The Canadian academic most worth watching right now: ‘The plan was just to have a positive impact’

The Waterloo region is known worldwide for one reason: it builds world-class tech companies and, with good cause, is often called Canada’s Silicon Valley.

Behind the success stories like BlackBerry, OpenText and Arctic Wolf, there’s a powerful ecosystem at play: Perimeter Institute, the deep-science and big-idea pillar; Communitech, the practical, membership-driven startup hub; and Velocity, the University of Waterloo’s engine room of startup culture, turning researchers and students into builders.

The region has surprisingly little political muscle at the cabinet tables. Aside from MPP Mike Harris Jr. in Kitchener-Conestoga, there are no federal or provincial ministers rooted here. Still, it’s clearly on Ottawa’s radar, as is the man freshly in charge of the region’s, and potentially one of the nation’s, most important institutions: the University of Waterloo.

Earlier this month, new U of W president Bill Rosehart joined a roundtable hosted by federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo, where she met with local dual-use tech companies to discuss innovation, defence capabilities, and supporting Canadian SMEs in the region.

I spoke to Rosehart to understand how this new president plans to ensure Waterloo plays its full part in rebuilding the region and the country. Ten days into the job, Bill Rosehart leans into the camera wearing a dark suit jacket and open-collared blue shirt, looking every bit the polished engineering dean turned university CEO. He speaks in complete, thoughtful sentences. No woke rambling. No ivory tower bafflegab.

He arrives in the job at a crucial time. Canada needs more Waterloo. The country is hungry for entrepreneurs and for success, and if you listen to people like Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, a harsh critic of the policy factors that have led to national stagnation, it’s no longer built that way.

Rosehart is ambitious, and not just for Waterloo: “I want to see the whole country grow,” he tells me.

Rosehart, 53, is the first alum to hold the presidency at the University of Waterloo. Born in Thunder Bay where his father was president of Lakehead University, he later watched his dad lead Wilfrid Laurier, just across the street from Waterloo. Now the son has come full circle.

It’s a great homecoming story, and there’s no question he’s qualified. Rosehart is a three-time University of Waterloo graduate: BASc in electrical engineering in 1996, MASc in 1997, and PhD in 2001. From there, he spent 23 years at the University of Calgary, rising from engineering professor to department head to dean. The past two years, he served as provost and vice-president academic at the University of Guelph.