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Mississauga: the place to be for innovation IDEA Mississauga – Where the Future is Being Invented

Waterfront Development Comes to Life

U of T Mississauga Life Sciences facility Soaring to New Heights

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Mississauga: Innovating Today for Tomorrow Message from Mayor Bonnie Crombie

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s Canada’s seventh-largest city, Mississauga has our eyes firmly set on the future. Our city, our people and our businesses are focused on ensuring our local economy not only recovers but thrives in a post-pandemic world. By applying an innovation and sustainability lens to everything we do, we will help future-proof our economy and build a more resilient city of the future.

The good news is that Mississauga is already a leader on these fronts. We have been working for years to foster an innovation ecosystem to cement our position as an innovation hub on the TorontoWaterloo tech corridor and put ourselves on the map as a global magnet for innovative business, research, and academics.

As the second-largest employment hub in the GTA and home to over 98,000 businesses, we are an economic powerhouse. In fact, we are home to over half a million jobs and are growing rapidly.

Over the past two years, despite the challenges we’ve faced, Mississauga gained nearly 13,000 net new jobs through new investment and business expansion.

IDEA Mississauga, our city’s collaborative campaign to spur local innovation and economic development, will be the cornerstone and the catalyst in helping maintain our global competitiveness. It’s where the future is being invented.

Mississauga will create an innovation ecosystem with hubs across the city that will not only help entrepreneurs come up with the big ideas, but commercialize and bring them to market. With plans well underway for the first two locations at Square One in our downtown and Lakeview along the waterfront, these hubs will be magnets for entrepreneurs and tech giants, and will create thousands of highly skilled jobs in the key sectors we’re invested in growing – Life Sciences, Clean Tech and ICT. Our ability to attract new business and support those already invested in Mississauga to scale up and expand will be critical in driving our economic prosperity and creating the groundwork for our innovation ecosystem to grow and thrive.

I want to commend Mississauga’s business community for your resiliency, your courage

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P e r s p e c t i v e TM 1464 Cornwall Rd, Suite 5, Oakville, ON L6J 7W5 1-866-779-7712 info@perspective.ca www.perspective.ca Publisher, CeO Steve Montague ViCe-PresiDeNT Ed Martin Editorial Meredith MacLeod Sheetal Pinto

Mayor Bonnie Crombie and your commitment to doing business in our City. Together, we will build back better, because innovation lives in Mississauga.

PerspectiveTM Mississauga was produced independent of the City of Mississauga.

Contents are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the written consent of Perspective Marketing Inc. The publisher is not liable for any views expressed in the articles and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher or the City of Mississauga.

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The Urbanization of Suburbia: What is Fueling the Transformation of Mississauga?

Key factors driving urbanization in Mississauga: • Shifting perspective on how we use office space. Businesses and employees want flexibility and choice in their workplace, says Patrick Campbell, Principal, Avison Young Toronto West. Companies are refining workplace strategies (remote, in-office, hybrid) to decide what’s best for their business, their company culture and their employees’ lifestyles. As prepandemic legacy leases are expiring, commercial real estate advisors are guiding businesses in locating and designing workspaces that align with newly implemented workplace strategies and provide maximum return on investment.

• Flight to Quality: While already a trend being observed across most major markets, the pandemic has accelerated the demand from occupiers for high quality office environments that offer an array of amenities and benefits to employees. In this flight to quality, Mississauga presents an opportunity for continued development, with many projects currently underway in desirable locations offering many of the required amenities and transit infrastructure already in place.

• Connectivity: There is a significant amount of commercial development and leasing activity in the Mississauga market, particularly along existing and upcoming transit hubs, says Colin Bell,

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Principal, Avison Young Toronto West. The upcoming Light Rail Transit (LRT) system is one of the biggest drivers of new development in our market – and Bell expects this infrastructure project will be a pivotal transformation for future business growth in the city, bringing more people into the city to work. The LRT will also encourage more people to call Mississauga home and Bell sees evidence of this already today, with about 7,000 units currently under construction and an additional 22,000 residential units in the pipeline.

“This is in addition to several major organizations over the past few years making long-term commitments to significant amounts of space directly along the upcoming LRT line,” adds Bell.

• Diverse, multi-talented labour pool: As more people settle into Mississauga, employers will have an abundant supply of talent. Employees in the city centre will have the appeal of an ideal office location close to shopping, dining, entertainment and many other important amenities.

