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Invested in the job Outgoing Invest Ottawa CEO Bruce Lazenby looks back on his five years at the helm > PAGES 10-11
July 4, 2016 Vol. 19, NO. 18
THE TENANT’S ADVANTAGE
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Panning planning How many bad decisions can one city’s planners make? In Ottawa’s case, a lot, says Bruce Firestone. > PAGES 6-7
Chamber champion New Ottawa Chamber of Commerce chair Marie Boivin wants businesses to get more out of the organization.
Gordon McMillan is the founder, CEO and chief creative officer of the ByWard Market branding agency that bears his name. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON
McMillan’s brand builds momentum
> PAGES 12-13
Ottawa-based creative agency has carved successful niche by being true to its vision
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It doesn’t do government work — instead, firm focuses on corporate clients and keeps growing stronger after 20 years > PAGES 4-5
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TOURISM
“Do we want a brand that’s independent of government or not? That can work in your favour and that can work against you. It’s one of the things that needs to be figured out.”— STEVE BALL, PRESIDENT OF THE OTTAWA GATINEAU HOTEL ASSOCIATION
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The Rideau Canal attracts local residents and out-oftown visitors alike yearround and is one of the city’s most well-known yet untapped tourism assets, a recent survey says; workers get Parliament Hill ready for Canada Day; kayakers enjoy a sunny trip on the canal. PHOTOS BY ANDREW MEADE
Ottawa’s brand needs a boost, tourism summit told City scores well overall as a destination, survey says, but needs to do a better job of defining itself to potential travellers BY DAVID SALI david@obj.ca
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ttawa rates high as an overall travel destination in a new survey, but the city lags behind many other major Canadian cities in air access and needs to better define its identity in marketing
campaigns if it hopes to fully cash in on its potential, officials at a recent tourism summit were told. “Overall, I would say Ottawa is doing fairly well,” said Paul Ouimet, managing director of DestinationNEXT, which conducted the survey of 200 members of the local tourism industry, businesses,
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government officials and travellers in April and May. “You’re starting from a position of strength.” The city compared favourably with more than 250 other destinations the organization has surveyed around the world in overall strength as a tourist destination – a category that
encompasses elements such as attractions and entertainment, events, sports and recreation facilities and convention spaces – as well as community engagement, he told the audience at the Shaw Centre. But he said Ottawa scored lower in categories such as international air access and brand, a “bit of a red flag” that suggests industry groups such as Ottawa Tourism need to do a better job of selling visitors on the city’s many assets such as its natural beauty, world-class museums and other cultural attractions. While Ottawa’s tourism organizations and various levels of government appear to be on same page when it comes to how to promote the city, they can’t rest on their laurels, Mr. Ouimet added. A destination’s brand is becoming increasingly important as cities look to stand out from the crowd in the ever-more competitive tourism business, he said. “There’s a lot of other communities that are coming after you,” he said. “It’s really, really important to continue to push the envelope.” Steve Ball, president of the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association, said branding has long been a challenge for the tourism industry in Ottawa because many travellers closely associate the nation’s capital with the government of the day. “Do we want a brand that’s independent of government or not?” he said in an interview with OBJ after Mr. Ouimet’s presentation. “That can work in your favour and that can work against you. It’s one of the things that needs to be figured out.” The rise of peer review sites on social media means it’s more important than ever for tourist attractions to deliver unique experiences that satisfy customers who can make or break a destination with their instant critiques, Mr. Ouimet said. “You can have the greatest sales campaign in the world,” he told the crowd of nearly 300 tourism and government officials. “If you have a bad experience at a meeting and convention or for leisure visitors, you can absolutely be massacred on peer-to-peer sites.” Continued on page 9
BRANDING “I think it would be fair to say we’re less Canadian in the way we approach the market. There’s not a lot of modesty anymore. That isn’t to say it’s arrogant or anything, but it’s just very clear … We are a global player.”— McMILLAN FOUNDER AND CEO GORDON M MILLAN c
McMillan enters third decade as a ‘global player’ Ottawa-based marketing agency’s early decision to eschew government contracts has paid off with a growing roster of high-profile international clients BY MICHAEL WOODS SPECIAL TO OBJ
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f you’re a mid-sized creative agency headquartered in Ottawa, you don’t become a global player without a bit of pluck. About six years ago, Siemens Enterprise Communications was looking for a company to help it rebrand. Then-chief marketing officer Chris Hummel had a previous working relationship with McMillan, the Ottawa-based branding and marketing agency. He invited the company to bid, although the seven much larger competitors had a six-week head start. “The criteria for the RFP was you had to be able to demonstrate that you had done three global rebrands. We had done zero,” Gordon McMillan, the founder, CEO and chief creative officer of the firm that bears his name, said in a recent interview at the company’s ByWard Market office. “But we knew that we could do it.” Undeterred, Mr. McMillan and business partner Rob Hyams flew to Munich for the pitch. Rather than describe the global rebrands they hadn’t
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McMILLAN’S BIG THREE To mark the 20th anniversary of his company’s founding, Gordon McMillan looked back at three of his most firm’s most important rebranding campaigns and explained their significance:
UNIFY “Probably the juiciest project we’ve worked on was rebranding Siemens Enterprise Communications as Unify. We brought them the name, which was perfect for a company combining phone, chat, video conferencing and file-sharing into one unified system. We really didn’t have a ton of experience doing global rebrands, and here we were asked to help redefine who they were, change everything from the corporate brochure to the website, create creative for a global ad campaign and, to top it off, help build out a broadcast live from New York and Munich. Yeah, that was stressful.”
