We should send an ‘Attaboy’ to the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa. It seems they are trying to stretch the thinking in the Finance Department to find new ways to fund high- technology start-ups. They are giving serious study to a report recommending ways to support Canada’s weakened high technology sector. The hope is to move some of Canada’s nascent high-tech companies into the giant job creation capabilities of the billion-dollar successes.
Of note is the fact that the report was commissioned by the previous Conservative government. It is to the Liberals’ credit that they are accepting and using the report. In all likelihood, it would still not have seen the light of day with the bottleneck of the previous Prime Minister’s Office.
The report was prepared by the Centre for Digital Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance. It is referred to as an economic think-tank.
The key to the thinking today in Ottawa is the statement Prime Minister Trudeau made in Davos, Switzerland in his first months in office. He put down Canada’s resource-based economy in favour of a more resourceful economy. That was a hard left turn from the attitude of the Harper regime that watched silently as high-tech companies constantly moved out of the country while all efforts went into an oil and gas based economy.
One of the concerns with the Trudeau government was that it might have relied entirely on construction projects to keep the economy moving. While construction can have a long-term payoff, it lacks the ability to generate new profits such as those from high-tech companies and their spin-offs.
One of the key recommendations in the report is to involve larger corporations in the support capabilities for high-tech start-ups. These corporations have capital sitting idle and incentives could assist them in moving the money into the economy where it could do some good in terms of job creation and helping the start-ups.
The report also called on the government to demand better accountability and transparency in incubators that are assisting start-ups. Without a technology base behind the operation, it could not assess the potential of the firms it was aiding.
We will assume that Justin Trudeau was also talking about Ottawa when he told the world forum in Davos that Canadians were resourceful. We will hear how resourceful at the occasion of the Liberal government’s first budget.
-30-
Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]