CCI's 2025 Manitoba Pre-Budget Recommendations

By Jess Sinclair
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

Back in the spring, Canadian thought leaders began to publicly opine on a subject our CCI team has been sounding the alarm on for years –the country’s productivity crisis. Canadians have been feeling the sting of increased cost of living and a decline in the quality of our public services (both inextricably linked to lack of economic strategy on the part of various levels of government) for some time. Manitobans are no exception, and the province is contending with a persistent infrastructure deficit and antiquated healthcare services administration system to boot.

Premier Kinew’s government has made moves in the right direction in the year since its election, but there is much more to do to build on the province’s existing strengths.

New ways of looking at old problems will be necessary. CCI and our Manitoba members have been calling on the province to update its economic policies for the 21st century for several years now. Thoughtful and common-sense tweaks around the way Manitoba manages government procurement, health service provision, the in and outflow of skilled talent, and intellectual property commercialization will be key to providing (and paying for) a better quality of life for Manitobans.

To that end, we encourage the province consider the following reforms as officials plan for the 2025 fiscal year.
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Key Recommendations:

1. Address the province’s skilled labour shortage to improve access to talent for domestic innovators.
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2. Develop a provincial procurement strategy focussing on the health technology that will drive better outcomes for Manitobans across the province.
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3. Establish a Manitoba Innovation Advisory Committee under the Ministry of Economic Development, Investment, Trade and Natural Resources.
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4. Develop a Provincial Intellectual Property Strategy with a focus on supporting local innovators in commercializing their ideas.

Many of these strategies have borne fruit in other Canadian jurisdictions, and Manitoba isn’t alone in needing to update its innovation industrial frameworks. The great news is that many of these tweaks are neither cost nor legislation-intensive. Manitoba boasts one of the youngest and most entrepreneurial populations in Canada, and if the province can orient itself toward keeping more bright minds and big ideas within its borders, the possibilities are pretty amazing.

Jess Sinclair leads CCI’s advocacy efforts in the prairies, and can be reached at jsinclair@canadianinnovators.org. To learn more about CCI's advocacy priorities in Manitoba, read our 2025 Manitoba Pre-Budget Submission here.

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About the Council of Canadian Innovators

The Council of Canadian Innovators is a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. Established in 2015, CCI represents and works with over 150 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and top senior executives behind some of Canada’s most successful ‘scale-up’ companies. All our members are job and wealth creators, investors, philanthropists, and experts in their fields of health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, AI and digital transformation. Companies in our portfolio are market leaders in their verticals, commercialize their technologies in over 190 countries, and generate between $10M-$750M in annual recurring revenue. We advocate on their behalf for government strategies that increase their access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers, as well as expanded freedom to operate for their global pursuits of scale.