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC “It still amazes me that a $30-billion-dollar company like Schneider Electric with 190,000 employees globally turns to us to help them define their brand. I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
appreciate the skill and talent of the New York agencies. But on the other, I learned not to be intimidated by it,” he said. “So I brought that perspective back to Ottawa.” The company’s first clients were Microsoft and Information Dimensions, an Ohio-based firm. Oracle followed soon afterward. The Unify rebrand was a turning point for the agency, but the bigger pivot came three years ago. That’s when Mr. McMillan and Mr. Hyams decided to narrow their focus to concentrate exclusively on business-to-business clients. They cut loose 15 local clients and stopped bidding on RFPs that they would have before. “It was a difficult decision,” Mr. McMillan said. “But it allowed us to focus on the opportunities that would allow us to be successful, and it led to some very large pieces of business.” Among those: a global-brand refresh for Schneider Electric, the French energy giant with 190,000 employees. Other clients have included Intuit, Commvault and Hub International. The shift in focus has helped the firm recruit the right talent, finding people “insatiably curious about how things work,” Mr. McMillan said. The narrower focus also helps assure clients that they’re getting dedication. “When (clients) work with a generalist agency, they’re often given a team who would prefer to be working on Victoria’s
Secret, for example, and they’re feeling compromised to have to work on a B2B client,” Mr. McMillan said. “When they come to us, they see the people they work with are actually very interested in what’s happening. “Selling cloud services ain’t like selling cologne, and I don’t have a lot of people here who really care about selling cologne.” A spirit of whimsy and collaboration is apparent at the company’s office at the corner of Sussex Avenue and George Street, in one of the city’s oldest buildings. Roy Lichtenstein comic strips adorn the walls. Open-concept meeting spaces are plentiful and often named in tribute to the building’s past as the former home of the Geological Survey of Canada. There’s even a room named after Oscar Wilde, who visited the building once while on a Canadian tour. McMillan’s own branding recently caught up to that decision three years ago to go exclusively global. At the agency’s 20th anniversary celebration party in May, a snazzy affair with 350 guests at an abandoned paper-storage facility on Albert Island, the company unveiled a rebrand, which its founder said takes the firm into bolder territory. “I think it would be fair to say we’re less Canadian in the way we approach the market,” Mr. McMillan said. “There’s not a lot of modesty anymore. That isn’t to say it’s arrogant or anything, but it’s just very clear … We are a global player.”
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done, they spent an hour outlining their detailed proposal for the project at hand. They won the bid with unanimous support in the room and oversaw the company’s rebrand to Unify. “Part of it is having the moxie to say, ‘Dammit, we know what we’re doing. Let’s put our best foot forward,’” Mr. McMillan said. “They actually never ended up asking us what those other three global rebrands were.” McMillan is unusual for an Ottawabased company: it’s a branding and marketing agency that doesn’t do government work (it has done one government contract in the last 15 years, for Statistics Canada). Instead, it competes with the world’s largest branding agencies such as Interbrand, Landor and Lippincott for huge global contracts. More than 90 per cent of McMillan’s revenue last year was from the United States and Europe. Annual revenue for its top five clients totals more than $60 billion. The company is now valued in the eight figures and has nearly doubled in size in the past two years, to 75 employees. “From the very beginning, we wanted to go global,” Mr. McMillan said. That desire originated partly with his experience in New York City working on campaigns for Xerox and Mercedes Benz before returning to Canada to found his own company in 1996. “On the one hand, I grew to
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COMMVAULT “We’ve been fortunate to do some rebrands or brand refreshes with some great global firms like Unify, Schneider Electric and Commvault. But I know the best work is in our future. We just keep getting better and better at it.”
Now 75 employees strong, McMillan recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with a party on Albert Island. PHOTO BY JUSTIN VAN LEEUWEN
COMMENTARY Great River Media 250 City Centre Ave., Suite 500 Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6K7 obj.ca TELEPHONE Phone: 613-238-1818 Sales Fax: 613-248-4564 News Fax: No faxes, email editor@obj.ca PUBLISHER Michael Curran, 238-1818 ext. 228 publisher@obj.ca CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Terry Tyo, 238-1818 ext. 268 terry@greatriver.ca EDITOR, PRINT CONTENT David Sali, 238-1818 ext. 269 david@greatriver.ca EDITOR, ONLINE CONTENT Maya Gwilliam, 238-1818 ext. 291 editor@obj.ca COPY EDITOR Samantha Paquin ADVERTISING SALES General Inquiries, 238-1818 ext. 286 sales@obj.ca Wendy Baily, 238-1818 ext. 244 wbaily@obj.ca Carlo Lombard, 238-1818 ext. 230 carlo@obj.ca Alison Stewart, 238-1818 ext. 226 alison@obj.ca SPECIAL PROJECTS Nikki DesLauriers, 238-1818 ext. 240 nikki@obj.ca MARKETING & SALES CO-ORDINATOR Cristha Sinden, 238-1818 ext. 222 cristha@greatriver.ca CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tanya Connolly-Holmes, 238-1818 ext. 253 creative@obj.ca
Bruce Firestone still wonders why the NCC didn’t allow something more imaginative than condo towers to be built at LeBreton Flats when it finally approved a bit of redevelopment on the property. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON
