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Ontario is the economic engine of Canada, the nation's financial and manufacturing centre. Our products and services are exported across North America and around the world.
With a population of more than 12 million, we are home to a largely urban, well-educated population that has an international perspective. Toronto, our provincial capital, has been called the most multicultural city in the world.
More than anything else, Ontario is a welcoming place where ideas, innovation and talented people thrive.
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Standing at the centre of Canada, both geographically and economically, Ontario has a long tradition of welcoming people from around the world to share our rich resources and shape our history.
Ontario stretches across more than one million square kilometres (415,000 square miles)—an area larger than France and Spain combined.
The northern edge lies at roughly the same latitude as Copenhagen and the Alaskan panhandle. Our southern, more temperate border along the Great Lakes is on the same latitude as Rome and northern California.
The Canadian Shield covers the northern two-thirds of the province, serving as a cradle for our mining riches. As one of the world's leading mineral producers for more than a century, we are ranked among the top 10 for nickel, platinum-group metals, gold and cobalt and among the top 20 for copper, silver and zinc. Toronto is the mine-financing capital of the world. Thanks to a century of mineral experience, Ontario firms have developed world-recognized expertise in mining technology, geology, metallurgy and environmental management.
The rich agricultural lands and mild climate of southern Ontario produce more than 200 agricultural commodities—a diversity unmatched in most parts of the world.
As the glaciers retreated some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, prehistoric settlers followed the caribou and elk into Ontario. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, French adventurers and Jesuit priests explored the river systems, trading for furs and searching for a route to the west. Henry Hudson sailed to Ontario from the north and claimed Hudson Bay for England.
British colonization, which began in the mid-eighteenth century, grew rapidly after 1776 when thousands of United Empire Loyalists from the United States fled the American Revolution to settle the lands between Quebec and Lake Huron. In 1867, Ontario joined with Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to create Canada. The country's first Prime Minister was John A. Macdonald, a Scottish-born lawyer from Kingston, Ontario.
More than 3 million McIntosh apple trees flourish throughout North America, all of them descended from one single tree discovered by John McIntosh in 1811 amidst the undergrowth on his farm near Prescott, Ontario.
By experimenting with grafting techniques and tirelessly marketing his seedlings across Canada and the United States, McIntosh and his descendants developed one of Canada's most successful agricultural products. Today, McIntosh varieties make up nearly half of Canada's annual crop of apples and Ontario is a world leader in food technology research and development. Our agri-food industry exports approximately $5 billion worth of products annually.
More than 200 years ago, loggers searched Ontario forests for the tallest pine trees to feed the hungry shipbuilding industry of Britain's Royal Navy. Today, Ontario's forest industry is still the economic lifeblood of more than 50 northern communities. About 20 million cubic metres of wood are harvested annually. Today, timber, paper, pre-fabricated houses and the latest manufactured-wood construction products are snapped up by customers around the world.
During the nineteenth century, life in Ontario was transformed by westward expansion, the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, industrialization and immigration. Trade in timber, fur and wheat gave way to manufactured products from iron foundries, steel mills, machinery, furniture and textile factories. By 1851, south-central Ontario had 1,500 industrial establishments.
Throughout the twentieth century, Ontario's economy expanded and diversified. In 1921, Ontario Hydro harnessed the power of Niagara Falls by building what was, at the time, the largest power plant in the world. The province quickly grew to become Canada's industrial heartland, producing mining equipment, automobiles, airplanes and an ever-expanding list of business and consumer products. By the beginning of the 21st Century, businesses in Ontario had a worldwide reputation for telecommunications, advanced manufacturing and computer software.
From the drilling of North America's first commercial oil well near Sarnia in 1858 to the invention and first production of the humble green plastic garbage bag, our plastic and chemical industries have been at the forefront of new ideas. Responsible Care®, the chemical industry's worldwide initiative to ensure the safe and environmentally sound management of products and processes, was born in Ontario in 1987 and has been adopted by 52 countries.
Ontario is Canada's leading petroleum-refining region, its largest chemical producer and the hub of Canada's plastic industry. Of the 10 largest chemical companies in the world, eight have operations in Ontario.
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Ontario takes pride in being both an internationally recognized business centre and home to one of the safest, most multicultural societies in the world. Successive provincial governments have built on those strengths to open new doors for economic growth and social development.
Ontario is a democracy rooted in the British parliamentary tradition. Our head of government is the Premier. During the past 20 years, we have had governments formed by the Liberal, New Democratic and Progressive Conservative parties.
Our justice system is based on British common law. Our legal environment is less litigious than that of the United States. There are caps on damages awarded by the courts, which are usually decided by a judge, and not a jury. As a result, the awards are substantially lower in Canada than the U.S.
Recognizing that education is an essential for progress, we have built a network of 20 universities and 24 colleges of applied arts and technology. Fifty-six per cent of our workforce aged 25–64 has completed its post-secondary education, a level that is higher than in any other industrialized country. Every year, more than 29,000 students graduate with degrees in mathematics, engineering and science.
