Ontario's new premier Kathleen Wynne gave residents a sense of her vision for the province via the
Speech from the Throne, delivered last week at Queen's Park by Lieutenant Governor David Onley. As is typical for such speeches, it mostly focused on the broad strokes and big picture, but a few specific policies were included. Among them: an announcement that Ontario will be getting a new, $300 million venture capital fund.
The fund will aggregate money from several sources, starting with $50 million that will be coming from the province. The new Liberal minority government, Wynne wrote in her speech, is eager to "work with financial institutions and government agencies to ensure that small- and medium-sized enterprises have access to the capital they need to expand." The federal government will contribute an as-yet unspecified amount of money via its
Venture Capital Action Plan (which has a total of $400 million available for dispersement nationally), and the remaining funds will come from private sector partners.
The new fund will be based on an earlier one, the Ontario Venture Capital Fund (OVCF), which dates back to the 2006 provincial budget. It is a "fund of funds" model--that is, a fund that is itself composed of several different venture capital funds. Full details are still being worked out, but the government anticipates that this venture capital fund will in turn attract more than $4 billion in investment.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ministry of Research and Innovation