Weekly Regional Business Intelligence | | | Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | | | Legal-tech platform Closer expands to Alberta Closer, a London-founded software platform that streamlines the legal paperwork behind real estate closings, is expanding into Alberta, the company announced this week. Used by more than 600 real estate law firms in Ontario, the platform assembles searches, documents and other information the various parties need to close a property transaction. “Closer’s job is to do all the searches and assemble all the information from different partners in the ecosystem, and ultimately close the transaction,” said CEO Harrison Kelly. He told BetaKit that Alberta made sense as Closer’s first stop outside Ontario because the two provinces’ conveyancing practices are similar, though the platform did require retooling for local rules. “We’ve taken time over the last year to localize the platform effectively, hiring local experts and working with data firms,” Kelly said. “Alberta’s a great fit to be the next launch point because the practices are quite similar to those of Ontario.” Kelly suggested that Alberta will serve as a case study for a continued national rollout. “If you’re a firm that operates in both Alberta and Ontario, you can run things from the central mothership, which is really unique,” Kelly said. “We have teams out localizing for a few other provinces, and we’ll be national very soon.” The upshot: In 2024, Closer announced an integration with LEAP, a global legal software suite provider that looks to be the basis of its national expansion. LEAP has characterized the problem of closing transactions as one of bottlenecks leading to clunky workflows, and pitches Closer (a companion software to its tools) as a way to streamline the final steps of a real estate transaction. Kelly said in a LinkedIn post that the expansion into Alberta was a year in the making, and is looking to replicate their growth in Ontario. “Over the past year, our team has worked directly with firms across the province, mapping out where daily matters get stuck and where existing tools keep falling short,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “We built our Alberta solution around those exact needs, backed by a talented local team who work with firms daily to deliver forward-thinking technology built specifically for them.” Read more: BetaKit | Newswire | | | YXU unveils its biggest-ever winter destination lineup London International Airport rolled out a winter flight schedule that it says is its biggest-ever lineup of sunny destinations. Announced Wednesday in partnership with several airlines (Porter Airlines, Air Transat, WestJet and Sunwing Vacations), the schedule offers nine weekly flights to Cancun, four weekly flights to Fort Lauderdale, three each to Orlando and Montego Bay, two to Punta Cana and one weekly flight to Puerto Plata. “We know travellers value convenience and choice,” said airport CEO Scott McFadzean in a press release. “By continuing to expand our sun flight offerings, we’re helping more people start their vacations closer to home while supporting the continued growth of air service in our community.” The expansion follows last month’s announcement that Porter Airlines would begin service out of London for the first time, with four nonstop seasonal routes starting in November plus a commitment from Porter to build a domestic network out of the airport by mid-2027. The upshot: YXU has done a lot of work to build out its sunny vacation offerings over the last few years. Compare, for instance, to the splashy announcements it made about two years ago, ahead of the 2024-25 season, in which it was touting around 10 flights a week to holiday destinations, almost half of which were to Cancun. Now it’s offering 22 weekly flights to a much larger variety of destinations. While total passenger counts are still down at YXU compared to pre-pandemic figures (last year saw around 293,000, according to Statistics Canada), the international sector — which covers most of the airport’s vacation flights — is way up from pre-pandemic numbers, with over 48,000 international travellers counted by StatsCan last year. Which is all to say, while the airport business has taken a bit of a hit over the last few years with fuel prices, cross-border tensions and an industry contraction of domestic flights out of regional hubs, YXU’s strategy to grow its sunny vacation segment appears to be taking flight. Read more: London Free Press | CTV News London | | | Western launches homegrown venture fund Western University is putting $5 million into a new venture fund that will invest in startups founded by its own students, faculty, staff and alumni — a first for the university. The Western Propel Fund will make up to six investments of $150,000 a year through 2030, aimed at startups that have raised less than $1 million and are too early to take on venture capital money. “The fund signals to the entrepreneurial community, here at Western and beyond, that we are serious about our entrepreneurs’ success,” said Eric Morse (pictured), executive director of the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, which is putting in $1 million into the fund, with Western and Ivey Business School each putting up $2 million. “We see the