Ontario's publicly funded health-care system is recognized as among the best in the world for the quality and breadth of its services and facilities. This helps workers stay healthier and lowers the cost of medical benefits of businesses operating in Ontario. In fact, employer health-care costs in Ontario are about one-half what they are in the United States; 6.8% versus 13.2% of wages.
Given Ontario's vast and varied geography, it is no surprise that we have a great interest in geology. In 1978, J. Tuzo Wilson, the world-renowned University of Toronto geophysicist, was awarded the Vetlesen Prize—the earth sciences equivalent of the Nobel Prize—for his groundbreaking work during the 1960s on the theory of plate tectonics. This theory describes the continual motion of the large, free-floating fragments that make up the Earth's crust. As these slow-moving plates drift apart, smash together or slide past each other, they can cause earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and the growth of new mountains.
The world's first robotic surgery service was created in Ontario by linking our sophisticated health-care system with our advanced telecommunications infrastructure. In March 2003, a surgeon at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton performed a complex stomach operation on a woman 400 kilometres (250 miles) away in North Bay. An array of sensors monitored the surgeon's hand movements, which were then transmitted by fibre optic cable to the distant robotic arms. The robot surgeon, named Zeus, is now "on staff" in North Bay to perform operations that would otherwise require a trip to southern Ontario.
Ontario has created an internationally competitive tax and regulatory environment that encourages business investment and growth. We are Canada's manufacturing, financial and R&D centre, and KPMG's comprehensive international survey of business costs found that Canada's business costs are the lowest among G7 countries.
Our combined (provincial and federal) general income tax rate for corporations is 4 percentage points below the U.S. average. We also offer one of the most generous R&D tax incentive programs in the world; costs can be reduced by almost 60%.
Along Ontario's innovation corridor, which stretches across the province from Ottawa to Windsor and into Northern Ontario, world-leading companies collaborate with more than 150 university, college and public research centres to speed new discoveries and processes from the lab to the marketplace.
Ontario has a history of being a launching pad for innovative ideas that have been felt around the world. Sir Sanford Fleming of Toronto devised Standard Time by dividing the world into 24 separate time zones. He unveiled the concept during a lecture in Toronto in 1878 and eventually the whole world adopted the system. In 1888, the first plant in Canada to run on hydro electric power was the Barber paper mill in Georgetown, Ontario. The University of Toronto's James Hillier and his colleague, Albert Prebus, constructed the world's first practical electron microscope in 1937.
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Ontario thrives through our unique combination of resources, manufacturing expertise, exports and a drive for innovation.
Ontario powers the Canadian economy. We generate 42% of Canada's real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our GDP, at $395.6 billion, is larger than that of Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden or Austria, and it has consistently grown at rates that outpace those of the world's industrial nations.
| International GDP comparison—2003 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Country/Province | US $billions | |
| Ontario | 395.6 | |
| Switzerland | 309.5 | |
| Belgium | 302.2 | |
| Sweden | 300.8 | |
| Austria | 251.5 | |
In 1903, at Cobalt, in northern Ontario, Fred LaRose, a blacksmith working at his forge, threw a hammer at a fox. Luckily for him and the fox, his hammer missed its mark and chipped the rock to expose a glint of silver—which turned out to be the richest silver vein in the world. Over the past century, Ontario has produced approximately 1 billion ounces of silver.
Today, Ontario is the world's second-largest nickel producer, eighth-largest gold producer and twelfth-largest copper producer. We mine more than 30 different minerals, from barite to zinc, valued at approximately $3.6 billion annually. Eighty per cent of Ontario's mineral production is exported around the world.
We are Canada's most industrialized province. The largest sectors of our diversified economy are: automotive, advanced manufacturing, machinery, chemicals, plastics, biotechnology, information and communications technology, BPOs (business process outsourcing), aerospace, food, forestry and mining.
Hundreds of leading international corporations, a global "who's who" of multinational and Canadian firms, have significant operations in Ontario. Most major Canadian banks are headquartered here. Canada's premier stock exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), is the third largest in North America and the seventh largest in the world.
From the heyday of the British Empire through to today's global economy, Ontario businesses have grown and prospered by supplying customers around the world with what they need.
Roughly half of our GDP is generated by exports, a higher percen-tage than that of the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France or Italy. The United States is our largest market, absorbing 91.74% of our merchandise exports. In fact, trade between Ontario and the United States is greater than trade between the United States and any national jurisdiction in the world, with the exceptions of Canada as a whole, Mexico and Japan.
An outstanding transportation network moves Ontario products to world markets. Our highways are connected to the U.S. interstate system. More than 5 million trucks a year cross the Ontario-Michigan border at Windsor and Sarnia—this is the busiest trade corridor in the world. The St. Lawrence Seaway allows ocean-going freighters to travel between Thunder Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, carrying goods to and from overseas markets. And with three international airports and a network of regional airports, business centres like Toronto, Ottawa and London are only a two-to-three hour flight from major U.S. cities like Detroit, Chicago, New York and Boston. Toronto's Pearson International Airport is serviced by more than 65 airlines which provide same-plane service to 43 cities in the U.S. and 42 cities abroad.
