There are 2 to 3 million Canadians living, working and studying outside our country – and 10 per cent of them are in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. This kind of diaspora strategy is how many countries such as Israel, Singapore, and India are taking on the world in a more networked and digital age.

No group better epitomizes that approach than the C100, an association of Canadian expats in the Valley that has helped build Canada’s tech ecosystem. For the past decade, it’s taken on our national innovation challenge and helped drive policy change, develop talent streams, and connected Canadian entrepreneurs with the world.

“Our ambition really is to build the preeminent global community of Canadians in tech and to take this model that we have built in Silicon Valley to markets everywhere,” said Laura Buhler, Executive Director of the C100. She joined the RBC Disruptors podcast, along with C100 Co-Chair Andre Charoo, to discuss how Canada has transformed into a global tech leader and how it can sustain its momentum.

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The last five years saw sustained year-over-year growth in venture capital investment into Canadian tech companies. And in 2019, the volume of VC invested in Canada had its greatest uptick ever with a 40% increase over the previous year.

Buhler said it comes down to Canada’s entrepreneurs. “In order to have investment, you need a founder or founders and an ambitious team who are talented enough and passionate enough about a problem to go build it and solve it.”

Few companies have attracted more investment into Canada than Ottawa-based Shopify, which has been heralded as Canada’s quintessential talent magnet.

“Having Shopify and its enormous growth … is really important for flows of capital,” said Charoo.

And coming up behind Shopify is a whole generation of promising tech companies founded by Canadians returning home after experiences in Silicon Valley –

Michael Katchen of Wealthsimple, Ray Reddy of RITUAL, and Andrew D’Souza of Clearbanc, to name a few.

It’s likely why we’ve seen an explosion in tech jobs. Over the past five years, 80,000 new tech jobs have been created in Toronto alone – more than San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. combined.

What can the Canadian tech ecosystem do to build on its impressive growth? Here are five takeaways.

1. Expats are an asset.

Canadians in every part of the world have the ability to network and plug our entrepreneurs into their local ecosystems. We need to tap into our diaspora networks to create strategic opportunities that accelerate the growth of our companies and our talent.

2. Seize the moment right now.

The restrictions that the United States is putting on immigration are a big opportunity for Canada to attract top global talent. It’s time to step up and show that in Canada, we do things differently. We value inclusion and we can foster success.

3. Pay up for talent.

Top tier tech executives in the U.S. get paid a lot more than in Canada. And to bring that world-class talent here and keep it here, we need to think about how to match ambition with compensation and ensure that we’re not undermining success. That includes our tax system.

4. Buy Canadian.

Procurement is a recurring theme on our podcast, and there’s never been a better time to support Canadian businesses. Large corporations and governments can invest locally to develop a thriving ecosystem that can compete on a global stage.

5. Innovation is happening coast to coast to coast.

It’s not just a Waterloo or Vancouver thing. From Whitehorse to St. John’s, Canadians are building sustainable and innovative businesses that are solving big problems. Some of the most successful, scalable companies are found in our smaller centres. So wherever you are, don’t be afraid to look beyond your own backyard. You might see exactly what you’re looking for.

Now they have a chance to reinvent themselves.

COVID-19 has crushed pretty much every retail category, nowhere more so than in malls. Clothing sales alone were down roughly 50% in the early weeks of the crisis.

In the U.S., Green Street Advisors predicts more than half of department stores in malls will close by the end of 2021. Coresight Research expects upwards of 25,000 stores in the U.S. to close this year – 60% of them in malls.

Cadillac Fairview has launched a new program called Ravel to counter the unravelling of malls. The digital platform is not just one-way information about sales or locations; it’s a blended model to allow shoppers to see styles and colours that may not be in stock, and to compare items across stores.

“It’s a virtual mall in your pocket,” says Jose Ribau, Cadillac Fairview’s Executive Vice President of Digital & Innovation. Ribau joined the RBC Disruptors podcast to discuss how the world of retail is shifting.

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“Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the efficiency of a digital platform but also try the blazer on before you buy it?”

