Silicon Valley North? Calgary wants to lure tech workers from the U.S.

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America’s loss could be Calgary’s gain.

Just weeks into Donald Trump’s new presidency, many foreign-born workers in America are weighing their options in the wake of a controversial executive order on immigration and rumours about looming changes to a work visa program that tech companies rely on.

North of the border, nearly one-third of all downtown office space in Calgary sits empty amid ongoing economic gloom, with local organizations and politicians desperately seeking ways to attract companies and breathe new life into the core.

Could luring workers fleeing Silicon Valley be the answer to Calgary’s woes?

Branding Calgary as a budding technology hub and capitalizing on employees leaving startup haven Silicon Valley could be a win for both parties, officials believe.

“We had made the decision before he (Trump) was elected to put a greater emphasis on the U.S. It’s more driven by the dollar and the fact we have great talent and economical office space, rather than the Trump factor,” said Mary Moran, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development, adding she and Mayor Naheed Nenshi visited Silicon Valley together last May to pitch Calgary as a potential site for tech companies looking to set up satellite offices.

However, Moran acknowledged that while the desire to attract American tech companies to Calgary is not new, the new political environment south of the border may make the sales pitch easier.

“I think companies, particularly executives, are more inclined to listen intently than they were previously,” she said.

Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal were cited in national and international headlines as Canadian cities courting Silicon Valley talent in the wake of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order temporarily barring travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

But Moran said rather than go on a blind fishing expedition, Calgary Economic Development has spent the past six months identifying American companies and “high potential markets” where there could be interest in relocation or a satellite office expansion.

“We’re trying to avoid getting in a lineup with seven other jurisdictions all going down there right now. We really have a razor-sharp target on certain industries and companies,” she said.

At a committee meeting in early February, Nenshi mentioned an article about Vancouver positioning itself amid a potential Silicon Valley talent exodus.

“We need to be very much on that train and ahead of that curve,” Nenshi said.

The mayor later told reporters he’ll be travelling to the United States this year to talk about Calgary and the “great opportunities there are to invest here.”

“We’re going to be spending a lot of time very methodically, very purposefully, showing people the opportunities that exist here in Calgary,” Nenshi said.

“We are actually at a critical moment in Canadian history, where we can define ourselves for the next century if we manage this correctly and we can get enormous benefit for ourselves.”

Nenshi said Calgary needs to focus on “opening ourselves up to brains, to people, to ideas and to investment.”

“We happen to be in a spot right now where we can actually do that because we have the space, we have the support staff available for investors who want to come here,” he said.

Inner-city Coun. Druh Farrell said Calgary boasts advantages over larger Canadian cities.

“We have an advantage over Toronto and Vancouver because we’re more affordable and we have the space,” she said. “A high-tech campus could easily be created in our core.”

Farrell said another benefit Calgary has is a mayor who gets recognized on streets across North America and represents “a welcoming face, tolerance and welcoming city.”

“The high-tech industry is very diverse,” Farrell said. “No one is better poised to appeal to such a diverse group than our mayor.”

An estimated 70,100 people are already employed in Calgary’s tech sector, according to a July 2016 report on the state of Canada’s tech sector, from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship.

The national report counted 71,000 tech sector firms across Canada and 864,000 employees — 5.6 per cent of the country’s total employment.

The top Canadian city for tech sector concentration, according to the report, is Montreal, followed by Toronto and a tie between Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo.

The report pegs Vancouver’s tech workers at 111,700 and says 286,100 people work in Toronto’s tech industry, 222,200 are employed in Montreal, and in Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo there are 23,200 people working in the tech sector.

AKlingbeil@postmedia.com

astephenson@postmedia.com