CCI Response to the 2022 Ontario Budget

Today, following the release of the 2022 Ontario Budget , Alanna Sokic , CCI’s Manager of Government Affairs in Ontario, issued the following statement on behalf of our members:

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“We are pleased to see the Ontario government’s continued commitment to digital policy infrastructure and effort to drive growth in the innovation economy. In particular, we are happy to see multi-year funding for Intellectual Property Ontario, a new institution that will lead the province’s transition to and success in the knowledge based economy.

We also commend the sizable financial support for critical technology initiatives and additional funding for Ontario’s venture capital sector to support emerging companies. The government has listened to leaders in the technology sector and embraced strategic government procurement as an economic driver. This budget also commits to a new life sciences strategy, the digitization of land approval processes, and a supply chain strategy to build greater opportunities for Ontario companies to sell to government.

We encourage the government to take an ambitious approach to talent going forward. The skilled talent shortage in Ontario’s tech sector is at a crisis point, and urgent action is needed. CCI has already proposed ideas in our Talent and Skills Strategy to grow the province’s supply of skilled workers, and from Alberta to Quebec, we have seen other provinces take meaningful action on this issue already. We look forward to seeing an updated analytical framework for foreign direct investment for agencies such as Invest Ontario, Regional Innovation Centres and other publicly funded institutions that need to add value to Ontario’s innovation ecosystem.

Over the past four years, the Ontario government has demonstrated leadership in creating institutions and strategies that are critical to improve innovation outcomes and Ontario’s innovators will continue to encourage the Ontario PC’s to keep supporting domestic firms in their mission to scale.”

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Media Contact:

James McLeod

jmcleod@canadianinnovators.org

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