CF owns 68 properties in Canada, including Toronto’s Eaton Centre and Vancouver’s Pacific Centre. In South America and East Asia, where CF also operates, malls deploy digital platforms to allow customers to choose items and have them delivered to their cars or their homes, often while paying through an app.

A lot is at stake. Retail employs more than two million Canadians, and accounts for a big chunk of commercial real estate. In 2017, there were 3,742 shopping centres larger than 40,000 square feet across the country – up from 3,496 such properties in 2012.

If those malls want to disrupt themselves, here’s some of what they need to consider:

1. Online shopping is here to stay.

But so, too, is the blended model. Yes, we love the convenience of e-commerce, but most of us also love to explore, to see and to touch. Malls allow us to browse stores while also browsing online and to use online platforms to get the ideal items sent to us whenever and wherever we want.

2. The mall of the future will be built on data.

Malls are a goldmine of data that can help retailers feed information to shoppers while they’re shopping — and use that data to enhance the shopping experience with alerts, deals and photos of products.

3. Delivery services are shifting from B2B to B2C.

As customers continue to go online, delivery services are becoming a key part of retailer and restaurant supply chains. Smart malls are figuring out how to get products to shoppers wherever they are.

4. Malls need to be fun and inspiring.

Those that can capture that spirit in a safe physical environment will be the ones that thrive.

Think video consultations, tracing apps, biometric screening – all of which are rapidly becoming part of the new normal.

Many Canadian hospitals and technology companies are already leaders in healthcare innovation. Dr. Abhinav Sharma, professor and researcher at McGill University Health Center, and Valérie Pisano, CEO of the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (MILA), joined the RBC Disruptors podcast to share how the pandemic has been a catalyst for the adoption of new technologies and how Canadian healthcare is transforming.

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What amazed Sharma is how quickly doctors and healthcare professionals pivoted to telemedicine amid the pandemic.

“It was a big shift to actually embrace this technology, which seems sort of basic and rudimentary, he said. “But actually from a medical point of view, to deliver healthcare over a phone or over a Skype visit is actually quite a paradigm shift.”

Arguably, the ability of front-line professionals to adapt in real-time is made possible by the ongoing work of the tech community over the past several years. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, tech and AI researchers were able to respond immediately.

Pisano said that within days of the pandemic hitting Canada, dozens of researchers at MILA mobilized multiple projects, including lung imagery for diagnostic testing and predictive analytics for virus tracing.

“There’s so many different ways where AI is being solicited right now,” Pisano said.

“It really is the perfect context to say, ‘OK, if we push the boundaries of innovation, how can these technologies support us as humble and vulnerable human beings as we face this pandemic in the months and probably years ahead?'”

That’s a question researchers are exploring.

So, what can we expect? Here are 4 key takeaways.

1. The future of healthcare is here.

COVID has shown us that virtual healthcare is possible. Telemedicine and online doctor visits aren’t hard. Yes, we will still need and want face-to-face contact for all sorts of reasons, but we need to focus on evolving to create a better, more inclusive, and accessible system.

2. Data and privacy.

Right now, we have an opportunity to help more Canadians be proactive with their health. But to do that, people need to be comfortable with the idea of allowing their data to be used through new technologies and protocols. So the question becomes, how do we clearly communicate the benefits of these new innovations and how data helps us get there?

3. Healthcare is global.

We in Canada focus a lot on the balance of power between the federal and provincial governments while the pandemic has shown us how health problems and health solutions are increasingly global. How can we ensure that the innovations being developed here in Canada are global in their ambition?

4. Humans matter.

Yes, technology is going to increasingly shape healthcare. But without the human adoption of technology, we’ll never see its potential. A cultural shift needs to take place in how we view the use of technologies and the implications of data sharing. Researchers and entrepreneurs can develop the best AI or equipment, but it’s up to healthcare professionals and patients to talk through how to make this work in our daily lives.

As Canada fights the COVID pandemic, health tech has never been more important. The challenge will be to continue to innovate, and to build on our existing foundation to create a system that’s both inclusive and accessible.

