Smart Cities Challenge Winners

The four winners of Canada’s first-ever Smart Cities Challenge, a competition that encouraged communities of all sizes to harness the potential of connected technology and data to improve the lives of Canadians, have been announced.

The winners will receive prizes worth a total of $75 million to implement their visions.

The winners are:

• Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia – $5 million prize for its proposal to reduce energy poverty.

• Nunavut Communities, Nunavut – $10 million prize for its proposal to use a life promotion approach to suicide prevention.

• City of Guelph and Wellington County, Ontario – $10 million prize for its proposal to create a Circular Food Economy.

• City of Montréal, Quebec – $50 million prize for its proposal to improve mobility and access to food.

The Challenge was launched in November 2017, and communities from across the country responded.

Over the past year, 20 finalists have been working to turn their ideas into practical plans.

The independent Jury of 13 members (including one engineer, Stéphane Roche of Laval University in Québec City) assessed and evaluated the final proposals based on detailed criteria.

The four winners will implement their smart cities approaches over the next five years.

Updates on their implementation will be posted on Infrastructure Canada’s website, where their proposal summaries are currently posted so they can inspire communities across the country on their own smart cities journeys.

• Over 200 communities responded to the Smart Cities Challenge.
• Of the 130 applications received, 20 were selected as finalists on June 1, 2018, and received grants of $250,000 to develop their proposals into fully-implementable business proposals.
• These final proposals were submitted on March 5, 2019, and were evaluated and assessed by the independent Smart Cities Canada jury based on the criteria set out in the Smart Cities Challenge Finalist Guide.
• This was the first of three competitions of the Challenge.