Reaction to the 2020 Ontario budget

Today, Ontario Finance Minister Rod Philips delivered the government’s 2020 budget plan.

In response to budget, CCI executive director Benjamin Bergen made the following statement on behalf of more than 130 high-growth Canadian companies:

Today’s fiscal blueprint includes several encouraging measures that will help innovative, high-growth companies. On behalf of Ontario’s most innovative, high-growth companies, we continue to call on the government to invest into strategic programs to increase access to talent, capital and customers for Ontario’s biggest job and wealth creators: its homegrown companies.

While we are pleased to see the government prioritizing critical investments in digital health and infrastructure including broadband, these investments need to continue and grow annually so Ontario can catch up with the 21st century global innovation race.

Our members have called on the province to support Ontario companies by adopting “Made-in-Ontario” procurement policies and today we welcome the government’s strong commitment to improving supply chain resiliency and enhancing the government’s procurement processes to include more new entrants. The government must continue to see procurement as an economic driver, especially in the post-pandemic recovery.

Business leaders in the innovation economy appreciate Ontario’s continued investments to help generate, protect and commercialize intellectual property to support growth of the intangible economy. Technology companies deeply understand the importance of Ontario accruing more intangible assets — like data and IP — in order to generate wealth from our ingenuity in the modern knowledge and data-driven economy.

For Ontario to have a meaningful and successful post-pandemic recovery, helping innovative, high-growth Ontario-based companies scale-up globally through targeted measures should be among the province’s top priority as we come out of this pandemic.

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