Commercial Real Estate for REAL Impact With an accessible city centre for workplaces, expanding residential housing, mixed-use transit-oriented developments, and thriving greenspaces, Mississauga offers the perfect work-life balance.

“Mississauga is a city with the potential to rival the urban centres of some of Canada’s largest major cities. It is truly an exciting time and our entire team at Avison Young is thrilled to witness the evolution and development of this incredible city,” says Campbell.

“Mississauga offers an exemplary human experience with an enviable blend of culture, entertainment, dining,

shopping, education, employment and so much more.”

If one were to envision what this vibrant city will look like 10 or 15 years from now, the highlights would certainly include booming residential development, extraordinary urban infrastructure for commercial expansion, high-tech transit facilities, a rich talent pool for employers to draw upon, and all the bells and whistles one expects from a worldclass city.

“Avison Young is the only major commercial real estate company to have an office right in the heart of the Mississauga City Centre, and we are seeing the transformation of the downtown core firsthand – we live and breathe it every day. We enjoy the access this location provides to the abundance of services and amenities in the City Centre.” says Bell. “We truly believe in the future of this downtown and are actively working with our landlord and occupier clients to create healthy, productive workplaces for employees. We strive to build functional environments that create a net benefit to the economy, environment, and community. In many ways Mississauga is the place to be.”

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IDEA Mississauga – Where the Future is Being Invented

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ississauga is already a hub of innovation and the City’s Economic Development Office (EDO) is showcasing that strength through the creation of a new identity for Mississauga’s Innovation District.

“Mississauga is where the future is being invented. It is a place of innovators and where ideas become reality,” says Bonnie Brown, Director of the EDO. “Homegrown innovation is critical to the city’s long-term economic competitiveness and our ability to attract talent, investment and jobs. We are ensuring that we are supporting young Canadian companies with the resources they need to grow to national and global companies.

This includes mentorship, connections, government and venture capital funding to scale up growth,” says Brown.

An Entrepreneurship and Innovation study completed in 2019 found that the range of resources and supports available in Mississauga weren’t always well known among some segments of the community.

“Mississauga is a large urban city, and there

is much happening on the innovation front. We needed to tie it all together.

Maximizing our innovation ecosystem as a strategic priority for our economic growth.”

The result was the creation of IDEA Mississauga, a unifying identity and a physical and digital manifestation that pulls together the innovation stakeholders, resources and supports, including clusters of innovation in life sciences and cleantechnology, along with incubators at Sheridan College (EDGE), University of Toronto Mississauga (ICUBE), and Altitude Accelerator.

The central vision of IDEA Mississauga is to provide a continuum of services for companies and innovators at all stages, from ideation to start-up to scale-up and beyond. That will include making connections between start-ups and established companies that can lead to partnerships beneficial to both, says Brown. “Mississauga is at the heart of the second-largest technology cluster in North America and our city is home to 1,400

multinational corporations and 76 Fortune 500 companies.”

We can help open doors within these large organizations and the more than 98,000 small companies that call Mississauga home.” “IDEA Mississauga is about facilitating company formations but it’s also about ensuring we keep entrepreneurial and innovation talent right here at home.”

“The City will act as the lead facilitator and connector of all the assets, services and supports that are available in order to maximize their collective impact.

We’ll also be celebrating all the success stories of innovation in Mississauga.”

To do this, a Virtual Innovation Hub – IdeaMississauga.ca was created to provide a space for entrepreneurs, innovators and scale-up companies to connect with IDEA Mississauga and become part of a leading innovation community. The site also features a number of tools and assets that can help make the start-up and scale-up journey easy for the entrepreneur.

The City is also looking forward to the expansion of its innovation assets including, IDEA Square One, a new innovation hub opening, this fall in downtown Mississauga, and a future presence within the Lakeview Innovation District in the massive Lakeview Village mixed-use waterfront development.

Mississauga is the place to be for innovation. The City continues to invest in developing the right tools, resources and physical assets to support its entrepreneurs, and creating a culture of innovation that spurs growth and leading-edge solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges.

To learn more about Mississauga’s Innovation district, visit: IdeaMississauga.ca

PEARSON’S CRITICAL ROLE TO THE CANADIAN ECONOMY Toronto Pearson is a driving force behind the Canadian economy. As the region emerges from the pandemic response, Pearson – located at the heart of Canada’s second-largest employment zone—is in a unique position to continue its role as an economic catalyst and critical piece of national infrastructure.

