Manitoba Can Find Opportunity Amid Uncertainty by Playing to Win in the 21st Century Economy

By Jess Sinclair,
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

On Tuesday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew held a press conference in front of the province’s legislature complete with a massive Canadian flag in the background.

Premier Kinew committed to new measures to provide tax relief for Manitoba businesses impacted by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and pull all American liquor products from provincially-operated liquor store shelves. He also indicated he supports a united Canadian response to U.S. tariffs. But Kinew’s cool and affable exterior surely belied some inner anxiety. Manitoba stands to be heavily impacted by a U.S.-Canada trade war, particularly within the province’s cornerstone industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation.

As Manitoba’s legislature reconvenes for the spring sitting, Kinew’s government faces a challenging fiscal situation. What’s more, the Premier repeatedly committed to balanced budgets over the course of the 2023 campaign.

The Premier and his team seem to have recognized the need to shore up capacity and diversify the province’s economy in a 21st century context, as Mike Moroz was sworn in as the province’s first Minister of Innovation and New Technology in November of last year. As policymakers reconvene in Winnipeg and gear up for a provincial budget (likely to land in April), higher economic stakes have not changed our key areas of focus for the province — on the contrary, they have made the need for innovation policy reform more pressing. We will be looking to Manitoba to pursue new solutions to old problems and grow the province’s innovation economy by:

1. Developing a provincial procurement strategy with an initial focus on the health technology that will drive better outcomes for Manitobans across the province.‍
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2. Establishing a Manitoba Innovation Advisory Committee under the Ministry of Innovation and New Technology with local scale-up company leadership included.
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3. Develop a Provincial Intellectual Property Strategy with a focus on supporting local innovators in commercializing their ideas.
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4. Addressing the province’s skilled labour shortage to improve access to talent for domestic innovators.
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There are any number of well-worn quips about crisis being a vector for opportunity, but in Manitoba’s case it may well prove accurate. Kinew’s government enjoys significant approval ratings, and the premier and his cabinet members are nothing if not ambitious. They need not reinvent the wheel to employ a formula that has enhanced support for scale-up innovators and grown prosperity in jurisdiction across the world.

You can read CCI’s full 2025 Manitoba Pre-Budget Submission here.

Jess Sinclair leads CCI’s advocacy initiatives in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. She can be reached at jsinclair@canadianinnovators.org.

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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.