Ottawa’s ugly planning history In his first column in a two-part series, Bruce Firestone recaps the litany of planning mistakes made by officials in the National Capital Region – and how a progressive-minded new generation at City Hall is trying to turn things around
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ow many bad decisions can one region’s planners make? Lots, if you are talking about the city of Ottawa. Let’s review some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you will) of urban planning in the nation’s capital through the years: Ottawa got rid of streetcars many years ago, not to replace them with subway lines, but with dirty, smelly diesel buses that get stuck in the snow every winter. The National Capital Commission expropriated lands at LeBreton Flats at what was then a flourishing workingclass community only to demolish the neighbourhood and replace it with nothing for decades. Eventually, the NCC approved construction of a few
lost $80 million of its own investment in planning, design and right-of-way acquisition and got sued for $177 million in the process, eventually settling the suit for about $35 million plus millions more in legal fees. All to build exactly nothing. The NCC built “parkways” – a.k.a. roads – between areas where people live and Ottawa’s three beautiful rivers and canals, along the way closing or unimaginative condo towers, thereby demolishing change rooms, toilets and creating another “nowhere.” small stores. As a result, even if you’ve Ottawa saved – wait for it, Dr. Evillived in Ottawa for decades, you don’t style – “one million dollars” on the design fully realize its beauty since you are and construction of its downtown arena separated from its waterways by tens of by truncating half its seating capacity so thousands of fast-moving cars and buses. that the Civic Centre was obsolete the When you do manage to access them, day it opened in 1967. there is nowhere to get a tea, coffee or The city signed a binding agreement muffin or go to the bathroom. with two respected firms (Siemens and Ontario amalgamated 12 governments PCL) for construction of a light-rail in the former Regional Municipality of line to the south, only to renege on its Ottawa-Carleton into one, the City of agreement. That decision caused the Ottawa, ostensibly to provide for more city to miss out on $900 million in senior rational management and cost savings. government funding, not to mention $2 Instead, the number of full-timebillion of real estate projects – hotels, equivalent municipal positions – what apartments, shopping areas and other you and I would call “jobs” – jumped from commercial space – planned for the areas 12,500 in the pre-amalgamation days to around new LRT stations. The city also 16,500, producing a vast bureaucracy
ART DEPARTMENT Regan VanDusen, 238-1818 ext. 254 regan@greatriver.ca Celine Paquette, 238-1818 ext. 252 celine@greatriver.ca FINANCE Jackie Whalen, 238-1818 ext. 250 jackie@greatriver.ca SUBSCRIPTIONS/DISTRIBUTION Patti Moran, 238-1818 ext. 248 subscribe@obj.ca PRINTED BY Transcontinental Qualimax 130 Adrien-Robert, Parc Industriel Richelieu Gatineau, QC J8Y 3S2 NEWS RELEASES News releases for the Ottawa Business Journal’s print or Internet news teams can be e-mailed to editor@obj.ca. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR We welcome opinions about any material published in the Ottawa Business Journal or issues of interest to local businesspeople. Only letters with the writer’s full name, address and telephone number will be considered for publication. Addresses and phone numbers will not be published, but they might be used to verify authenticity. Letters can be e-mailed to editor@obj.ca.
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that couldn’t find Ottawa’s rural villages with a compass and a map and costing taxpayers an extra $800 million. To this day, Ottawa allows suburbs where you’ll find 3,000 stick-built homes in a row without catching sight of a corner store, a pub, a shop, a dental office or a medical clinic and where every trip requires a vehicle that must travel on curvilinear roads with rights-of-way wide enough to host Formula One races. I could go on for hours. So imagine my surprise when I learned recently that the city, which already legalized in-home suites some time ago, was contemplating adding coach houses to its list of permitted uses. I have fond memories of living in what was then called a granny flat in
Santa Cruz, Calif., many years ago. The big house in front was occupied by a lady who I thought was impossibly old (probably about the age I am today – her 60s). I got to know her a bit, so I asked her why she’d built a tiny onebedroom home in her backyard. “Well, I like students,” she said. “I like their company. My own family has kind of forgotten about me.” And it was true. I never heard her phone ring, and she never had any visitors. She was lonely and, in addition to having the company of the students, she felt safer having someone else live on her property. Then she added, “And frankly, Bruce, I can also use the extra income, too.” The year was 1969.
The point is, if you want to keep your most valuable resource in your village, town or city – your kids – you have to build your brand. You have to make it feel like living in your community is a cool thing to do and convince young people they can do great things without moving down the road to a megacity, which noted urbanist Richard Florida says is a place of 10 million or more, of which Canada has none. To that end, two senior Ottawa planners – Alain Miguelez, program manager for zoning, intensification and neighbourhoods, and John Smit, manager of policy development and urban design, Alain’s boss – recently sat down with me for 90 minutes of frank talk about the state of the city’s planning.
Bruce M. Firestone is founder of the Ottawa Senators and a broker at Century 21 Explorer Realty. Follow him on Twitter @ProfBruce.