Propel Fund as a way to help Western-founded ventures bridge that investment gap.” Founders will pitch for investments at Morrissette’s twice-yearly Angels’ Demo Day, after which student volunteers run formal due diligence before an investment committee decides who gets funded — a structure Morse says lets Western put “additional resources into the ventures that come through our programming.” (This structure also weaves some experiential learning into the fund, which is a pretty clever move.) Seven startups have already pitched for a piece of this money, according to Western News, although the winners were not named. The upshot: Offering money to early-stage startups isn’t entirely new for Western — it has doled out grant or prize money with no equity in various forms over the years — but establishing what is effectively their own VC fund is new territory for the school. The University of Waterloo was the first to do something like this in 2023, when it pitched in $5 million of its own endowment to a fund called Velocity Fund II, although it was a limited partner in an externally managed fund, where Western looks to be managing its fund directly. The announcement comes on the heels of a report that outlined how significant private-sector investment has become for startups associated with Ontario’s universities. According to the Council of Ontario Universities, schools have attracted more than $1 billion in private sector investment over the past three years, supporting more than 2,800 startups. Commercialization is quite clearly high on the priority list for schools like Western. “Western produces some exceptional entrepreneurial quality, both the entrepreneurs themselves and the companies they start,” Morse concluded. “This is just the beginning of more ambitious possibilities.” Read more: Western News | | | Roshel-Stellantis MOU clouds picture for CAMI With workers at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll still awaiting any sign that GM might land a major defence contract, which could see the plant reopen, there was another new development in the region’s auto sector last week when Stellantis announced it had signed an MOU with Roshel Inc., a Brampton-based armoured vehicle maker, on a possible sale of Stellantis’ idled Brampton assembly plant. (The MOU itself has created turbulence — it caused Unifor to break off negotiations with Stellantis, and on Wednesday Unifor urged the feds to stop the deal.) It’s a deal that could complicate GM’s hopes for the CAMI plant. Roshel is chasing the same big defence industry prize as GM Defense Canada is: a Canadian military contract, worth an estimated $4.9 billion, to build light utility vehicles for the military. Neither company has that contract yet, although Roshel has reportedly been telling the feds it could get the Brampton plant running again quickly if it wins. GM, for its part, says it won’t sell or permanently close CAMI (a commitment it made in its contract negotiations with Unifor) and has committed to giving the plant “top priority” for any military work it lands. Both companies are still just hoping, though. GM Defense Canada said in a statement that it is “actively pursuing several Canadian defence procurement opportunities,” but that “no final decisions have been made as relevant contracts have yet to be awarded by the Canadian government.” The upshot: Much of this is still speculative, since neither the federal government nor GM Defense Canada are saying anything publicly about where the company stands in pecking order as far as the LUV contract is concerned. Technically, we don’t even know if GM is still even in the running for this project: in July, it was reported by CityNews that “only two bids remain on the table” for the program, one of which being Roshel, whose bid was made a bit stronger by the potential acquisition of a major assembly plant. “We’re the only company, not just in Canada, but in the world that can start delivering this year,” said Roshel’s CEO Roman Shimonov, earlier this year. “We’re a 100 per cent Canadian company, so when it comes to buy Canadian policy, we would expect the government to choose real Canadian companies and not companies that promise to become Canadian, subject to getting the award.” GM might not be out of the running though. According to the True North Strategic Review, it has continued to lobby the federal government for military contracts, even after the field was narrowed to two potential suppliers. Separately from the actual procurement competition, questions are now being asked about whether a defence contract in Ingersoll would actually revive the two-million-square-foot CAMI plant over the long term. “To make it profitable, it’s still going to require filling that plant to a certain level, and you’ve got to be talking in the tens of thousands of units at minimum to get a profitable return on whatever the investment would be to build that vehicle,” said Sam Fiorani, auto industry analyst at AutoForecast Solutions, speaking to The London Free Press’ Jonathan Juha. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but it does seem unlikely.” Read more: London Free Press | Bloomberg | | | Commercial real estate investment surges in Q2, led by multi-family residential London saw $459 million in commercial real estate investment in Q2 of this year, nearly double Q1’s total and making it the eighth best performing market in the country, according to the most recent Canada Investment Overview report from CBRE. The increase was almost entirely driven by the money pouring into apartment and condo construction, with the multi-family residential sector responsible for the lion’s share at $387.7 million, more than triple the Q1 investment. “Things are a little bit more buoyant than they have been in a while,” Kevin MacDougall, vice-president of CBRE’s London office, told The London Free Press. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the market. Nobody likes uncertainty.” The surge in investment is reflected in the city’s housing start numbers. London saw 213 new home starts in August, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, with the overall 2026 numbers for the entire London-Middlesex sitting at 2,862 starts as of August of this year, compared to 2,133, the ten-year benchmark for that period. “[London has] had a very strong year. You’re well above what we typically build in London,” said CMHC economist Anthony Passarelli, speaking to CTV News London. “It’s heavily skewed toward the rental sector, particularly, there’s rental apartments that has really dominated construction activity. Not so much in that townhome, single-detached segment of the market yet.” London Home Builders’ Association CEO Jared Zaifman credited some of the strength of the market to buyers cashing in on the new HST rebate on new homes, but cautioned that “a lot of those won’t get constructed until spring 2027.” The upshot: Just about every other category of real estate investment CBRE looks at — office, industrial, retail, etc. — softened from Q1, but overall investors appear to be bullish on the Canadian real estate investment market. “Despite some of the negative headlines, the momentum is real and investors believe in Canada,” said CBRE Canadian Capital Markets president Peter Senst. In London, investments were generally led by real estate investment trusts, which were responsible for $250 million, with foreign investors putting in around $100 million. “We are on a trajectory that could make 2026 a record year for Canadian commercial real estate investment. Global investors are increasingly viewing Canada as a market of safety and stability, and the capital flows back that up.” Read more: London Free Press | CTV News London | | | Feds launch $1B agri-food fund at Arva Flour Mill The federal government is putting $1 billion into a new Agri-food Project Finance Fund for mid-sized food and agriculture businesses, a program it unveiled Monday at the Arva Flour Mill. The fund, delivered through Farm Credit Canada, targets projects with capital costs between $25 million and $500 million, a project size that can be difficult to finance. “That’s the gap we are here to fill,” said FCC president and CEO Justine Hendricks. “It’s financing built to unlock projects and bring other lenders and investors alongside us.” Arva Flour Mill owner Mark Rinker told The London Free Press the timing suits businesses like his. “There is no funding like this in the space right now,” he said. “It is beyond what commercial banks can offer. It is too specialized for other types of financing, so this will fill a sweet spot in terms of helping mid-size producers.” Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald framed the fund as an urgent need. “We want to allow processors to scale up as quickly as possible,” he said. “We want to create something special and we need to do it relatively quickly.” Separately at the event, the feds announced they were kicking in $150 million to Velocity Agri-Capital Partners, with the Dragons’ Den’s own Arlene Dickinson on hand. Dickinson has been all about food sovereignty and boosting the Canadian food industry for some time now, and the new fund is focused on boosting Canadian exports, primarily to Southeast Asia. The upshot: The Arva Flour Mill was an apt setting for an announcement like this, even if the flour mill itself wasn’t on the receiving end of any investment (at least not this week) as it serves as a practical example of the exact kind of project the feds want to support with a fund like this — ambitious, somewhat capital-intensive, mid-market projects, often in locations that need the economic boost. (It’s also good to see Farm Credit Canada, which took a $41-million haircut on its Aspire Food Group investment when the cricket factory went into bankruptcy, hasn’t totally been scared off from the London market.) MacDonald said the fund was looking to support businesses that want to “produce more product, hire more people, drive the economy in these small rural towns,” he said. That it comes against the backdrop of a trade war — and warnings of food inflation to come — helps them, at least rhetorically, make the case for public money being pumped into food production. “We would like to keep those products to be able to process them here,” said MacDonald. “If we can do that, we take some of the cost away for logistics purposes, which entails possibly a lesser cost on the grocery shelves.” Read more: London Free Press | CBC News London | | | Dispatch: September 18, 2026 A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week. View listings here | | | | |