Canada's largest city is beginning to develop into a world-class hub to found and develop tech startups. According to Mark MacLeod, former CFO for Shopify Inc. and Freshbooks, the combination of recent tax law changes for foreign investors, concerted local efforts to establish creative hubs and great talent have recently allowed Toronto's startup sector to come into its own. A recent article in the Globe and Mail also cited efforts by Toronto mayor, John Tory, to establish a working group on innovation as an important step in the right direction on the path to firmly establish the city's startup sector.

Tory recently spoke to a group of investors and tech players at Shopify's Toronto offices and in relation to startups stated, "I really want to know what the city has been doing right, and what we should stop doing, that might have been doing that's going to impede." This new focus on what can be done to grow Toronto's startup community is bolstered by efforts from tech champions like the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund (OMERS), which manages the assets of several hundred thousand retired civil servants. OMERS recently added $260 million to its fund in August and has invested in Toronto-based tech companies Wattpad and Interaxon. John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS, has noted that creating "clusters" is imperative to the success of Toronto's startup sector and believes that in the next 24 to 36 months we'll be seeing more and more like-minded people founding and growing startups in Toronto's downtown core.

Canadian venture firms, an integral component of a successful startup sector, are also growing. According to the same article in the Globe and Mail, mentioned above, the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association now has 70 venture capital members and 33 of those firms have offices in Toronto.

Toronto is following in the footsteps of startup leaders like San Francisco, and it's signs of growth and increased attention to develop the sector from local leaders is encouraging and will hopefully signal to the rest of the world that Toronto is becoming a world-class location to grow and develop ideas and eventual businesses.

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