CCI Statement on the Liberal Party’s 2025 Campaign Platform

Earlier this week the Liberal Party of Canada published their 2025 campaign platform, which include significant policy ideas about how Canada should navigate the years ahead. After assessing the platform, CCI President Benjamin Bergen issued the following statement on behalf of our members:

"This election, Canadian business leaders and innovators made a clear ask: show us your plan to secure long-term prosperity. In our pre-election brief, What Innovators Need to Scale, and our open letter signed by 150 CEOs at SecureProsperity.ca, we outlined the policies needed to help Canadian companies grow, compete globally, and create better paycheques here at home.

"In the Liberal plan, we see a number of long-standing policies that Canadian innovators have been calling for: recapitalizing venture programs, expanding SR&ED to better support commercialization, launching a Canada Patent Box, and making more strategic use of public procurement to drive innovation and domestic capacity. These commitments signal that the Liberal Party understands the tech community’s concerns—and the reforms needed to seize this moment and rebuild Canada’s economic strength through homegrown innovation. We were also encouraged to see Mark Carney heed the call of innovators by reversing the capital gains tax hike shortly before the campaign began.

"We’re encouraged to see platform recognition for building sovereign AI infrastructure and funding targeted defence and health innovation—both areas where CCI has pushed for Canada to take leadership. On the procurement file, however, there remains a disconnect between rhetoric and action. As we saw with the recent pre-election contract awarded to an Australian defence firm, ‘Made-in-Canada’ commitments are only meaningful if backed by real government spending decisions.

“If the Liberals form government, the real test is in delivery. Mark Carney has pitched himself as a reset for the Liberal government. If he earns a mandate next week, we expect him to act quickly to implement these proposals and rebuild trust with Canada’s tech community. That starts with meeting innovators directly. Convening a roundtable of Canadian scale-up leaders within the first 30 days of a new mandate would send a strong signal that the government understands this moment—and is ready to lead."

CCI is proudly non-partisan. We’ll continue to measure every party’s platform against the core principles outlined in our What Innovators Need to Scale document — delivered to all parties before the campaign began.

‍

Media Contact:

James McLeod
jmcleod@canadianinnovators.org