The airport proudly employs over 13,000 Mississauga residents and procures over $200 million in goods and services from Peel businesses.

As Canada’s largest airport, the sixth-most-connected airport in the world and the second-most-connected airport in North America, Pearson is often the first and last impression international travellers have of Canada and provides a competitive advantage to businesses and the many industries that benefit from tourism. Before the pandemic, Pearson facilitated 6.3% of Ontario’s GDP, or $42 billion. The country’s economic well-being is intricately linked to how well Pearson connects Canada to the world.

While the pandemic challenged every aspect of the aviation industry, and the return to travel has required the airport to respond creatively and work together with government and industry to support hundreds of thousands of returning

travellers, Tourism Mississauga, in partnership with the Mississauga Board of Trade (MBOT) recently recognized Pearson for the airport’s creativity and resilience in responding to the pandemic, naming Pearson the recipient of MBOT’s first-ever Mississauga Tourism Resiliency award.

As the pandemic evolved, the ability to get goods and services into the hands of business and, ultimately, consumers isolating at home became critical. While many know that cargo has always been a major part of Pearson’s operation, the pandemic really highlighted this fact. In mid-2020, air cargo became a literal lifeline, delivering personal protective equipment and vaccines, and meeting the supply needs of businesses. Pre-pandemic, Pearson processed 40% of Canada’s air cargo and was rated in the top 30 airports worldwide for cargo activity.

In 2021, the average daily cargo activity at Pearson more than doubled versus 2019, underscoring the continuing importance of air cargo at Pearson to local communities, the Province of Ontario and the nation at large.

While airports touch travellers, businesses and consumers, they also play a role in the communities

where they’re located. As a proud neighbour to Mississauga, Pearson has supported a growing number of organizations operating in the city through the airport’s community investment program, the Propeller Project. Pearson invests in initiatives, organizations and projects that create stronger, healthier and happier communities, including ACCES Employment’s work addressing underemployment and Brands for Canada’s goals to redirect goods from landfills to Canadian families.

This focus on the future of the community doesn’t stop there. Pearson prioritizes environmental stewardship and sustainability in all aspects of the airport’s operation, and has committed to a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Airport employees care about working for an organization that embodies sustainability through values and actions, and Pearson knows that neighbours hold the airport accountable for the way in which it manages and mitigates airport impacts.

Pearson is focused on creating the airport of the future—one that is healthier, more innovative, greener and more efficient. This is critical for Canada’s future economic growth and global competitiveness.

WE ARE MORE THAN AN AIRPORT. WE ARE A COMMUNITY. Toronto Pearson is Canada’s largest airport helping the region, and Canada, build back better.

As a neighbour, we foster close connections with residents and businesses in the GTA. Today, Toronto Pearson employs thousands of people in Mississauga, and spends over $200 million annually with local Region of Peel businesses.

Join us in building the airport of the future, today: torontopearson.com/jobsatpearson

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IDEA Square One – A Community supporting local & globally minded entrepreneurs & businesses The epicentre for the collision of ideas that allows interesting concepts to emerge and grow

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new innovation hub – IDEA Square One – is the nexus of the City of Mississauga’s strategic plan to retain and attract ambitious entrepreneurs, start-ups and scale-ups.

It is expected to fully open in the Square One shopping centre in the fall.

“IDEA Square One will be based on an affordable membership model,” says Donna Heslin, Manager of Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation with the City of Mississauga’s Economic Development Office.

It will include co-working space, along with rentable or bookable offices, boardrooms and event spaces.

Business experts and mentors, along with City economic development staff and representatives of other innovation programs, will offer a range of services at the hub.

“IDEA Square One is a physical manifestation of the City of Mississauga’s commitment to our innovation ecosystem. We are

approaching things differently. We will service small start-ups but also the step-ups and scale-ups,” says Heslin.

“Building on a strong innovation ecosystem that includes University of Toronto Mississauga, Sheridan College and a wealth of private companies of all sizes, IDEA Square One and the future Lakeview Innovation District will help ensure that made-in-Canada ideas don’t have to go elsewhere to flourish,” says Vigen Nazarian, who serves as an entrepreneur-inresidence at the Mississauga Business Entrepreneur Centre.