Practically overnight, thousands of bureaucrats had to pivot to working from home and processing millions of relief applications. They’ve been pushing out billions of dollars in support for Canadians impacted by the COVID-19 crisis – almost entirely through digital channels, a first for the government.

Hillary Hartley, Ontario’s Chief Digital and Data Officer, and her distributed team were uniquely suited to this new environment. Their model made it easy for them to immediately start working from home when it became necessary without losing ground. After Alberta launched Canada’s first COVID-19 online self-assessment tool, Hartley’s team got the code and launched a version for Ontario within three days.

While the current focus for governments is on mission-critical crisis response, conversations are happening behind the scenes about how to seize this crisis to digitally revolutionize and better serve Canadians. Hartley and Alex Benay, the former CIO of Canada and partner at KPMG responsible for digital and government solutions, joined the RBC Disruptors podcast to discuss how the pandemic has made getting government up to the speed of digital more possible than ever.

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Benay says it’s interesting to see so many efforts pushing past all the “excuses” that used to exist for why governments couldn’t go digital-first. New programs such as the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit are going online faster, for instance, partly because the underlying rules are simpler.

“EI has tens of thousands of rules, CERB has a handful,” he said, “You’re seeing governments – both from a programmatic perspective and a technological perspective – realize that digital first is the way to go now.”

That is, if we can overcome outdated operating models.

Benay said the government’s conception of the Internet hasn’t evolved from processes created roughly 20 years ago. Bureaucrats are focused on the people who need to implement services, rather than data that could be beneficial. And information collected is protected behind firewalls and silo-ed across departments.

The latter is partly the product of privacy restrictions. In Ontario, for instance, data collected for a government program is allowed to be used only for that program. Even within the same ministry, different teams have to write up mutual agreements to be able to share data. Hartley said Ontario might have gone “a little bit too far in thinking about privacy” and not enough on interoperability, or how information could be exchanged.

“Attitudes are shifting,” she said. “It’s a moment where we really need to ask ourselves and ask the public how we should proceed.”

It comes down to two core pillars.

One is ensuring policies and regulations adapt quickly to enable proper sharing of information.

The other is having the right digital infrastructure to support a new model of service delivery. At the heart of the two is balancing a digital first mindset with appropriate privacy protections.

Perhaps there’s no better example of a digital-first government than Estonia. Both Hartley and Benay point to two specific innovations that paint a picture of what a future Canadian digital infrastructure could strive for.

The first is Estonia’s X-Road or as Benay describes it, “their railroad of the Industrial Age, but for the digital age.” It’s a decentralized server that allows thousands of businesses, governments and people to connect and exchange information. The other is a secure digital identity issued to every Estonian, which might arguably provide better privacy protections than what’s available in Canada today.

So how might Canada build the digital government of the future? A few takeaways:

• Distributed teams. They’re key to finding innovative solutions. To solve complex challenges, governments will need to work with people and networks in every corner of the world.
• Digital isn’t a tool, it’s a culture. Digital transformations require a major shift of mindset toward speed and user centricity. And it starts at the top with leaders who champion a digital-first model and encourage diversity of perspectives on their teams.
• Data is key. Governments need to focus on a new approach to data and privacy if they want to keep pace with the challenges and opportunities all around us. That doesn’t mean citizens will surrender control of our data, but there needs to be more flexibility, coupled with transparency, to solve a crisis like COVID.
• Obsess with users. Increasingly governments are learning to act less like monopolies and think more like start-ups that aren’t afraid to test and learn from their clients – it’s the most fundamental principle of a digital organization.
• Bold does not mean big. Use the success of the CERB roll-out, with its simpler business rules, as an example. Governments no longer need size to deliver results at scale. They can fund smaller things; focus on the half-dozen things that can make an impact and ensure the system doesn’t squash it.

The government will continue to play a huge role in propping up Canada’s economy throughout this crisis and using digital channels to do so. But the momentum can’t slow once the urgency fades. As we move into the 2020s, governments are going to have to move faster and be smarter in taking on challenges. If they are able to use the COVID-19 crisis as a catalyst for adopting digital tools and platforms, we could see a future in which every citizen is digitally enabled to receive the services they need as soon as they need them.