “Beaver,” one of the most successful bush planes in the world, was designed and built in Toronto in 1947. It pioneered the development of Short Take-off and Landing (STOL) technology.
• The first commercial jet transport to fly in the Western Hemisphere was designed in Canada and built in Ontario, as were NASA’s Canadarm I and II.
• The first anti-gravity suit or flight suit was developed in 1941 by Doctor Wilbur Franks at U of T’s Banting Research Institute. The “G-suit” prevents pilot blackout due to high acceleration and g-force.

Trade

• Ontario lies in the heart of the North American Free Trade area, which has more than 400 million people and generates a GDP of more than €11 trillion.
• Ontario produces almost 50% of all Canadian exports and consumes more than 60% of all imports.
• More than €1 billion crosses the Canada-U.S. border each day and Ontario-U.S. two-way trade accounts for more than €600 million of it.
• The United States is our largest two-way trade partner, followed by China, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany.
• The Detroit-Windsor gateway is the largest corridor of international trade in North America.
• The North American Free Trade Agreement ensures that goods manu-factured in Ontario have tariff-free access to the United States and Mexico.

Advanced Manufacturing

• Ontario is the manufacturing centre of Canada, producing almost 60% of all the manufactured goods that are shipped out of the country. In 2004, the total value of our exports in the top five categories alone – from cars to electronic equipment to pre-fab housing – topped €114 billion.
• Ontario’s key sectors – automotive, information and communications technologies, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biotech – use advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics, innovative injection molding equipment and leading-edge visioning systems to produce exceptional quality products for customers in more than 170 countries.

Rich in natural resources

• Ontario is one of the world’s leading miner-al producers; among the top 10 for nickel, platinum, gold and cobalt group metals, and among the top 20 for copper, silver and zinc. Eighty per cent of Ontario’s mineral production is exported.
• Ontario has the world’s largest salt mine and the world’s richest silver vein.
• Toronto, Ontario, is the mine-financing capital of the world. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the TSX Venture Exchange list more than 1,100 mining companies.
• Ontario’s forest industry harvests about 20 million cubic metres of timber annually to make products that range from paper to the latest in manufactured wood construction products and pre-fab housing.

Fun facts & firsts

• In 1811, John McIntosh discovered a unique variety of apple on his Prescott, Ontario farm. There are now 3,000,000 McIntosh apple trees across North America, all descendents of seedlings grafted from that single tree.
• North America’s first commercial oil well was drilled near Sarnia, Ontario, in 1858.
• Standard Time, dividing the world into 24 time zones, was developed by Toronto’s Sir Sanford Fleming.
• Thomas Willson, born in Princeton, Ontario, discovered the first commercial process for the production of calcium carbide, a chemical compound used in the manufacture of acetylene gas.
• “Canada Dry” ginger ale was invented in Toronto by John McLaughlin.
• The first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb was patented by Toronto’s Henry Woodward in 1874. Henry later sold a share of the patent to Thomas Edison.
• Norman Breakey, from Toronto, invented the paint roller in 1940.
• The familiar green plastic garbage bag was invented by Henry Wasylyk from Winnipeg and Larry Hansen, a Union Carbide employee in Lindsay, Ontario.
• Responsible Care®, the chemical industry’s voluntary initiative to safely handle products from the research laboratory through manufacture and distribution to ultimate disposal, was developed in Ontario in 1987 and has quickly spread to 45 countries.

For more information about Ontario, please visit us at:

www.2ontario.com

E-mail: info@2ontario.com

00-800-46-68-27-46 (U.K. and Europe)

Special thanks to the following organizations
for providing photos:
NASA
FNX Mining Company Inc.