“I am so happy to see this come to fruition. Mayor Bonnie Crombie and her team deserve credit for being bold and going in this direction,” says Nazarian, who is a successful Mississauga-based serial entrepreneur and commercialization expert.

Square One is the perfect location because it is the “intersection of commerce and civic activities and offers visibility many such incubators don’t have,” says Nazarian. “It will be the epicentre for the collision of ideas

that allows interesting concepts to emerge and grow.”

As a transit hub, Square One delivers critical accessibility, says Heslin.

“A lot of thinking and planning went into choosing this location.

We wanted to ensure it was easily accessible from anywhere in the city.”

The shopping centre also offers high visibility for IDEA Mississauga.

“We want the diverse communities of Mississauga to know about us and what we offer. We know Square One will deliver that to us. Oxford Properties has been a terrific partner on this initiative.”

Sherif Masood, head of asset management in Canada for Oxford Properties, which co-owns and operates Square One, says he’s not aware of another incubator space in the country that is located in a mall.

It fits in with the company’s strategy to diversify the uses of 25 per cent of its leasable space in its shopping centres into alternative uses, including employment and educational uses, destination retail and food options, health and wellness, entertainment and public realm spaces.

“We’ve had a decades-long relationship with the City of Mississauga and this partnership is mutually beneficial. IDEA will give many people a reason to come to Square One regularly,” says Masood.

“This is an investment in our community. IDEA will help start-ups grow into mid-sized companies. We are huge believers in Mississauga.”

Oxford Properties has invested $500 million in the 2.2-millionsquare-foot Square One ­– Ontario’s largest retail destination – over the past seven years. A long-term vision for the 130 acres at Square One includes office and life sciences spaces, recreation, and 18,000 residential units.

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Mohawk College Mississauga Campus in partnership with triOS College is driving workforce development in Mississauga Classes are underway for international post-secondary students at a new Mississauga campus through a partnership between Mohawk College and private career college triOS College.

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tudents from around the world are studying in seven programs at a purpose-built facility within the Square One shopping centre that opened in May. Graduates will earn Mohawk credentials.

The partnership supports economic growth within Mississauga, says Cebert Adamson,Vice President, Academic at Mohawk.

“We will be able to respond to market needs as they arise. We are providing the training and programming that will help companies thrive.”

Whether it’s a growing start-up or a corporate headquarters, the first conversation with prospective companies is always whether there is a ready pipeline of talent, says Adamson.

“Anywhere Mohawk is located, it has fulfilled that role. In Mississauga, there is rapid growth in supply chain logistics, health care administration and technology.”

Forging the partnership involved consultations with stakeholders across Mississauga, Peel and the GTA to determine their employment needs.

“These offerings are also aligned to what we were hearing from our program advisory committees. These are the areas of need that will drive Ontario’s and Canada’s economy.”

As well, attracting more international students will help meet Immigration Canada growth targets designed to address the country’s growing labour deficit, says Adamson.

The Mississauga campus offers various modes of delivery and a rigorous quality assurance system that ensures students are receiving a Mohawk education, says Adamson.

Only graduates of public colleges and universities are eligible for post-graduate work permits and through this partnership, students at the Mohawk College Mississauga Campus in partnership with triOS College will be eligible to work in Canada after graduation.

Initial offerings through the triOS partnership are Business (General), Global Business Management, Computer Systems Technician-Network Systems, Office Administration-Health Services, Supply Chain Management, International Business Management and Computer Systems Technician-Software Support.

Eventually, 4,000 students will study at the 33,000-square-foot campus and there is room to grow to 58,000 square feet.

Mississauga-based triOS College, which will celebrate 30 years in July, has a strong relationship with its employer partners, says Adamson, which includes developing and delivering direct training solutions. This is also an area of strength for Mohawk.

“Being flexible in response to partner needs is a key element of economic development. Talent is the No. 1 priority for employers as they locate and expand in a municipality,” said Adamson.

“Mohawk College is part of the process when municipalities are developing their strategic plans around economic growth. We play a pivotal role in providing education and training solutions through academic programming and applied research.” triOS has trained thousands of people in Mississauga for careers in business, technology, health care and law, says Craig Donaldson, Executive Vice President, International. The career college now has eight campuses in Ontario.

Square One is an ideal location for the new campus because it’s a public transit hub and close to employment clusters in the city, he says. Several programs have co-op placements and those are key bridges to employment.

