Canada may be poised for a tech comeback with innovation-friendly Liberal agenda: CEOs

“There were no jobs after school so they went south. We supported them with socialized health care and education and as soon as they were to start paying taxes we said goodbye,” Holmes told the Star. “They just never came back. But we have another opportunity now.”

Canadian-based tech companies with multi billions in sales across global markets have been in critically short supply since the failure in 2009 of telecom gear maker Nortel Networks Corp. and as mobile communications pioneer BlackBerry Ltd. declines as a maker of smartphones for the world.

But Holmes says the outlook for early stage tech companies looking to grow may be improving thanks to factors including the innovation-friendly agenda of the federal Liberals and easier access to financing in a historically low interest rate environment.

He says an ample supply of engineering talent is the key prerequisite along with capital, customers and intellectual property to scaling Canadian tech companies into global champions.

Adam Froman, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based data collection company the Delvinia Group, adds that “the talent will follow the money,” noting that his firm is well financed and able to recruit aggressively even though risk averse banks in the country “have not been very supportive of growing tech.”

Froman notes that incubator programs and tax-credits have aided early stage companies, but he says a group called the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) has also been influential as it steps up lobbying efforts with policy makers to advance the interests of companies looking to scale globally.

Some 70 CEOs of elite tech concerns, including Shopify Inc., Wattpad and Hootsuite, have signed on since CCI was launched in 2015, then with just 20 companies on board.

Former BlackBerry Ltd. co-CEO Jim Balsillie serves as chair while John Ruffolo of the venture arm of OMERS, a leading pension fund that has been a steadfast investor in high tech companies, is deputy chair.

Read more: Jim Balsillie says Ottawa is open for ‘course correction’ on intellectual property

Member companies who contribute an undisclosed amount to support the council must be Canadian-based firms — as opposed to branches of multinationals — with annual sales of at least $15 million (U.S.) and whose revenues are ramping up quickly.

The coalition believes Canadian rules, policies and procedures need to favour domestic tech companies the way the policies and standards of countries around the world support their own firms.

“The United States has this, the EU has this and Israel has this. The one major innovation country that doesn’t have this is Canada,” Ruffolo says.

CCI executive director Benjamin Bergen says the group is now among the most active lobbyists in Ottawa with member CEOs taking a lead role in meetings with politicians and bureaucrats to advocate for high growth companies.

Bergen added that there is opportunity for tech companies on a growth trajectory, but Canada needs to act fast given the burgeoning global demand for tech talent.

He says Ottawa has a role in supporting local tech firms in part through procurement strategies for software and other goods and services that provide an even playing field for the homegrown companies competing with much larger, foreign-based multi nationals.

“We also need to make sure that those companies emerging victorious are Canadian headquartered otherwise all of the wealth generated will head back to the country of origin.”

He says CCI’s lobbying has already informed the federal government’s Global Skills Strategy, which was unveiled in early March and sets a two-week turnaround for processing visas and short-term work permits, to give early stage companies faster access to highly skilled workers.

It’s an approach to immigration that Bergen calls a competitive advantage.

It also played a role in Ottawa’s decision in early 2016 to back off plans for increasing taxes on employee stock option benefits that critics called a tech sector job killer.

Holmes, meanwhile, says Prime Minister Trudeau appears committed to nurturing tech companies, adding that he suggested to the PM when the two attended the closed-door Microsoft summit at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. in mid May that Ottawa consider forgiving student loans for technology program grads that stay and work in the country.

Read more: Trudeau attends Microsoft summit to promote Canadian tech, lure foreign investment

Trudeau is the first sitting head of government or state to be invited to address the annual gathering of CEOs, his office said.

“I think we made really good progress in Seattle,” Holmes says.

As well as taking part in the council’s main lobbying effort for polices that support access to talent, capitol and markets, participating companies are pitching their own business ideas, many focused on clean tech solutions that could benefit from federal support.

One from 55-year-old company Fielding Environmental of Mississauga would link early revenue companies in the clean tech ecosystem with larger players that have traditionally been in the manufacturing sector.

Ellen McGregor, Fielding’s CEO, said the plan would help plants exploit under-used capacity and municipal operating permits so that “tech companies could live within these walls.”

She said government could pay or co-pay the host company to accommodate tech operations and to assure the tenant company has access to money, laboratory facilities and skilled staff.

She says the initiative should be publicly supported, possibly via the federal budget’s tech cluster fund, because it would enable the fast tracking of commercialization efforts for clean tech — and “because it makes sense.”