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The Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal provide plenty of opportunities for cyclists and pedestrians to soak up the beauty of the region’s waterways. PHOTO BY ANDREW MEADE
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The point is, if you want to keep your most valuable resource in your village, town or city — your kids — you have to build your brand. You have to make it feel like living in your community is a cool thing to do and convince young people they can do great things without moving down the road to a megacity
“In my tour of duty in zoning, I’ve been focused on removing barriers,” Mr. Miguelez told me. “I was able to oversee up-zoning of about 100 kilometres of arterial frontage (to allow both residential and commercial uses), get micro-retail zoning passed without appeal, get more front-yard parking flexibility in the ’burbs, establish streetscape character zoning for infill in older neighbourhoods, open the door to corner lot severances in the R1 bungalow belt inside the Greenbelt, allow front-toback semis, allow wrap-around semis, and now we’re doing coach houses, plus a review of minimum parking requirements. We’ll end up eliminating them, or significantly reducing them, at key locations, allowing open-air markets as-of-right on church lands, and we’re about to start projects on makerspace, removing obsolete restrictions in many rural zones and cleaning up yet more obsolete restrictions in several urban industrial zones.” Mr. Miguelez credited his superiors with giving him leeway to pursue changes he believes are necessary. “I’ve been lucky that senior management has gone along with all my stuff,” he said. “I’ve also been successful with humour sometimes. One of my star planners is a cartoonist, and I got him permission to do a video about what impact Ottawa’s parking standards is having on development in this city.” For example, Montreal requires one parking space per 250 square metres of restaurant space, while Toronto asks for seven. Ottawa? It demands a whopping 23. What this means is that pleasing streetscapes and walkable places, such as Hintonburg or the Glebe, could not be built today. It’s worth watching the city planner’s video. Just plug “Review of Minimum Parking Standards” into YouTube’s search bar. Maybe, as American author and social critic James Howard Kunstler says in his book Home from Nowhere, it might be better to “burn all your zoning codes.” Mr. Smit won’t go that far. “Right now, developers, community associations and BIAs (business improvement areas) have to twist themselves into pretzels to get things done in this city,” he said. “Our job is to rationalize that. (Former deputy city manager) Ned Lathrop used to say, ‘Ottawa is changing from a big little city to a little big city,’ and we have to adjust to that. Once a city gets to a million population (Ottawa is approaching that now), its economy and culture shifts in fundamental ways, and planning has to shift with it.”
EVENTS
FORTY UNDER
40
2016
Region’s brightest biz stars feted Ottawa’s young business trailblazers were honoured during a gala ceremony at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on June 16 when OBJ and the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce presented their annual Forty Under 40 awards. Top row, hosts Lianne Laing and Ian Mendes share a laugh; Invest Ottawa’s Blair Patacairk presents OSEG’s John Mathers with his award; Mayor Jim Watson greets recipient Jeff Clarke of Inflector Environment Services; second row, Tasico Hospitality Group’s Fayez Thawer receives his award from OBJ publisher Michael Curran; Joe Clark poses with daughter Catherine, a Forty Under 40 recipient this year; another winner, Wipebook’s Frank Bouchard, poses with presenter Robert Rheaume of BDO Canada; this year’s recipients celebrate in a group photo; bottom row, presenter Marie Boivin high-fives winner Richard Isaac of RealDecoy; Mr. Watson chats with recipient Dr. Safeena Kherani; winner Carey Assaf of Kardish Health Food Centres is congratulated by presenter Sophia Leong; the Hitmen Drumline group performs for the crowd.
MONDAY, JULY 4, 2016
PHOTOS BY MARK HOLLERON
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“It’s a nice feeling to be recognized. I think seeing the other 39 people, you get to realize how similar you are. Hearing the stories of all the other people is pretty cool.” — CAREY ASSAF, 34, CO-OWNER OF KARDISH HEALTH FOOD CENTRES
TOURISM Ottawa’s brand needs a boost Continued from page 3 Ottawa Tourism CEO Michael Crockatt said that means organizations such as his need to work harder to use social media platforms to their advantage. “A brand is no longer just what we are telling people it is,” he said. “We have to be engaging with visitors while they’re here, because they’re the ones who are shaping our brand out there through their social media channels and the stories they’re telling their families.” Local tourism officials also agreed Ottawa would benefit from more international air connections but said the industry needs to expand further before that will happen. “Until we have that critical mass that justifies having direct routes to more locations, that’s going to come with time as our marketplace grows,” said Mr. Ball. “I think we need to focus on the lowhanging fruit – areas where there is easy access and direct routes, particularly ... the northern U.S., and maximize those first.”
Guy Laflamme, executive director of the Ottawa 2017 Bureau that is planning the capital’s Canada 150 celebrations, said the year-long party will raise the city’s profile and help make it a more attractive air travel route. “If we make 2017 a huge success, which we will, as a result this will increase the interest of transportation companies to improve service to Ottawa,” he said. “When they see increased level of demand, that’s the best argument you can use to convince Air Canada, WestJet, Porter or VIA to increase the servicing volume and level to our city.” Mr. Ouimet also said many survey respondents pointed to the Rideau Canal as a underdeveloped tourism asset, adding the ongoing rehabilitation work on Parliament Hill has posed a challenge for the local industry lately because the Hill’s majestic vistas have been obstructed by scaffolding. “That is a major, iconic attraction,” Mr. Ouimet said. “To have that boarded up … is going to be a major issue.”
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Q&A ‘It’s about telling the world what a wonderful asset we’ve got’ One of the capital’s best pitchmen, outgoing Invest Ottawa CEO Bruce Lazenby says he has many happy memories and few regrets after five years at the helm of the region’s main economic development agency
A
fter five years as head of Invest Ottawa, Bruce Lazenby vacated the CEO’s chair on June 30. The former high-tech executive became president and CEO of the agency then known as the Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation in 2011, overseeing its rebranding to Invest Ottawa and presiding over a time of significant growth at the organization, which will move to its new headquarters in the Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards this fall. A few days before his departure, Mr. Lazenby sat down with OBJ to talk about his achievements, where he thinks the organization is headed and his plans for the future. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview.
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OBJ: Why did you decide to step down now? BL: The easy answer is I originally signed a four-year contract because there’s a reason that presidents serve terms of four years. The reality is that these aren’t the kind of jobs you should be in for a career. You should come in, put your head down, work hard for some years and then hand it off like a relay runner to the next person. So that’s it. I stayed on one year later than I had originally planned, but now I think is the right time to go. I’m particularly delighted to do it now so the new person can come in to put their fingerprints on the Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards and get it tweaked up the way they want before they move in. And I get to work on my golf game a little bit over the summer, which is pretty good too.
