Finalist Waterloo Region among 20 finalists in $50-million Smart Cities Challenge

WATERLOO REGION — Waterloo Region is in the running for the grand $50-million prize in the federal Smart Cities Challenge.

“We were really quite pleased with it,” Regional Chair Ken Seiling said Friday.

He said the region’s pitch exemplifies its spirit of working together: all the local municipalities got on board, along with dozens of partners from across the community.

“It is a collaborative effort with everybody involved,” he said.

The 20 finalists were announced Friday at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ annual conference in Halifax, N.S. More than 200 communities from across Canada submitted their ideas for the competition that encourages communities to come up with innovative solutions to a pressing challenge.

Waterloo Region is competing against four other large municipalities: Edmonton, Montreal, Quebec City, and Vancouver and Surrey. Guelph and Wellington County is a finalist for the $10million prize.

Improving children and youth wellbeing is the focus of the Region’s plan.

“Here’s a potential of using technology to create a better life for people,” Seiling said.

The Region’s challenge statement says: “We will become the benchmark community in Canada for child and youth well-being by using early intervention, youth engagement and a connected-community framework to create adaptive, data-driven programs and scalable learning technologies that improve early child development, mental health and high school graduation rates.”

The region is also partnering with UNICEF Canada to help develop a realtime child and youth well-being dashboard that will be rolled out nationally.

Seiling said the focus on children and youth was based on research and data collected from the community that showed a need in that area.

Each finalist receives a grant of $250,000 to further develop the plan into a final proposal. Seiling said that even if Waterloo Region doesn’t win the big prize, being a finalist will lay the groundwork and get the Region moving in the right direction. Winners will be announced in spring 2019.