Canada has spent centuries mopping up surplus British talent — from dispossessed farmers in the 19th century to disillusioned video games makers a few years ago.
Now it is mounting — or perhaps mountie-ing — an assault on London’s fintech industry, the companies that use cutting-edge technology to make financial services groups more efficient.
Last week, in London, Charles Sousa, the minister of finance for Ontario, met British companies that are looking to expand into North America, to extol the virtues of the Toronto to Waterloo corridor — a 100-mile stretch on the northwestern bank of Lake Ontario just across the border from Niagara Falls.
“It’s a $19 trillion opportunity,” he said of the province’s proximity to the US and its participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta. More than $1.4 million of trade is conducted every minute between the region and the US.
Several British businesses have already taken the plunge, with more than 200 expanding to Ontario, which employs 40,000 people. Mr Sousa said that the investment totalled $48 billion in 2014.
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First Derivatives, a £500 million listed Northern Irish software company, expanded to Ottawa and Toronto in September last year when it opened its FD Labs division there to address the US market.
Axxsys Consulting, which provides technology for hedge funds, and Operis, a financial modelling and software advisory company, have also opened shop in Ontario.
One of the province’s biggest strengths is its cross-section of high-tech and finance, a similar model to that reflected in Britain around Canary Wharf.
The Toronto-Waterloo corridor has 15,000 technology companies and 200,000 technology workers already but remains a cheap place to develop compared with Silicon Valley. The latest KPMG Competitive Alternatives report found that there was a near 30 per cent cost advantage of basing research and development in Ontario compared with the US.
That is largely the result of BlackBerry’s legacy as well as investment in video-gaming. The phone maker, which is based in Waterloo, has brought a huge amount of wealth to the region and — like many pockets of Finland where Nokia once dominated — is populated by ex-workers with advanced technical skills. More than 20,000 people are now employed in the Canadian gaming sector, mostly in Quebec and Toronto, and the sector contributed $3 billion to the Canadian GDP last year.
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Mike Lazaridis, BlackBerry co-founder, also set up the Institute for Quantum Computing in the town. Canada, alongside Indonesia, is one of the few markets where the company remains a force in smartphones.
Mr Sousa, 57, said that the talent and tax breaks on offer were vital to establishing the region’s fintech and cleantech sectors. “If we can’t compete on smokestacks and low wages, we will have to find a different way,” he said.
Yet he resisted the notion that Toronto would snatch the fintech industry from under British noses in a similar vein to video games two decades ago. “It is about replicating the UK’s success. This is not about taking it away. The UK has a leadership role,” he said.