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INVEST in BC 2 0 2 0 17 Official Publication of the BC Economic Development Association. In special partnership with BCBusiness. REGIONAL POPULATION 3,093,000 LARGEST CENTRES VANCOUVER, SURREY, ABBOTSFORD UNEMPLOYMENT RATE 4.4% TOP EMPLOYERS BY INDUSTRY Retail trade 11.4% Health care and social assistance 11.3% Professional, scientific and technical services 9.1% FORECAST EMPLOYMENT GROWTH, 2018-28 588,500 BUILDING PERMIT VALUES (2018) $13.6 BILLION HOUSING STARTS (2018) 25,654 VALUE OF MAJOR PROJECTS PLANNED OR UNDER CONSTRUCTION $73.9 BILLION BUSINESS INCORPORATIONS (2019) 34,835 SOURCES: B.C. L ABOUR MARKET OUTLOOK , BC STATS past year. In January, Mastercard announced it would create a cyber- security development centre in the city, dedicated to curtailing hacking in the payments sector and creating around 300 new jobs. Incumbent players Apple, Microsoft Corp., Shopify and Slack Technologies have all signed leases to expand their footprints downtown. Many of these companies cite abundant technical talent, competitive labour costs and accommodating immigration policies as reasons for locating north of the border. Quora co-founder and CEO Adam D'Angelo had this to say about the choice of Vancouver for a new office focusing on machine learning to support its question-and-answer platform: "We looked at many possible locations for this office, and decided on Vancouver for three reasons: First, our success as a company depends on our ability to hire the best engineers from around the world, and Canada's strong immigration program will let us do that. Second, it is important to be in a location where highly skilled technical people want to live. Vancouver is regularly rated as one of the cities with the highest quality of life in the world, and our research has confirmed this preference among the engineers we're hiring. Finally, Quora is a tightly integrated product, so coordination in product development is extremely important to us… Vancouver is in the same time zone as our Mountain View headquarters and just a short flight away." OFFICE SPACE NEEDED Amazon.com, meanwhile, has reportedly tripled the space it intends to lease in the redevelopment of the former main post office downtown, to 1.1 million square feet—enough to accommodate up to 10,000 employees. The lease agreement would make Amazon the largest single occupant in downtown Vancouver. The electronic gaming subsector is buoyant, too, with local developers Relic Entertainment and Kabam both moving into spacious new offices with capacity for 300-plus employees. A report from the Entertainment Software Association of Canada put the number of local jobs in the industry at 7,300— up 1,400 in just two years. Homegrown startups, meanwhile, have garnered some unprecedented sums of venture capital. Burnaby-based Themis Solutions, better known by its brand name, Clio, set a record for the largest VC investment in Canadian history last year with a $333-million raise. The money will go into expanding the distribution of its software solution for law firms. Alternative energy startup General Fusion raised about $135 million between equity investments and a contribution from the federal Strategic Innovation Fund in its effort to build a working nuclear fusion reactor. Trulioo Information Services, Terramera and ToursByLocals all raised money in the tens of millions. Partly due to the growth of the technology sector, Metro Vancouver's market for office space is witnessing a cyclical low in vacancy. Relief is in sight, though: there are 26 projects comprising nearly five million square feet of space under construction, according to a report released last August by data provider CoStar Group. The technology frenzy isn't all downtown, either. With funding from the provincial government and participation from post-secondary and corporate partners, a new Quantum Algorithms Institute is rising at SFU's Surrey campus. The institute will help train graduate students in the emerging field of quantum computing, supporting the research of FROM TOP: PARTNERSHIPS BC; TRANSLINK NEW INFRASTRUCTURE: Container capacity is increasing in Vancouver Harbour (bottom left); Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project is under construction between Surrey and New Westminster (left); Metro Vancouver mayors are working to see SkyTrain (below) extended east to Langley and west to UBC L O W E R M A I N L A N D / S O U T H W E S T