Canada’s software industry benefits from a number of advantages: labour costs for high value-added activities, for instance, are significantly lower than those in the US, Japan and Europe. Furthermore, Canada’s full and free access to the large US market makes it an ideal nearshore option.

• In 2011, Canada’s ICT sector employed an estimated 556,000 people—half of these in software development. Canada’s ICT workforce is highly educated; 84 percent of all workers have university or college training and 71 percent hold post-secondary degrees.
• In 2011, Canada’s top 250 ICT companies recorded sales of more than $82 billion. This total is expected to rise due to an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 2.6 percent through 2015.
• Each of the world’s ten-largest software companies, such as IBM, SAP and Microsoft, have R&D operations in Canada.
• Between 2003 and 2011, nearly 250 foreign companies established greenfield projects in Canada’s wireless-communications industry. During the same period, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued more than 12,000 software-related patents to inventors based in Canada.