On the TechTO stage ×7
Mayor John Tory Launches the 2016 Series of TechToronto at City Hall
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Mayor John Tory Launches the 2016 Series of TechToronto at City Hall
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Toronto Mayor John Tory Addresses TechToronto
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Toronto Mayor John Tory Addresses TechToronto
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Best of TechTO 2020: Mayor John Tory
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TechTO Together — Mayor John Tory
Watch on YouTube ↗The Best of TechTO: Mayor John Tory Discusses the Opportunities in Canadian Tech Right Now
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on a TechTO stage in 2016. Every TechTO talk is searchable — ask the archive about John ↗
In their words
Hi, I'm John, I'm mayor. I need jobs and innovation to keep the city fair and strong and to modernize the city — and it's up to you and the ideas you generate to keep us one of the greatest and most livable cities in the world.
They came to me and said, don't you think we should kick Uber out of town — and some cities chose to do that; they were wrong. At the end of the day it was about sending a signal to the rest of the world that we were going to be embracing innovation, not turning it away.
That's not because of me — I try to provide leadership and try to be a champion for the sector — but it's because of our fantastic educational system, our open immigration system, and the hard work of a lot of people in this room and elsewhere.
Around the web ×1
Quick answers
How many times has John Tory appeared at TechTO?
Seven recorded talks between January 2016 and December 2022, all delivered while he was Mayor of Toronto — from launching TechToronto's 2016 series at City Hall, through a virtual TechTO Together session in March 2020, to a December 2022 talk on the opportunities in Canadian tech.
What did John Tory do to support Toronto's tech ecosystem?
He sold the city abroad — trips to Silicon Valley to recruit Canadian graduates home and to Israel to pitch Toronto as a North American headquarters — and worked at home: modernizing recreation-program sign-up with help from local tech people, making Toronto the first Canadian city in Bloomberg Philanthropies' global innovation network, a business incubation and commercialization grant, and a planned clean-tech innovation hub on the waterfront.
Why did John Tory believe Toronto tech could compete globally?
People, above all. He credited the education system (U of T, Waterloo, Ryerson), openness to immigration, and the city's diversity, alongside critical mass in financial services and life sciences. By 2022 he pointed to Amazon and IBM offices downtown and homegrown companies like Wattpad, Ritual, FreshBooks, Wealthsimple and League as proof the opportunity gap that once pushed graduates to Silicon Valley had closed.