Meet Stewart Beck- 'Hoser' Helper

Stewart G. Beck


Consul General,

Consulate General of Canada San, Francisco/Silicon Valley




BIO taken from government of Canada website










Stewart Beck was appointed Consul General of Canada in August 2009 with accreditation for northern California, Nevada, Hawaii, and Guam.

Mr. Beck graduated in 1979 from Queen’s University, Kingston with a BA, a BPHE and an MBA. He spent several years working as a business consultant and as Assistant Professor at Queen’s University School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. Mr. Beck joined Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1982 as a Trade Commissioner. Mr. Beck has served inthe United States, Asia and Canada, including positions in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Miami and Taipei as well as in Shanghai as Consul General for Canada.

Most recently, he has been responsible for the Government of Canada’s Foreign Direct Investment, International Innovation and International Business Development operations. This included oversight of the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership, the management of Science and Technology agreements and relationships with other countries. As part of his mandate, Mr. Beck oversaw the development and execution of Canada’s Foreign Direct Investment Program; the focus of the strategy being the promotion of Canada’s knowledge-based industries and capabilities in key markets and sectors globally. This Canadian Foreign Direct Investment Program worked with organizations like Forbes and the Association for Corporate Growth to increase investment in Canada and to activate the Canadian brand. He oversaw the Trade Commissioner Service, a network with over 140 offices around the world, pursuing global business opportunities for Canadian clients working or headquartered in Canada.

You will read about the contributions that he is currently making in the posting below entitled The Hoser Mafia.

The 'Hoser' Mafia

In an article in Bill Mann's Canada in Marketwatch, I read the phrase the 'Hoser Mafia' for the first time and laughed aloud. Apparently, DFAIT with the help of a group of expat Canadians from Silicon Valley  (C100) has organized barnstorming tours throughout Canada by a group of American and Canadian venture capitalists to selected Canada-based start-ups who are looking for VC help.

“Canada is a young and dynamic country with a young and highly educated population. We want to help Canadians build different kinds of companies, to start out on their own — instead of just being a Canadian subsidiary of a foreign company. Canada has traditionally relied on commodities, as we all know,” says C100 organizing committee member Ron Piovesan, Toronto-born manager of corporate development at Cisco Systems.


All this is being coordinated by Stewart Beck, Canadian consul general in San Francisco. Canadian government subsidies to tech start-ups have disappeared, so Beck and the government are now networking Silicon Valley tech people to their countrymen back home. Business Without Borders says some 300,000 Canadian expatriates work in such Silicon Valley companies as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, and many are execs of the big tech firms. DFAIT and the C100 are working together to get Silicon VC/tech money flowing northward to Canada.

Canada Concerned over Death of Congolese Human Rights Defender

Taken directly from the site for Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade:

(No. 182 - June 3, 2010 – 6:25 p.m. ET) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today voiced concern over the circumstances surrounding the death of prominent Congolese human rights defender Floribert Chebeya Bahizire and the disappearance of his driver, Fidèle Bazana Edadi, on June 2, 2010.
“This is an immense blow to human rights and human rights defenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said Minister Cannon. “On behalf of Canadians, I express my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Chebeya; my hope that Mr. Bazana will be found quickly, and safe and sound; and my solidarity with all Congolese human rights defenders.
“Canada urgently requests that an impartial, independent and fully transparent investigation be launched into the circumstances of Mr. Chebeya’s death and Mr. Bazana’s disappearance. Canada also urges the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to take the necessary measures to guarantee the protection of all human rights defenders.”
Mr. Chebeya was the executive director of the human rights group La Voix des Sans-Voix [Voice of the Voiceless] and had been campaigning in defence of democracy and human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the early 1990s. He met with the Governor General of Canada, Michaëlle Jean, while she was on a state visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo from April 18 to 20, 2010.