Ottawa economic agency tries to woo Swedish, Finnish companies

The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) and member companies from Ottawa’s wireless cluster are visiting Helsinki and Stockholm to try to lure the Northern European wireless sector to locate in the Ottawa area.
The group is visiting in partnership with the Canadian Embassies in Sweden and Finland, and tech groups in the countries, expounding on Canada’s research and development talent and its aggressive tax structure. Top telecom equipment manufacturers Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems Inc., and Huawei Technologies Inc. have significant R&D facilities in Ottawa. OCRI counts 367 companies and 27,000 employees in the Ottawa wireless infrastructure and services sector.
“The backdrop of Canada’s prudent fiscal management is a plus for Ottawa’s wireless businesses,” the OCRI said in a news release. “Canada was the last member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations to enter the global recession, and was the first to recover, thanks partially to having the G-7’s lowest debt-to-GDP ratio and the world’s most sound financial system, according to the World Economic Forum.”
Ottawa said that after tax credits, a $100 R&D expense can be reduced to an after-tax cost of under $44.
The economic development agency said the marginal effective tax rate on new capital investments is 18.6% today and set to drop to 16.2% by 2018. Capital taxes on businesses in Ontario are zero.
Concerning talent, OCRI said Ottawa offers two nationally funded laboratories –the Communications Research Centre and the National Research Centre; two universities and a game development program.