“Historically, about 25 or 30 per cent of our students are offered jobs with their internship host employer, while other students use the experience gained on their placement to help secure jobs with other employers. Internships and coop placements are great learning experiences for students and strong recruitment tools for employers,” said Donaldson.

Under the arrangement, Mohawk looks after recruitment, admissions and oversight of program delivery, while triOS provides student services and delivers the Mohawk curriculum.

“It’s a great opportunity for international students to get a Mohawk education

in Mississauga,” said Donaldson. “We take our responsibility to look after our international students very seriously. We offer a wide range of services, including pickup from the airport, assistance finding accommodations, mental health supports, language training, tutoring and career services.”

Students who graduate from the Mohawk College Mississauga Campus in partnership with triOS College will be eligible for the career college’s life-time career services support.

The new Mohawk College Mississauga Campus in partnership with triOS College complements the existing Mississauga postsecondary landscape that includes University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College’s Mississauga campus, says Adamson.

“We are filling in some gaps that will address the present and future workforce needs for the city.”

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Waterfront Development Vision Comes to Life in Mississauga

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he Lakeview Innovation District is at the heart of the 177-acre Lakeview Village, an ambitious, historic reimagining of the former coalburning Lakeview Generating Station.

The master-planned waterfront development combines employment and office spaces, residential, retail, parks, and public spaces.

“It is a one-of-a-kind opportunity within the second-largest technology corridor in North America, stretching from Toronto to Waterloo,” says Brian Sutherland, vice president of development for Argo Development Corporation, a partner in Lakeview Community Partners Limited, the consortium of developers behind Lakeview Village.

“I certainly don’t know of anything else like it. It really is special.”

The Lakeview land is a strategic asset for the City in its commitment to activating a national and global innovation identity through IDEA Mississauga – Mississauga’s new entrepreneurship and innovation market identifier. The Lakeview Innovation District has the potential to position Mississauga as the scaling and commercialization global leader, and a centre for entrepreneurship and innovation within the region, says Bonnie Brown, director of the Economic Development Office at the City of Mississauga.

“This is an aspirational city-building initiative.”

The 20-acre Lakeview Innovation District will include 1.5 million square feet of flexible office and co-working spaces, and state-of-the-art labs and research

facilities across 12 to 14 buildings. At full buildout, it will employ 9,000 people in knowledge-intensive jobs.

The Innovation District, and its attraction of high-tech firms, technology incubators, researchers and entrepreneurs, is a critical component of the project, says Sutherland.

“The Lakeview Innovation District is central to our vision for the future Lakeview Village community. It will be a vibrant place to work and attract talented people and forward-thinking companies.

We are also hopeful about bringing a post-secondary satellite campus to the district. The Innovation District provides an

exciting and unique opportunity for leading businesses to integrate into one of North America’s largest waterfront communities.”

With sustainability as a foundational element, Lakeview Village will feature a low-carbon district energy system – located in the Innovation District – that will use effluent waste heat from the adjacent wastewater treatment plant as the main source of energy to heat and cool the buildings. It will be the first of its kind facility in Ontario.

To learn more about Lakeview Village plans and opportunities visit: www.ideamississauga.ca/discover/ lakeview-innovation-district/

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Helping businesses step up to grow in Mississauga IDEA Mississauga launches new 6-month program

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ississauga is ideally located, well-connected and home to thousands of innovative companies both large and small.

Its robust innovation ecosystem is unified by the City of Mississauga’s newly launched platform IDEA Mississauga, which is enabled by its virtual hub IdeaMississauga.ca “All the right ingredients are in place and so many resources are available.

The City is now a concierge to help start-ups find what they need to take the next step,” says John Lam, the first Entrepreneurship and Innovation Specialist at the City of Mississauga.

He’s been in his role over a year and works on a team within the Economic Development Office.

“The large size of the city is an opportunity and an advantage. There is so much diversity and when different perspectives come together, that breeds innovation. But that size can sometimes

make it hard for people to find the resources they need. That’s where IDEA Mississauga comes in.”

Among the innovation assets in Mississauga are Sheridan College’s incubator EDGE, ICUBE at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and a range of programs offered through the Mississauga Business Entrepreneur Centre, the Region of Peel’s Altitude Accelerator, and the federal and provincial governments. As well, after a six-month pilot, IDEA Mississauga is officially launching an on-going step-up program that helps start-ups move to the next stage of growth. The program offers training, access to mentors, and pitch opportunities to investors and industry.

