Dear Prime Minister,
It's time to invest in Waterloo.
“We used to take big, bold risks in this country. It is time to swing for the fences again.”
Waterloo is ready.
For example, Serena Ge, 21, encountered a problem with AI training data during her Waterloo co-op at Cohere, then co-founded Datacurve to solve it. Her company has raised US$17 million and supplies data for frontier AI research. She is building it in San Francisco.
Hooman Reza Nezhad, 20, began researching resource technologies at Waterloo while still in high school. His company, Solcoa, has raised US$75 million to expand rare-earth metal production needed for robotics, energy, and advanced industries. He is building it in California and Nevada.
What would it take for the next generation of founders like them to choose Waterloo?
I am proposing a Waterloo Special Economic Zone, built from the ground up to give builders the freedom and conditions to create world-leading companies, win here, and make their home here in Canada.
Waterloo is one of the world's great places to begin. Now we need to create one of the world's great places to win.
What is the Waterloo Special Economic Zone?
People build where they have the greatest chance to succeed. They need capital, talented colleagues, customers, infrastructure, and the freedom to experiment.
The Waterloo Special Economic Zone would bring these conditions together in one designated region, drawing inspiration from the economic success of places like Singapore, Dubai, and Shenzhen.
Imagine starting a company here: raising your first investment, bringing your cofounder to Canada, testing your invention, and winning your first customer. As your company grows, you can find the people, space, and infrastructure to manufacture and sell to the world. You can build a home here, too.
In Waterloo, we can give the extraordinary culture already here every opportunity to succeed—and develop a model that could benefit the rest of Canada.
Five pillars for the Waterloo Special Economic Zone
Together, we could build a new centre of technology, research, industry, and prosperity for Canada, spanning Waterloo Region and Southwestern Ontario.
1. Capital
Make Waterloo the world's most attractive place to invest in the future.
Eliminate capital-gains taxes on qualifying long-term investments in Waterloo businesses. Defer capital-gains taxes on eligible gains reinvested into Canadian companies, unlocking private capital for the next generation of builders and businesses.
2. Regulatory Freedom
Make sure regulation never strangles progress.
Establish a regulatory sandbox and industrial zones allowing robotics, autonomous systems, aerospace, defence, biotechnology, and advanced energy companies to research, test, manufacture, and deploy new technologies with accelerated approvals. Create a single-window regulatory authority with binding timelines for research, factory construction, and industrial operations.
3. People
Attract and keep the world's most extraordinary builders here.
Establish an Extraordinary Talent visa recognizing proven achievement, with expedited processing, no employer sponsorship requirement, and a direct pathway to permanent residency. Give exceptional international students already in Canada a pathway to stay and build their futures here.
4. Customers
Make Waterloo the world's first customer for frontier technology.
Commit $1 billion to purchasing and deploying technologies from startups and frontier companies. Bring together governments, hospitals, defence agencies, and industry to test new inventions in Waterloo, buy what works, and scale successful deployments across Canada.
5. Infrastructure
Build a new economic, technological, and cultural heart of Canada.
Build high-speed rail connecting Waterloo to Toronto and Southwestern Ontario. Secure gigawatts of electricity and new water infrastructure for research and advanced manufacturing campuses. Expand Waterloo's existing hospitals into a world-class medical, research, and biotechnology hub to rival North Carolina's Research Triangle. Build beautiful, walkable neighbourhoods with abundant housing, rapid transit, cultural institutions, and public spaces designed for all seasons.
These are some of the possibilities I see for Waterloo Region and beyond, but I hope others will bring ambitions even greater than mine.
Why Waterloo, and why now?
In September, you said that frontier AI, quantum, and robotics will transform our economy. Waterloo already brings together the capabilities to turn that ambition into industry: world-class software and hardware engineering talent, leading quantum research, and access to Southern Ontario's manufacturing base.
University of Waterloo founders have established over 250 companies in the United States—nearly as many as every other Canadian institution combined—contributing to more than US$240 billion in company creation there.
You know the University of Waterloo, and you know BlackBerry. You may also know David Chilton, the Laurier graduate whose Wealthy Barber sold more than two million copies. Or The Hacksmith, the Conestoga-trained engineer whose inventions have been viewed over 3 billion times on YouTube, and whose work grew from his parents' basement into an engineering campus in Cambridge.
The builders are already here
Waterloo's builder culture has deep roots. In 1956, Ira Needles published The Waterloo Plan, proposing a new way to train the engineers Canada needed. Rather than simply build another university, he proposed changing how education worked: combining study with industry, opening opportunities to more students, and educating more engineers with the same resources.
The plan helped give birth to the University of Waterloo, which welcomed 74 students in 1957.
Seventy years later, Waterloo ranked first in Canada and seventh globally for undergraduate startup founders.
Waterloo knows how to build companies. Velocity has helped more than 500 startups reach a collective enterprise value of $40 billion. Companies supported by the Accelerator Centre have a combined corporate value of over $7 billion.
Communitech connects more than 1,100 companies. Builders Club brings together hundreds of active builders, including a dozen Y Combinator alumni.
At Akatos, the founder community I started just a year ago, 20 startups have raised more than US$30 million, with a combined valuation exceeding US$300 million. Twelve have entered Y Combinator.
That same culture continues to attract new generations. Hack the North brings over a thousand students from across Canada to Waterloo. This March, Socratica brought 2,500 makers together to share projects spanning engineering, art, design, and business.
Behind those achievements is a culture where someone takes your idea seriously, shares what they know, and gives you room to try. You discover what you're capable of by doing it.
People must be able to begin before they have the achievements that make others comfortable supporting them.
As their ambitions grow, so do their needs: capital, customers, people, and places to build.
Waterloo gives people the confidence to begin. The Waterloo Special Economic Zone would give them the freedom and conditions to scale, compete, and win here.
In Waterloo, builders share their success
Caring for one another has deep roots here: in Haudenosaunee teachings of sharing and responsibility to future generations, and in Mennonite traditions of communal aid.
Mike Lazaridis, cofounder of BlackBerry, expressed that responsibility best:
“When you benefit, you have a moral responsibility to give back.”
He donated $100 million—a third of his fortune at the time—to establish the Perimeter Institute. Across Waterloo, successful builders have invested in universities, hospitals, libraries, and community institutions.
That is the culture we want to carry forward: success creating opportunity for others.
We want good jobs, comfortable homes, dependable public services, and a community that looks after people who need help. We want beautiful streets, safe bike routes, music, places to gather, and time with the people we love.
That is the prosperity we are building toward.
Waterloo could become Canada's proving ground for better policy, sharing successful reforms with communities across the country.
We want Canada's most ambitious people to find their greatest opportunities here, and give those who have left every reason to come home.
Waterloo wants to build
Dear Prime Minister,
I've lived in New York, London, Beijing, Toronto, and San Francisco. I chose Waterloo because I believe in what this place could become.
I ask you to work with us to establish the Waterloo Special Economic Zone, bringing together First Nations, municipal, provincial, and federal governments, and the builders and communities whose futures it will shape.
These ambitions are just a starting point for what this could become. I welcome ideas, criticism, and contributions from other builders, economists, policymakers, and local communities who want to help make it real.
In the original Waterloo Plan, Ira Needles recalled a board member’s response to the proposal: “Well, what are we waiting for. Let’s get rolling.”
You have asked Canada to build. Waterloo wants to build.
Let's invest in Waterloo—and make Canada the place our most ambitious people choose to call home.
Warmly,
Waterloo, Canada