Canada announces winners of Supercluster Initiative
In May 2017, the Canadian Government launched the Innovation Supercluster Initiative (ISI). This initiative aims at boosting innovation, by creating superclusters, conceived as hotbeds for innovation, in key strategic industrial domains, pointed out by the Canadian Government at the inception of the initiative: advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean technology, digital industries, health and biosciences, clean resources, infrastructure and transportation
To do so, the Canadian government decided to fund five initiatives to create so-called superclusters which could become global centres of excellence. The measure is funded with a total envelop of CAD 950 million, for five years.
The cluster selection was operated in a two-step process: the government selected nine finalists in September and has now announced the winners.
The Government of Canada has set up an information page, which provides information about the applicants and their projects.
The following table provides an overview of the five winning superclusters:
|
Initiative |
Entity(ies) supporting the initiative |
Region |
|
Quebec City’s Optel Group |
Quebec |
|
|
Communitech of Waterloo, MaRS Discovery District in Toronto |
Toronto-Hamilton-Waterloo corridor |
|
|
Digital Technology Supercluster (Focus on health, natural resources and industrial applications) |
Consortium of large technology companies |
British Columbia |
|
Companies in the energy, shipbuilding and seafood industry |
Atlantic Canada |
|
|
Protein Industries Supercluster (Focus on plant proteins and related food ingredients) |
Agriculture companies |
Saskatchewan |