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OBJ: What are your emotions in your final week on the job? BL: There are parts of this job that I’m really going to miss, and there’s parts of this job that I’m not going to miss. There’s a lot of small-p politics in the nature of this, and that hasn’t been my background. I’ve been a private-sector guy, so that was a little interesting. But the opportunity to make a difference that this job provides was really interesting. I got on more committees and got involved with more decision-makers than I could ever have any other way. I moved here after having had 33 different address changes in every province and territory in the country, (plus) time at sea and time in the Middle East and time in Europe. I chose Ottawa in 1989 after having seen literally dozens of other cities. It was
Bruce Lazenby has relished his role as a salesman for the capital region. PHOTO BY MARK HOLLERON
“It was really easy for me to sort of fill that role of VP sales for the city. To, in some small way, help make the city better was something that I really enjoyed.” — BRUCE LAZENBY, ON HIS FIVE-YEAR TENURE AS HEAD OF INVEST OTTAWA really easy for me to sort of fill that role of VP sales for the city. To, in some small way, help make the city better was something that I really enjoyed. That was a great part of the job. OBJ: What accomplishments over the past five years stand out? BL: Early on, one of the things that I said was we need more venture capital in the city, so we recruited Code Cubitt to move here from the United States to launch a new fund (Mistral Venture Partners), which he’s done. That fund is now closed, and he’s looking at starting fund two. He’s made a dozen investments, most of which are in Ottawa, which I’m excited about. The Innovation Centre getting $15 million from the province and $15 million matching from the city was good. We wanted to make
that happen. CENGN (Kanata’s Centre of Excellence for Next Generation Networks, which opened in 2014) was an Invest Ottawa initiative, which we launched, and for the first time ever, Ottawa won a centre of excellence opportunity. The CAPE award that we won in collaboration with Terry Matthews which led to L-Spark is another thing we’re very proud of. The ZDG (Chinese investment fund Zhongguancun Development Group) relationship – the first time we really got in a deep relationship with China and the massive opportunity that we’re seeing for Ottawa companies as they work that pipeline; I think that was a great step for us. The fact that we’ve got the four major postsecondaries working together on a joint co-op program I think is good. Talent has been a real big
preoccupation with us – how do we make sure that we attract and retain the best talent possible. A lot of that led to the Why Ottawa presentation. The reason I think that happened was because there’s a new sense of collaboration in the city. I remember five years ago, there was not a healthy relationship between the city and OCRI (and) the chamber of commerce. A lot of the startup community saw the programs that OCRI was running back in the day as being not relevant to what they were doing, so there was really not a spirit of working together. I think now in this city, if there’s one change that I’ve seen in the last five years, it’s been that real desire to work collaboratively. Invest Ottawa is not going to take a lot of credit for that – I think the mayor and council deserve a lot of credit. Now we’ve got a council that can make Lansdowne happen, can make LRT happen, can work with the NCC to get LeBreton in place. OBJ: There’s a lot of competition for talent in today’s global economy. How can Ottawa do a better job of standing out in the crowd? BL: I think the data is there. Now we just need to let people know about it. That’s something that we have launched; it will come out in the fall. It will be a program specifically targeted at bringing more technology talent to Ottawa. We’re going to be targeting specific cities in Canada and overseas where we think that we’re a better fit for some of that talent. How do we attract more people from other places? (Canada is) the most sought-after destination in the world, and I think working with Immigration Canada, we can find ways to make (Ottawa) more accessible. The reason I chose to live here after looking at 32 other places was because I know how great it is. We’ve just got to make sure that other people understand what is here, and that (requires) a significant marketing campaign. The reason that tourists should flock to Ottawa is the same reason that people should want to live here – for all the assets and beauty and the weather and everything else. It’s fantastic. We’re actively discussing opportunities to work together with Ottawa Tourism. What that’s going to shake out like, I’m not sure. But there’s a lot of goodwill on both sides. OBJ: We talk a lot about technology and innovation in this city, but some people feel Invest Ottawa is too tech-centric. How do you respond to that criticism? BL: People should not confuse technology and innovation. They’re different things. Innovation in restaurateuring, innovation in retail, innovation in all other service industries, is important. It’s all part of the talent attraction message. Innovation means things like Lansdowne Park and the fantastic organizations in there. Innovation means bringing a CFL team here and getting them to the Grey Cup in year two. One of the things, when I took over, was the focus became job-related. We looked at this
CANADA’S BIG YEAR: WHAT EVENT PLANNERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NATION’S 150TH ANNIVERSARY and said, what do we need to do every day to help facilitate more job creation in the city? Innovation in any form is part of that. OBJ: What would your message be to the leaders of the Innovation Centre to ensure that happens? BL: My definition of innovation is creativity plus value. Being creative in and of itself isn’t enough. You’ve got to think about how you’re going to bring value to that. I believe most innovation is going to come from the intersection of previously disparate organizations. When health care meets social innovation meets technology, then I think we’re going to find some really innovative things happening. The Innovation Centre’s got the opportunity to bring various groups together. One of the things we don’t have at 80 Aberdeen (Invest Ottawa’s current headquarters) is a makerspace or a digital media lab. People are going to be meeting each other and talking about innovative opportunities in discussions that have never happened before. OBJ: More than 1,000 startups have been incubated at Invest Ottawa. Are you happy with the sustainability they’ve shown so far, overall?
