Invest Ottawa Needs Transparency: STANKOVIC

Invest Ottawa is a solid organization but it’s not without its flaws … two in particular.

First, it tends to ignore development in Orleans and, second, the group lacks transparency in public funding.

But before all that, what exactly is Invest Ottawa?

Invest Ottawa is known as the lead economic development agency for knowledge-based industries in Ottawa. According the City of Ottawa’s website, the agency’s “services include start-up incubation and mentorship, acceleration for existing companies, global business attraction and local business retention, targeted sector development, commercialization, and marketing Ottawa’s diversified economy and high quality of life.”

Invest Ottawa is a stand-alone non-profit corporation operating at arms-length from the City of Ottawa.

It was created in 2012 through a city-led effort mostly by former mayor Jim Watson. Current Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is now the co-chair. Invest Ottawa was actually originally formed in 1983 when it was called the Ottawa-Carleton Research Institute and later the Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation. Invest Ottawa is located at the city-owned and former municipal works building at Bayview Yards where it is the anchor tenant and manages the hub called the Innovation Centre

For the most part, there is very little to be critical about Invest Ottawa as it represents a highly effective and successful economic development agency. That’s especially with respect to the local technology and entrepreneurial communities. Still, there are two issues I do have with its operations.

First, Invest Ottawa doesn’t pay a lot of attention to Orléans and the eastern suburbs where there is a dearth of technology companies compared to downtown Ottawa and the technology cluster in the Kanata North Business Park. For at least the last 50 years with the previous municipalities of Gloucester and Cumberland and more recently the City of Ottawa, they have tried to attract high technology and knowledge-based firms in the suburban area of Orléans without success. It doesn’t look like this will change.

A more serious issue with Invest Ottawa is the absence of transparency and accountability when it comes to public funding. The city is a key funder of Invest Ottawa through a multi-year service agreement. However, despite my efforts with Invest Ottawa, the mayor’s office and city staff, I was not able to get a copy of the agreement. It turns out that the deal is not, inexplicably, available to the public. As a result, one cannot discover how much funding the city is currently providing to Invest Ottawa and, more importantly, how the money is tied to deliverables.

Invest Ottawa is, after all, a large organization with 69 employees so there must be a lot of accomplishments each year and salaries paid out to deliver results. Invest Ottawa also does not publish its annual audited financial statements at least online whereas similar economic development organizations do. They include Toronto Global and MaRS Discovery Centre (Toronto) as well as Ottawa Tourism. Once again, I tried to obtain the latest statement from Invest Ottawa without success.

I was able to find, however, some historical financial data from the city’s annual Grants and Contributions (G&C) Reports available online for the 2020-2023 period. These reports include all G&C programs which are 100 per cent funded by the city but where the municipality does not directly receive goods and services in return.

According to the available G&C reports, Invest Ottawa has received $4,375,000 in funding each year between 2020 and 2023. Given that there is a multi-year funding arrangement in place, it can be expected that the amount has been similar in 2024 and 2025. It is not known how much of the city funding represents of total yearly revenue but according to an old contract bidding document from Invest Ottawa, 42 per cent of its total 2017 revenue of $10,726,773 came from the city’s fund amounting to $4,524,470. Another 26 per cent and 25 per cent came from the federal and provincial governments respectively. Approximately seven per cent came from sub-tenant and sponsorships revenue streams.

Invest Ottawa continues to rely strongly on senior government funding. For example, in November 2024, FedDev Ontario announced that Invest Ottawa will share in $47.5 million funding with MaRS and Communitech (Waterloo) from the federal government’s Scale-Up Platform program to assist entrepreneurs in high-growth sectors. As part of the New Ottawa-Ontario Deal announced in 2024, Invest Ottawa received $1.5 million to attract new investment from international and local companies to help stimulate sustainable, long-term economic growth in the downtown core.

When it comes to spending significant public funds, whether from municipal, provincial or federal sources, on external organizations (non-profit or private sector), transparency and accountability are very important for obvious reasons. Transparency allows the public and elected officials to identify whether funded organizations are delivering value for money and meeting program goals. I, for one, would be interested in seeing how the city’s multi-year contract with Invest Ottawa impacts Orléans’ economy.

This is not to say that Invest Ottawa is misusing funds but there is also no reason documents like the multi-year agreement with the city and annual financial statements be hidden from public access. Keeping these documents away from public view just adds to the ongoing concerns about accountability and transparency at Ottawa City Hall.

Dan Stankovic is an Ottawa consultant and former municipal public servant in economic development and housing.

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