• Ontario is one of 10 provinces and three territories that form Canada.
• Ontario covers a huge territory - more than 415,000 square miles - an area equal to the size of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York and Minnesota combined.
• Ontario's population of 12.5 million people make up one of the most multicultural societies on earth. Roughly 250,000 people immigrate to Canada every year and about half of them choose to live in Ontario.
• Toronto, our largest city and provincial capital, is home to more than 90 ethnic groups. In addition to English and French, you will hear Chinese, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish, Punjabi, Ukrainian and Portuguese spoken throughout the city. In fact, the latest census records over 100 languages spoken in the province. Wherever you are from, in Ontario you will find a community where you'll feel comfortable.

• Ontario is a democracy based on the British parliamentary model.
• Canada's head of state is the Prime Minister. Ontario's government is headed by the Premier.
• Our universal healthcare and first-class education systems are publicly funded.
• Ontario boasts 280 provincial parks, 25,000 square miles of protected wilderness and more than 600 golf courses.

• Ontario, Canada's manufacturing and financial centre, powers the national economy. We generate about 42% of Canada's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Our provincial GDP, at almost $414 billion, has consistently grown at rates that outpace the world's industrial nations.
• The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) is a global leader in the mining, oil and gas sectors, and the second largest technology market in the world.

• Ontario scientists discovered insulin, T-cell receptors, the human progenitor blood stem cell and the gene carrying the defect that causes cystic fibrosis. The electron microscope was developed here, as were the pacemaker and the and the first implantable heart monitor.
• The world's first remote robotic surgery service was established in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2003. The robot surgeon, named Zeus, is physically located in a hospital in North Bay - but controlled by a surgeon at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton some 250 miles away. The two communicate via Ontario's high-bandwidth fibre optic network.
• Ontario is at the heart of Canada's innovative biotech, pharmaceutical and medical devices industries. More than 42,000 scientists, engineers and technicians working at more than 800 companies and manufacturing facilities generate revenues of almost $10.7 billion annually.

• The Ford Motor Company started manufacturing in Ontario in 1904, followed by General Motors in 1918 and Chrysler in 1925.
• Fourteen major auto assembly plants and more than 450+ auto parts factories operate in Ontario.
• For the second year in a row [2004 and 2005], Ontario produced more cars and light trucks than any other jurisdiction in North America. Our vehicle assembly and auto parts industries have grown to employ more than 135,000 people.

• Ontario is a world leader in digital microwave transmission, satellite communications services, data distribution networks and voice, data and video telecommunications. We also produce more than a quarter of the world's computer animation software products.
• More than 5,000 hardware, software and service firms do business here, including such world leaders as Nortel, IBM, Microsoft, Research In Motion (RIM), ATI Technologies, Alias, Open Text, and Corel. Clustered in the Greater Toronto Area, Waterloo Region and Ottawa, the sector employs more than 230,000 people and has annual revenues of more than $40 billion.
• Ontario's IT expertise has helped generate a wealth of Canadian breakthrough services, from SchoolNet (the world's first national online network of public schools) to QuickLaw (the world's first computerized legal information retrieval system).

• The renowned de Havilland Beaver, one of the most successful bush planes in the world, was designed and built in Toronto in 1947. It pioneered the development of Short Take-off and Landing (STOL) technology.
• The first commercial jet transport to fly in the Western Hemisphere was designed in Canada and built in Ontario, as were NASA's Canadarm I and II.
• The first anti-gravity suit or flight suit was developed in 1941 by Doctor Wilbur Franks at U of T's Banting Research Institute. The G-suit prevents pilot blackout due to high acceleration and g-force.

• Ontario lies in the heart of the North American Free Trade area, which has more than 400 million people and generates a GDP of $13.8+ trillion.
• When it comes to moving goods, there are 15 road, rail and marine border crossings between Ontario and the United States.
• More than $1.3 billion crosses the Canada-U.S. border each day and Ontario-U.S. two-way trade accounts for more than $750 million of it.
• The Detroit-Windsor gateway is the largest corridor of international trade in North America. The Ambassador Bridge alone accounts for as much trade as the U.S. does with Japan in a year.
• Two-thirds of the total Foreign Direct Investment in Canada ($144 billion) comes from the United States. The U.S. is also the single largest country for Canadian Direct Investment Abroad, accounting for $194 billion or 44% of the total.

• Ontario is the manufacturing centre of Canada, producing almost 60% of all the manufactured goods that are shipped out of the country. In 2004, the total value of our exports in the top five categories alone - from cars to electronic equipment to pre-fab housing - topped $92 billion.
• Ontario's key sectors - automotive, information and communications technologies, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biotech - use advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics, innovative injection molding equipment and leading-edge visioning systems to produce exceptional quality products for customers in more than 170 countries.

• Ontario is one of the world's leading mineral producers; among the top 10 for nickel, platinum, gold and cobalt group metals and among the top 20 for copper, silver and zinc. Eighty per cent of Ontario's mineral production is exported.
• Ontario has the world's largest salt mine and the world's richest silver vein.
• De Beers Canada is investing $750 million to develop a diamond mine in the James Bay lowlands of Northern Ontario.
• Ontario's forest industry harvests about 26 million cubic yards of timber annually to make products that range from paper to the latest in manufactured wood construction products and pre-fab housing.

• In 1811, John McIntosh discovered a unique variety of apple on his Prescott, Ontario farm. There are now 3,000,000 McIntosh apple trees across North America, all descendents of seedlings grafted from that single tree.
• North America's first commercial oil well was drilled near Sarnia, Ontario, in 1858.
• Standard Time, dividing the world into 24 time zones, was developed by Toronto's Sir Sanford Fleming.
• Thomas Willson, born in Princeton, Ontario, discovered the first commercial process for the production of calcium carbide, a chemical compound used in the manufacture of acetylene gas.
• Canada Dry ginger ale was invented in Toronto by John McLaughlin.
• The first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb was patented by Toronto's Henry Woodward in 1874. Henry later sold a share of the patent to Thomas Edison.
• Norman Breakey, from Toronto, invented the paint roller in 1940.
• The familiar green plastic garbage bag was invented by Henry Wasylyk from Winnipeg and Larry Hansen, a Union Carbide employee in Lindsay, Ontario.
• Responsible Care^®, the chemical industry's voluntary initiative to safely handle products from the research laboratory through manufacture and distribution to ultimate disposal, was developed in Ontario in 1987 and has quickly spread to 45 countries.

For more information about Ontario, please visit us at:

www.investinontario.com

Email:

1-800-819-8701 (North America)

Special thanks to the following organizations
for providing photos:
NASA
FNX Mining Company Inc.