BL: It’s getting better and better. I think we invested in the concept of entrepreneurship some time ago, and now Ottawa is one of the most entrepreneurial cities in the country. We have 1,700 technology companies, 1,400 of which are less than 50 people. Now, I think we’re shifting gears into scaling these companies up. Having a thousand companies with less than 10 people is interesting, but how do we get more companies like Shopify, like Ross Video, like You.i, like Kinaxis, like Halogen Software, who grow up to be 500 people or a thousand people? I think that’s going to be the next challenge. OBJ: What are your thoughts so far on the federal Liberals and their approach to innovation? BL: I’ve been really encouraged by the attitude of the federal government. When they were elected, I was asked about the difference between the previous government and this government, and I said two monologues do not make a dialogue. I felt previously there was a lot of monologues, a lot of one-sided conversations. Now, there seems to be a real dialogue. In my meetings with ministers, there’s a real openness to understanding how we can work together.
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OBJ: Some analysts have noted that instead of looking at competition among the province’s high-tech hubs as Waterloo vs. Ottawa vs. Toronto, for example, we should be finding more ways to work together and pool our strengths to compete as one cluster against other parts of the world. What are your thoughts on that approach? BL: The competition is not Toronto or Waterloo. The competition is Boston, Barcelona, San Francisco, Tel Aviv. I’m very excited to hear the premier and other senior cabinet ministers talking about the Ontario technology super-corridor, which extends from Ottawa through Toronto and connecting with Waterloo. That makes sense. We’ve got about five times as many large ICT companies headquartered in Ottawa as they do in Waterloo, so really when you bring Ottawa to that mix, all of a sudden now we’re bigger than Silicon Valley. OBJ: Do you look back and wish you’d done anything differently in the last five years? BL: Not many regrets, but I do feel like we ran out of time on a few files, one of which is the opportunity to more deeply connect the universities and the city with the business sector. We’ve got 120,000 students
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here at four great public-sector institutions and Willis College, which is a private college that has a lot to add to the city. I think there’s another gear available to fine-tune those connections. If you look at the Why Ottawa presentation, there’s still more wins we can have, still more we can do. I’m really excited to see what my successor’s going to do and where they’re going to take this place. OBJ: In that vein, do have any words of wisdom or advice for the next person who sits in that chair? BL: Enjoy the job. It’s a wonderful job, and I think that subtitle of VP sales is something that I think the next CEO should wear with pride. It’s about telling the world what a wonderful asset we’ve got and then making sure that we continue to grow that asset and make it as shiny as possible. OBJ: I know you’ve got a lot of golf on your agenda this summer, but what are your plans after that? BL: I’ve got some really exciting irons in the fire, and probably in August I’ll be announcing what I’m going to be doing next. But you can rest assured it’s going to have some significant city-building elements to it.
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LOCAL ECONOMY New chamber chair eyes ‘stronger voice’ for local businesses ‘Everything aligning’ for Ottawa’s economy, Accu-Rate CEO Marie Boivin says BY DAVID SALI david@obj.ca
A
s a partner in a successful financial services company, Marie Boivin knows firsthand the challenges entrepreneurs face each day. The newest chair of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce hopes to use that experience to help the organization’s more than 700 members get the most out of the capital’s
largest business advocacy group – no matter what sector of the economy they represent. “I want the value that the chamber brings to business to be clear,” the CEO of AccuRate Corporation said in an interview with OBJ after she was sworn in late last month. “If you want to grow a business, we can connect you to the proper (supports). There is more to Ottawa than innovation. There’s a really broad landscape of various industries.” Ms. Boivin replaces Ottawa Tourism CEO Michael Crockatt, whose term expired. An OBJ Forty Under 40 recipient in 2009, she has run her company for more than 15 years and has been a member of the chamber’s board of directors since 2010. She said one of her top priorities as chair Accu-Rate CEO Marie Boivin is the new chair of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. FILE PHOTO will be to encourage more co-operation
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“There is more to Ottawa than innovation. There’s a really broad landscape of various industries.” — MARIE BOIVIN, NEW CHAIR OF THE OTTAWA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE The Women’s Business Network Businesswoman of the Year nominee in 2015 also said she’s looking forward to working with chamber CEO Ian Faris and new vice-chair Ian Sherman, a partner at EY’s Ottawa office. “He’s very strong in advocacy,” Ms. Boivin, whose term runs for one year with an option for a second, said of Mr. Faris. “He’s extraordinarily connected.” The chamber’s first female chair in a decade, Ms. Boivin assumes the role at a time when the local economy appears to be gaining steam, thanks to such initiatives as the new Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards, the pending arrival of light rail, new real estate projects such as Zibi and the planned redevelopment of LeBreton Flats and the anticipated spike in tourists expected next year for Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations. “I’m so excited,” she said. “Ottawa is a happening place. It’s the perfect storm. Everything is aligning. We just have to keep working. We have to work together so that we keep momentum rolling.”
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among various local business groups and economic agencies, including Invest Ottawa and the region’s other chambers of commerce. “In order to create an environment that fosters true potential growth for businesses, we need to have a stronger voice to represent the entire community,” she said. “We need to engage in a deeper way with the various stakeholders. The more we work together, obviously the stronger we get.” Ms. Boivin also hopes to spread the word about the benefits of being a chamber member – for example, preferred rates on items, including group and home insurance plans, as well as discounts on business tools such as the Better Software Company’s locally produced scheduling, billing, reporting and analytics platform. All local chambers are important advocacy organizations that provide key services, and it’s important for Ottawa businesses to support them, she added. “Every business in Ottawa should be a member of their chamber of commerce,” Ms. Boivin said.