Several of the participants in the pilot program were excited to have these supports available to their stage of company in Mississauga. “As a start-up founder, you don’t always have time to think about mentorship,”

Angad Singh (Co-founder, Business & Sales) & Prabhpahul Singh (Co-founder, Product & Technology),The Lean Suite says Vandana Taxali. She is a lawyer who founded Artcryption, a platform to help creators share, protect and sell their works using NFTs, a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos.

They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency.

“Participating in this program went way beyond my expectations. The quality of the mentors was incredible and they were really engaged with us. As a visible minority, female founder, sometimes you feel really alone.” Taxali’s mentors opened doors to venture capitalists and advised her on her pitch.

“I am proud of what the City is doing to help small companies. They have been key for my business in helping me overcome hurdles and in saving me time. It’s important to me to bring jobs, money and attention to my city through Artcryption.”

Angad Singh, co-founder of The Lean Suite, was a participant in the pilot stepup program and has also taken advantage of a range of resources, including EDGE at Sheridan.“ We provide the tools available in larger companies to smaller manufacturers to help them save time.”

“IDEA Mississauga’s mentors helped the company develop a sales blueprint

and an IP strategy and The Lean Suite was able to refine its pitch before approaching a funder of early-stage start-ups. The company also got help in landing funding for a partnership with a college to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm. “ “We were introduced to a large automaker and to the Industrial Research Assistance Program. That kind of help has been amazing for us.”

The Lean Suite, launched in May 2021, offers customized mobile software solutions to digitize labour-intensive internal workflows in manufacturing facilities.

“Mississauga is a wonderful place to do business as a start-up,” says Singh.

“These programs have been critical for us. It’s been important for technical and professional help but also to have the personal support of someone who understands what it’s like to launch a business.”

This new programming is filling a gap that was identified by many of the players in Mississauga’s entrepreneur ecosystem.

By providing supports for companies at an early revenue generation phase, Mississauga can keep businesses in the city and create new jobs for an expanding innovation community.

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Biopharmaceutical firm establishes foundation of equity and diversity in the workplace AstraZeneca has been selected a Top Employer in the Greater Toronto Area Eight Consecutive Years.

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straZeneca, one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies, is playing a pivotal role in developing life-changing medicines from its Canadian headquarters and clinical research hub in Mississauga.

“We are very fortunate for the investment the City has made in the life sciences community and the collaboration that is growing the sector,” says Gena Restivo,Vice President of Human Resources and Sustainability at AstraZeneca Canada.

The scale of the biotechnology sector in Mississauga – the second largest life sciences cluster in Canada by employment – means there is very strong demand for a highly educated talent pool, particularly with a background in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine), says Carlo Mastrangelo, Head of Sustainability and Communications.

“When universities, research organizations, scientific institutions, world-class hospitals and private companies work together, it elevates

our collective ability to attract and hire the best in the field.”

The company has a strong partnership with the University of Toronto Mississauga, and has hired more than 100 students through its Masters of Biotechnology program, over the last 15 years. Many have remained with AstraZeneca Canada, advancing into national and global careers.

AstraZeneca, which has a core focus in oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular, respiratory and immunology, vaccines and immune therapies, offers an environment that supports continuous employee growth and where diversity, equity and inclusion are promoted and valued throughout the organization.

“As a science-led biopharmaceutical company, we believe inclusion and diversity are absolutely fundamental to our purpose and ability to push the boundaries of science to deliver lifechanging medicines,” says Restivo. ”Innovation requires breakthrough ideas that only come from a diverse workforce empowered to challenge conventional thinking and find new ways to solve challenges.”

Reflecting the diversity of community is not only the right thing to do, it offers a strategic advantage, says Mastrangelo.

“Valuing diverse experiences, expertise, backgrounds and ways of thinking means we can generate more creative ideas to tackle complex problems. It makes an exponential impact on our competitiveness.”

AstraZeneca is a key player on the City of Mississauga’s Equity & Diversity Collaborative – a consortium of health-care and life sciences companies dedicated to advancing gender equity and diversity in the workplace.

“By putting our competitive differences aside and coming together to share best practices and resources, we’re having a greater impact in affecting change in our organizations and community,” says Jaime Duguid, Senior Manager, Talent, Development, Culture & Inclusion. ”We are improving recruitment, hiring and promotion practices that are driving greater equity and diversity.”

