The Ottawa Citizen published a report Friday titled, "Venture Capital Funding Falls 80%." With only seven VC deals so far this year totaling $43.3 million, the Citizen reports, 2006 may go down as one of the poorest years since the tech bubble burst.

Here is an interesting piece of information for those readers out there who have recently received VC funding: Of the 39 startups that received VC funding in 2003 and 2004 only 15 have received additional funding. Looking at this stat another way, we can draw a broad conclusion that just over one-third of VC investments in Canada's high-tech capital continue to be attractive to investors after two to three years (the article does say that some of the companies are managing to generate enough ongoing revenue to sustain themselves so the one-third figure is a very rough approximation).

Compare the 2006 figures to:

After hitting a record 74 deals for $1.26 billion at the peak of boom in 2000, Ottawa technology investment appears to have lost momentum at a time when venture capital investment is on the rebound in the United States and Europe.

Now that we are apparently an "Energy Superpower," knowledge based industries and services are a side show.