S I T E    S E L E C T I O N    S P E C I A L    F E A T U R E    F R O M    N O V E M B E R    2 0 0 0

---

Sweetening the Pot

Aside from important advantages in terms of operating costs, manpower and taxation, Quebec goes a little further with some of the most generous R&D incentives in the industrialized world. The government has also launched a series of measures to ensure the province gets a head start in promising technology sectors such as multimedia and e-commerce.

Bolstered by generous tax incentives, information technology development centers and new economy centers (learn more about these at www.bdne.gouv.qc.ca) are mushrooming all over the province. The Cité du Multimédia in Old Montreal, a 900,000-sq.-ft. (83,613-sq.-m.), $80.7 million project, has met with resounding success, attracting well-known names such as Motorola, Cognicase and Public Technologies Multimédia.

Building on this momentum, the government launched earlier this year E-Commerce Place (www.citeducommerceelectronique.com), a 3 million-sq.-ft. (278,709-sq.-m.), $470.6 million project in downtown Montreal, where companies involved in e-commerce will benefit from a train of similar measures and are projected to create 20,000 jobs over the next 10 years. NASDAQ is set to open its first trading office outside the United States in E-Commerce Place.

-- Louise A. Legault is a free-lance writer based in Montreal.