Eight Canadian cities rank among the top-50 North American technology employment markets, including six in the top 15, in CBRE’s 13th annual Scoring Tech Talent report.

Toronto held on to third spot in this year’s rankings, followed by Vancouver at nine, Waterloo Region at 10, Montreal at 11, Ottawa at 14 and Calgary at 15. Quebec City at 37 and Edmonton at 42 also made the list. 

"Toronto solidified its number-three ranking, putting more distance between itself and the rest of the markets that we studied,” said CBRE Canada Research managing director Marc Meehan during an Aug. 18 webinar to discuss the report.

Montreal was the most improved Canadian market after moving up four positions.

Ottawa’s Kanata North is Canada’s largest technology park, according to Meehan, and home to North America’s highest concentration of tech talent. The federal government is also a large employer of tech talent.

Calgary has a growing tech workforce and specialized artificial intelligence (AI) research institutions and is also Canada’s energy capital, which Meehan said helped its ranking. 

Tech office leasing in Canada

CBRE defines tech talent as highly skilled workers across more than 20 tech-oriented occupations in all industries, including computer and information systems managers, software developers and hardware engineers. The rankings are determined by a weighted analysis of 13 metrics, such as talent concentration, the talent pipeline and research and development investment.

Tech companies have accounted for about 25 per cent of office leasing in Canada this year, according to Meehan, which he said is well above its typical share. 

“We're seeing new office leasing from gaming development, fintech, e-com, software and high-tech services,” said Meehan. “Activity today is greatest in Toronto, where conviction around the relevance of office, and also return to office, is driving heightened deal velocity.” 

Toronto and Calgary were the two leading North American cities where tech talent job creation exceeded tech graduates between 2022 and 2024, with Ontario’s capital up by 50,636 and Alberta’s largest city up by 25,240.

Lower prices make Canada attractive

Employee wages are the biggest cost for tech companies, as highly skilled and educated workers often command more than double the average salary. Office rent is the second biggest cost for most companies. 

CBRE applied local market wages to the various occupations to determine total annual wage costs by market, while local market rents were used to estimate the annual cost of renting a 60,000-square-foot office to house 500 employees. 

The eight lowest cost markets were all in Canada, with Quebec City the least expensive at US$36.14 million and Toronto as the most expensive at US$42.09 million. The most expensive American market was the San Francisco Bay Area at US$90.63 million while the least expensive was Indianapolis at US$50.08 million.

“If you're looking for the best value, Canada is probably where you can find it,” San Francisco-based CBRE Tech Insights Center executive director Colin Yasukochi said during the webinar. 

“Specifically, Vancouver and Waterloo are in the very-high-quality-talent category and are among the lowest priced.”

Growing importance of artificial intelligence

Tech talent jobs grew by 7.6 per cent in Canada since the previous report, and much of that came from positions related to AI.

The amount of U.S. and Canadian tech talent skilled in AI grew by 45 per cent in the past year alone. There were 751,000 AI-related workers in the U.S. and Canada as of June.

“These types of growth rates are not going to necessarily continue into the future,” said Yasukochi. “But AI is an emerging skill that almost everyone is trying to adapt themselves to improve their productivity and their capabilities, so we're definitely going to see continued growth, but maybe not at the same rate. 

“But we've gotten so large that even 25 per cent versus 45 per cent growth on 750,000 people is going to be a lot.”

Sixty per cent of Canadian AI jobs are based in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. AI companies across Canada occupy about five million square feet of office space, three million of which is in Toronto. Montreal comes second with nearly one million square feet.

“This AI workforce has come from many of our leading universities and research centres that focus on training new talent and pursuing AI-research breakthroughs,” said Meehan.

Emerging tech markets

In a separate ranking of North America’s next 25 emerging tech markets, Halifax placed second while London, Ont. was fifth and Winnipeg was 11th.

“These markets offer additional talent pools to employers who are seeking to expand their reach geographically and uncover opportunities that may be at even lower cost than some of the top markets,” said Yasukochi. 

“Alongside demand for more traditional tech, Halifax is also our ocean sciences tech hub,” said Meehan. “This is a niche within Canada where we play a leading role globally. 

“In Halifax, you'll find COVE, which stands for the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship. This is an incubator accelerator housing about 20 organizations that specialize in marine tech, ocean AI and sensing. And as a real estate tie-in, it's also located in a former Coast Guard facility.”