The company is also a supporter of the gender equity initiative Girls Belong Here, which aims to tackle gender equality and girls’ rights around the world, including in Canada by boosting female representation in STEMM fields and in boardrooms.

AstraZeneca Canada employs about 700 people in Mississauga and more than 1,200 across Canada. Mississauga is a strategic clinical research hub, leading more than 100 global clinical studies, many of these in oncology and respiratory, and delivering 174 clinical studies here in Canada.

Access to a great scientific talent base, as well as world-class local hospitals and researchers, has helped the clinical trial

teams at AstraZeneca grow to more than 450 employees , a number that was less than 100 just a few years ago.

“Building our clinical footprint in Canada means that Canadian patients are getting access to cutting-edge medicines earlier and we are creating a clinical cluster within Mississauga that is great for talent attraction,” says Restivo.

The company has been selected a Top Employer in the Greater Toronto Area eight consecutive years, a reflection of its efforts to nurture a diverse and inclusive culture, support employee well-being, and create an engaging work environment.

“That’s really important recognition for us. We are a company with a bold purpose – developing life-changing medicines – and having highly engaged and talented employees is critical to our delivering on that purpose.”

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University of Toronto Mississauga Life Sciences Facility Soaring to New Heights Innovative building will advance discoveries and enable research within the pharmaceutical sector

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he University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is a catalyst for Peel Region’s dynamic life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors. A new advanced research facility at UTM will accelerate Mississauga’s global competitiveness in innovation and talent attraction.

UTM’s new life sciences building will enable a cutting-edge cancer drug discovery program to grow exponentially into an international research hub, the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry (CMC). CMC is a success story already leading transformative discoveries into molecular compounds that target cancer and other important diseases and launching spin-off companies in Mississauga.

“The CMC will be the anchor tenant in UTM’s New Science Building, which will open in 2023. It will expand CMC’s footprint from 4,000 to 90,000 square feet, and enable transformative drug discovery at scale,” says Alexandra Gillespie,VicePresident of the University of Toronto and UTM’s Principal.

“Drug discovery is extremely expensive and labour intensive,” says Professor Patrick

Gunning, founder and Chief Scientific Director of CMC, a UTM professor in Chemical & Physical Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Medicinal Chemistry.

Gunning’s successful research model was the driving force behind the Centre’s creation.

“This new facility will be a fully integrated drug discovery centre that will help to fast-track research programs. We will be able to capture all the components, from computational chemistry to cell biology and biochemistry to synthetic chemistry and to early preclinical evaluation, that we currently have to outsource. That saves time and money.”

The new complex, seeded through a $7 million philanthropic investment

by Mississauga-based Orlando Corp., will conduct ground-breaking research and train in-demand talent for the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors, which expect to grow by more than 65,000 jobs nationally before 2029.

“The University of Toronto is one of the world’s best research universities and that strength is growing in Mississauga, which has Canada’s second-largest life sciences sector by employment,” says Gillespie. “We are the only research university in Peel Region and we take that seriously. We will graduate more than 400 life sciences students this year alone. And that’s just the beginning.”

The New Science Building will also be home to research into forensic sciences

Alex Gillespie and high-performance computing, as well as U of T’s Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations, which aims to lead the fight against diabetes and serious chronic diseases.

The CMC attracts talent from Mississauga and around the world “who might otherwise have gone to Boston or California to do drug discovery,” says Gunning, who has authored about 120 papers and won 26 research awards.

CMC will grow to 130 graduate students, research associates and postdoctoral fellows, up from about 30 now.

“Part of CMC’s long-term vision is to inspire a path toward entrepreneurship, and to empower emerging researchers to launch drug discovery companies,” says Dr. Elvin de Araujo, CMC’s Research Manager.

Patrick Gunning CMC spin-offs have also attracted about $70 million in private investment and employ more than 120 people, says Gunning.

“Drug discovery is one of the biggest industries in the world. Canada, Ontario and the GTA can produce more biotech companies and the CMC can be an incubator. We have shown that you can build these companies in Ontario and succeed.”

“Both the university and the City of Mississauga have empowered CMC’s increase in scale and backed the growth of the region’s biotech industry,” he says.

“Professor Gunning’s work into the next generation of pharmaceutical solutions for the most pressing problems is so leading edge,” says Gillespie. “He’s taking his place on the world stage and showing what Mississauga and Canada can do.”

Terry Varga

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