Ontario announced that it is supporting innovation in the transportation sector by launching the first automated vehicle (AV) pilot program in Canada, led by The University of Waterloo, the Erwin Hymer Group and BlackBerry QNX.

The WATCar Project at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Automotive Research, which will monitor a Lincoln MKZ for performance and test it on-road at different levels of automation.

Self-driving vehicles are hitting Ontario streets, after the province became the first in Canada to open a pilot project to test the automated vehicles on public roads.

Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced the program's first three participants Monday, saying they will be working with different levels of automation.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the government agency that manages alcohol sales across the province, is tapping into Kitchener-Waterloo’s startup community as it seeks to modernize the way it interacts with customers at its retail stores.

Even though the LCBO already has an innovation lab at its downtown Toronto headquarters, the scope of development there has been limited because of what the LCBO admits is a lagging approach to problem-solving.

WATERLOO REGION — A new report on Canada's 10 leading tech markets says Waterloo Region is the fastest-growing, with the largest increase in new tech jobs over the past five years.

The 2016 Scoring Tech Talent Report, issued Monday by commercial real estate and investment firm CBRE Canada, found that Waterloo Region recorded an increase of 74.4 per cent in new tech jobs, followed by Winnipeg at 58.5 per cent and Halifax at 50 per cent.

Waterloo, Ontario chemical imaging company P&P Optica will be led by CEO Olga Pawluczyk at the Google Demo Day – Women’s Edition on November 2 in Palo Alto, California, as the company showcases its Smart Imaging technology, aimed at revolutionizing the food processing industry.

PPO was chosen, along with the other companies presenting at the event, from more than 800 applicants in over 65 countries.

Ontario’s Waterloo Region to Pearson Airport corridor is well established as a technology and jobs powerhouse but much more transit infrastructure is needed so it can reach its full potential, delegates at the CityAge conference in Toronto were told recently.

The "Airport Megazone" is especially underserviced, noted representatives of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) in attendance at CityAge on Oct. 6. It is Canada's second largest employer — second only to downtown Toronto — supporting 332,000 jobs, but since the airport is regulated federally, it's a relative dead zone in terms of public transit, with 90 per cent of all trips to Pearson made via automobile, the representatives explained.

As the first hurricane-force storm sits just off from the Atlantic Ocean’s shores, the American Northeast Summer draws to a close. During its rapid course, I took some hours to look back on the ICF Summit in June, celebrate its highlights and to consider what it means as our movement goes forward into the next Awards cycle, with its conclusion this time on the big stage of New York.

Sometime this fall, a former Blackberry manufacturing plant turned light-infused office building will open its doors to companies in a Waterloo, Ontario area branded as the Idea Quarter, a mixed-use technology cluster near the University of Waterloo and the region’s light rail transit system.

When Spear Street Capital set out to revitalize that area, it set its sights on redeveloping the 215,000-square-foot building at 451 Phillip Street, a space that RIM had acquired in the late 1990s. There was an opportunity to rebirth a community and free up space for companies who could not previously find room in the neighbourhood.

Being called “one of the most important council decisions of this term,” Waterloo City Council is working to bring a Communitech Data Hub to the old Police Station on Erb Street in Uptown Waterloo.

Waterloo Mayor Dave Jaworsky tells 570 News that the Hub will help organize the terabytes of data that is being gathered on consumer spending and information.

Through concerted collaboration executed in a spirit of co-opetition, over the last three years 11 Canadian cities have executed seven joint Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) missions with the Federal government to 12 countries. These missions have resulted in 1,706 B2B meetings, 855 leads and 59 company visits. At an event last month hosted by the Toronto Region Board of Trade and attended by representatives of Chambers of Commerce and municipal economic development leaders from Canada's largest cities, attendees learned more about how to improve these numbers and accelerate leads to investment success.