CCI’s Manitoba Priorities for Fall 2024

By Jess Sinclair
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

Manitoba premier Wab Kinew recently reflected on his government’s successes and shortcomings one year into its mandate. Though the Premier and his party both enjoy high approval ratings, Kinew has been up-front about the challenges before the province, namely in the areas of healthcare service provision and chronic deficits.

Collaboration with homegrown innovation leaders will be key to unlocking jobs, prosperity, and better services for Manitobans. CCI has long advocated for thoughtful innovation policy in the areas of government procurement (ie. service provision), intellectual property commercialization, and talent, because this formula has worked for jurisdictions the world over. Solid strategies that drive the intangible economy create a flywheel effect as thriving ecosystems take on a life of their own.

CCI and our Manitoba members have been calling on the province to work toward crafting and developing innovation strategies reflective of the formula above. This vision should include policy direction on intellectual property, digitization of government, and the increased participation of local innovators in the province’s policies when it comes to skills, talent, procurement and economic development program funding.
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Key Recommendations:

1. Improving health service provision and driving better health outcomes and cost-savings through smarter innovative health procurement practices in the province.
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2. Establish a Manitoba Innovation Advisory Committee or similar stand-alone body to liaise directly with local innovators.
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3. Supporting Manitoba’s brightest minds in commercializing their ideas through updated intellectual property commercialization frameworks.
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4. Spearheading flexibility and filling programming gaps within the province’s post-secondary system for the upskilling and retraining essential to the innovation sector.
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Manitoba is facing many of the challenges other Canadian provinces are looking at, but most policymakers and officials I’ve spoken with want to tackle these issues head-on. The province has a clear opportunity to focus on a few areas that will help address the urgent needs of Manitobans in the immediate term and lay the groundwork for reduced spending, labour productivity, and a more prosperous innovation ecosystem down the line.

Government and industry leaders should seize thus considerable opportunity by working hand-in-glove with one another.

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.