On August 3, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell telephoned his uncle in Brantford, Ontario, from nearby Mt. Pleasant—the world's first long distance phone call. Since then, Ontario has become a world leader in the develop-ent and implementation of digital microwave transmission, satellite communications services, data distribution networks, telecommunications and computer software. Ontario is home to more than 6,000 information and communications technology firms, including such world leaders as Nortel, IBM, Research In Motion (RIM), ATI Technologies, Alias/Wavefront, Rogers Communications and Open Text.
Savvy business people know that tomorrow's profits are based on today's research and development. Ontario is at the centre of Canadian business innovation. In 2001, expenditures on industrial research and development (R&D) in Ontario amounted to $4.75 billion—55% of the national total. Seventeen of Canada's top 50 research universities are in Ontario. University researchers routinely work on joint projects with corporations through specialized research centres.
Many Ontario-based R&D operations hold global mandates from their Canadian and foreign parent companies. Nortel Networks, Canada's biggest R&D spender, has its main global research centre here. General Motors of Canada holds GM's world mandate for alternative-fuel vehicles, conversion engineering and vehicle design. IBM Canada researchers have worldwide missions for database management, application development tools and network computing applications. And homegrown Ontario companies with international operations, such as Apotex, ATI Technologies, Husky Injection Molding Systems, Magna International and Research in Motion (RIM), do much of their R&D here.
Back in 1904, when Henry Ford arranged for vehicles to be manufactured in Windsor to supply the British Empire, he planted the seed for one of the largest collaborative cross-border industries in the world. Four years later, in 1908, Oshawa's Sam McLaughlin transformed his family's carriage company into the McLaughlin Motor Car Company and began incorporating Detroit-built Buick engines into its cars. In 1918, General Motors bought the company on one condition—that Sam stay on to manage it. Sam McLaughlin stayed on as president of GM Canada till 1945 and then as chairman of the board until his death in 1972, at the age of 100.
In 2004, Ontario produced almost 2.7 million cars and light trucks; more vehicles than any other jurisdiction in North America. Ontario's vehicle-assembly and auto-parts industries have grown to employ 135,000 highly skilled workers.
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Every year, about 250,000 people from around the world immigrate to Canada. Roughly half of them choose Ontario. They come for the business opportunities. They come for the quality of life.
International leaders from business, academia and the arts call Ontario home. Toronto is recognized as the most multicultural city in the world, where more than 100 languages are spoken. Wherever you come from, whatever your interests, you'll feel right at home in Ontario.
Every summer, music of all kinds comes alive across the province with international jazz festivals in Ottawa and Toronto, classical music in Elora and an eclectic mixture of traditional, world beat and classics in Parry Sound.
Each year, Toronto's International Film Festival draws 250,000 movie fans, industry representatives and celebrities from across Canada, the United States and more than 50 other countries. The International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront gives readers an unparalleled opportunity to see their favourite authors, from P.D. James and Elmore Leonard to literary authors and poets from countries large and small.
In Toronto, theatre buffs join the third-largest theatre-going audience in the English-speaking world. Drama, Broadway shows and major international musicals are all performed in downtown theatres. Renowned theatre productions at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake and at the Stratford Festival, North America's largest classical repertory theatre, bring visitors from around the world to our province.
The Canadian Opera Company will have a new venue in 2006 and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa is Canada's largest showcase for the performing arts. Both the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto are undergoing extensive renovations that will give visitors unique and totally different experiences with exhibitions. Just outside Toronto, in Kleinburg, the McMichael Gallery hosts an extensive permanent exhibition of works by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, First Nations and Inuit artists.
When it comes to unwinding after work, your toughest decision is what to choose. Whether you like to catch a game, relax at a spa or simply enjoy a meal out, it's all at your doorstep:
Page 1: Canadarm, NASA
Page 1: Nanticoke, Canadian Steamship Lines
Page 5: Hudson Bay Trading Store, The Granger Collection, New York
Page 8: Tuzo Wilson, University of Toronto Archives
Page 9: Sir Sanford Fleming, The Canadian Press
Page 12: Alexander Graham Bell, The Granger Collection, New York
Page 13: 1910 Ford Torpedo, The Canadian Press
Page 14: The Lord of the Rings Toronto Press Launch - May 16 2005, Photographer: Cylla von Tiedemann
Page 14: The National Ballet of Canada. Principal Dancer Sonia Rodriguez in Cinderella. Photographer: Cylla von Tiedemann
Page 14: Christian Franz as Siegfried confronting the dragon Fafner in the Canadian Opera Company's production of Siegfried. Photographer: Michael Cooper, 2005
Page 14: The R. Fraser Elliot Hall in the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Diamond and Schmitt Architects, Inc. Rendering: Cicada Design
Page 15: Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945), Mirror Lake, 1929, Watercolour over graphite on paper, 51. x 68.7cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Gift of Mrs. R.G. Mastin 1976.8
For more information about investment opportunities in Ontario, please call us at:
1-800-819-8701 (North America)
00-800-46-68-27-46 (U.K. and Europe)
e-mail:info@2ontario.com
website: www.2ontario.com
Ontario Investment and Trade Centre
250 Yonge Street, 35th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5B 2L7
Tel: 416-313-3400
Fax: 416-360-1817
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