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Facility/Address/ Total meeting Phone/Fax/Web space (sq. ft.) EY Centre 4899 Uplands Dr. Ottawa, ON K1V 2N6 219,000 613-822-8800 / 613-237-0685 eycentre.ca Shaw Centre 55 Colonel By Dr. Ottawa, ON K1N 9J2 192,000 613-563-1984 / 613-563-7646 shaw-centre.com Carleton University Conference Services 1125 Colonel By Dr., 172 Residence Common Building Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 150,000 613-520-5611 / 613-520-2750 carleton.ca/conferenceservices University of Ottawa Conventions & Reservations 85 University Pvt. Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 90,000 613-562-5771 / 613-562-5201 reservations.uottawa.ca Nepean Sportsplex 1701 Woodroffe Ave. Nepean, ON K2G 1W2 70,000 613-580-2424 x23055 / 613-580-9607 ottawa.ca Palais des congres de Gatineau 50 Maisonneuve Blvd. 3rd floor, Gatineau, QC J8X 4H4 55,000 819-595-8000 / 819-595-8012 congresgatineau.com Hilton Lac-Leamy 3 Casino Blvd. Gatineau, QC J8Y 6X4 51,000 819-790-6444 / 819-790-6408 hiltonlacleamy.com NAV Centre 1950 Montreal Rd. Cornwall, ON K6H 6L2 50,000 1-877-832-6416 / 613-936-5089 navcentre.ca The Westin Ottawa 11 Colonel By Dr. Ottawa, ON K1N 9H4 44,000 613-560-7000 / 613-560-7359 thewestinottawa.com Ottawa Conference and Event Centre 200 Coventry Rd. Ottawa, ON K1K 4S3 43,000 613-288-3450 / 613-667-9888 ottawaconferenceandeventcentre.com Lansdowne Park 450 Queen Elizabeth Dr. Ottawa, ON K1S 5J3 42,000 613-580-2429 ottawa.ca/lansdownepark Algonquin Commons Theatre/ Algonquin Students’ Association 1385 Woodroffe Ave. 40,915 Ottawa, ON K2G 1V8 613-727-4723 x6442 / 613-727-7712 algonquinsa.com Algonquin College 1385 Woodroffe Ave. Ottawa, ON K2G 1V8 40,144 613-727-4723 x7481 / 613-727-7735 algonquincollege.com/conference Fairmont Chateau Laurier 1 Rideau St., Ottawa, ON K1N 8S7 36,000 613-241-1414 / 613-562-7030 fairmont.com Ottawa Marriott 100 Kent St. Ottawa, ON K1P 5R7 36,000 613-238-1122 / 613-783-4228 ottawamarriott.com RA Centre 2451 Riverside Dr. Ottawa, ON K1H 7X7 33,821 613-733-5100 / 613-736-6233 racentre.com Canadian Museum of History 100 Laurier St., Gatineau, QC K1A 0M8 33,235 819-776-7018 / 819-776-7059 history.ca/facilityrentals Delta Ottawa City Centre 101 Lyon St. Ottawa, ON K1R 5T9 26,000 613-237-3600 / 613-237-9114 deltaottawacitycentre.com Collège La Cité 801 Aviation Pky. Ottawa, ON K1K 4R3 25,000 613-742-2483 / 613-742-2479 collegelacite.ca North Grenville Municipal Centre 285 County Road 44, P.O. Box 130 Kemptville, ON K0G 1J0 23,000 613-258-9569 x134 / 613-258-9620 northgrenville.ca
LARGEST MEETING AND CONVENTION SPACES (RANKED BY TOTAL MEETING SPACE) No. of meeting rooms / Largest meeting room (sq. ft.)
Theatre capacity / Reception capacity
Restaurant capacity/ Banquet capacity Daily rental rate
In-house catering? / Key local executive / Free parking? Sales contact
12 90,000
N/A 50
5,000 5,000
WND
Y N
Neil Bales Maxime Laporte
28 57,740
6,000 6,000
N/A 3,840
WND
Y N
Nina Kressler Dawn Guindon
26 10,000
444 500
800 340
$95-$600
Y N
Kendra Reay Linda Cruz
200 3,700
420 500
887 250
WND
Y N
Marie-Sylvie Pruneau WND
13 8,640
900 1,000
N/A 480
$122-$1,795
Y Y
Chantal Laporte Kay Boland
12 26,668
2,800 4,500
1,750 1,750
$285-$1,350
Y N
L. M. Makrakis André Pelland
16 15,866
1,600 1,500
140 1100
$350-$9,250
Y Y
Alain Miroux Fabienne Nadeau
70 9,800
875 1,000
450 500
Y Y
Kim Coe-Turner Silvia Marino
27 16,587
1,800 1,500
200 1,370
$495-$16,200
Y N
Ross Meredith Shaddy Shibley
37 11,000
1,200 1,000
100 800
Starting at $250
Y Y
Claudio Dinardo Pamela Diane DiNardo
2 35,000
2,800 2,800
N/A 2,800
WND
N N
Benoit Osborne Jennifer Bradley
13 11,160
835 300
295 150
WND
Y N
Ken McLeod WND
20 11,760
N/A 1,256
120 1,200
$75 and up
Y N
Mary Baxter Jennifer Thurston
16 5,886
600 800
180 450
$700-$7,000
Y N
Claude J. Sauvé Sue Ohlson
26 6,500
600 600
180 600
$250-$4,000
Y N
Stephane Pelletier Amina Hassan
12 6,690
600 600
180 475
WND
Y Y
Tosha Rhodenizer Shelley Carbonetto
12 12,925
500 1,500
60 600
$600-$4,500
Y N
Mark O’Neill Genevieve Mercier
17 10,000
1,100 1,000
150 900
WND
Y N
Zubair Siddiqi Marilyn Power
200 4,800
300 500
120 500
WND
Y N
Lise Bourgeois Joseé Lacourse
5 17,000
300 300
N/A 300
$126-$1,050
N Y
Mark Guy Lisa Kmiel
WND = Would not disclose. Should your company be on this list? If so, please send details to research@obj.ca This list is current as of July 4, 2016. © 2015 by Ottawa Business Journal. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced by any method in whole or in part without written permission by Ottawa Business Journal. While every attempt is made to ensure the thoroughness and accuracy of the list, omissions and errors sometimes occur. Please send any corrections or additions by e-mail to research@obj.ca. OBJ lists are primarily compiled using information provided voluntarily by the organizations named. Some firms that may qualify for the list are not included because the company either failed to respond to requests for information by press time, because the company declined to take part in the survey or because of space constraints. Categories are drawn up in attempt to gather information of relevance to the Ottawa market. Research by Patti Moran. Please send questions and comments to research@obj.ca.
FOR THE RECORD People on the move
to the firm. Garett Schromm will practise in environmental, municipal, expropriation and regulatory law. Éliane Tremblay joins the firm in commercial litigation. Alicia Maiuri Sampford Advisors announced that Boris will be practising in commercial real Petkovic has joined the firm as a financial estate law. analyst. Mr. Petkovic comes to the firm from the Sprott School of Business at ProntoForms announced that Gordon Carleton University, where he recently Stein has joined the company as senior received a bachelor of commerce with a vice-president of global sales. Mr. concentration in finance. Stein is a senior sales and marketing executive with background centred Carleton University announced the on technology and mobility. His past appointment of Michel Piché as viceexperience includes time with Apple president of finance and administration. Canada, Rogers and Dell. With more than 18 years of experience as a finance and corporate services executive, Mr. Piché has served in a variety of agencies and enterprises, including, most recently, the National Lydia Blanchard, business development Research Council Canada. sales manager for Cornwall’s Nav Centre, is the 2016 recipient of the Borden Ladner Gervais LLP announced Meeting Professionals International the appointment of three new associates RISE Award for Young Professional.
Hats off
Contracts The following contains information about recent contracts, standing offers and supply arrangements awarded to local firms. IBM Canada Ltd. 3755 Riverside Dr. Description: Informatics professional services Buyer: DND $22,995,000 IBI Group Architects and Moriyama & Teshima Architects, in joint venture 333 Preston St. Description: Land border crossing project Buyer: Canada Border Services Agency $11,017,500 IBM Canada Ltd. 3755 Riverside Dr. Description: CFHIS – support services Buyer: DND $6,215,000
related to armament, R&D and R&O) Buyer: DND $3,626,943
related to armament, R&D and R&O) Buyer: DND $2,270,155
Michael Wager Consulting Inc. 173 Dalhousie St. Description: Soldier equipment systems Buyer: DND $2,802,459
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP 99 Bank St. Description: Informatics professional services Buyer: PWGSC $2,000,000
Modis Canada Inc. 155 Queen St. Description: Informatics professional services Buyer: Health Canada $2,774,376
Emerion 368 Dalhousie St. Description: Technology Architects – level 2 Buyer: Canada Border Services Agency $1,524,686
PCL Constructors Canada Inc. 49 Auriga Dr. Description: Steam generation and distribution, HVAC upgrades Buyer: National Capital Commission $2,691,526
ADGA Group Consultants Inc. 110 Argyle Ave. Description: Technical engineering and maintenance services (Excludes requirements
A MATTER OF PERCEPTION
Is Ottawa less innovative than other cities, or is it only perceived that way by residents due to its hard-to-shake reputation as a sleepy government town? With the tech sector on a general upswing, big plans for Canada’s 150th, and a host of iconic infrastructure projects set to remake public transit, Lebreton Flats and the downtown waterfront, old perceptions about Canada’s capital may be due for a shakeup.
Do you think Ottawa has the potential to be more innovative than it is or do you think it is doing the best it can to be an innovative city?
8% 9%
83%
n OTTAWA HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE MORE INNOVATIVE THAN IT CURRENTLY IS n OTTAWA IS DOING THE BEST IT CAN TO BE AN INNOVATIVE CITY n DON’T KNOW
Donald Servant Electric Ltd. 219 Bruyere St. Description: KC01 complex – switchgear upgrade Buyer: PWGSC $1,354,179
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Mandor Food Storage 182 Colonnade Rd. Description: Meat, poultry and fish Buyer: DND $700,541 Emerion 368 Dalhousie St. Description: Four level 3 programmer analysts Buyer: Canada Border Services Agency $687,763
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DENTAL PRACTICE FOR SALE Well Established Downtown Practice including Practice, Goodwill, Large Free Standing Properly Zoned Building and Lands. Owner Retiring.
Rocco Disipio, Broker, MBA, CA, CPA, Royal Lepage Team Realty 613-723-5300 or 613-277-4537
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Promaxis Systems Inc. 2385 St. Laurent Blvd. Description: Technical engineering and maintenance services (Excludes requirements
This data is part of the Ottawa Business Growth Survey. Conducted by Abacus Data and made possible by Welch LLP, the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and the Ottawa Business Journal, the survey gathered input from hundreds of local businesses. A free 36-page report can be downloaded at www.ottawabusinessgrowthreport.ca.
MONDAY, JULY 4, 2016
Cistel Technology Inc. 30 Concourse Gate Description: Informatics professional services Buyer: Health Canada $4,161,564
CSI Consulting Inc., FoxWise Technologies Inc., DWP Solutions Inc., Innovision Consulting Inc., in joint venture 109 York St. Description: Informatics professional services Buyer: Health Canada $2,311,980
The award recognizes Ms. Blanchard’s past volunteer work on MPI Ottawa’s community outreach committee, where she helped raise more than $90,000 towards the Ottawa Network for Education School Breakfast Program and developed a sport tourism events partnership for the region.
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