We’re looking forward to working with you, Minister Champagne

Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shuffled his cabinet, with François-Philippe Champagne replacing Navdeep Bains as Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry.

Minister Bains has been the lead minister responsible for the innovation portfolio for more than five years, and he has been somebody that the Council of Canadian Innovators has worked with extensively.

Following the cabinet shuffle, CCI executive director Benjamin Bergen made the following statement:

“I want to thank Minister Bains for his unwavering commitment to Canadian innovators throughout his many years of service to this country. He will be remembered as an innovation minister who often called business leaders directly to understand their challenges, and championed them at the cabinet table. He left a lasting mark by creating programs designed to support high-growth companies in Canada, like the Global Skills Strategy, the National IP strategy, and the groundwork he laid for other important post-pandemic prosperity strategies.

“Our members are excited to work with Minister François-Philippe Champagne in helping him achieve his bold new mandate to drive innovation and economic development in Canada.

“With vaccine doses beginning to roll out across the country, there is a light at the end of the tunnel with COVID-19. A top priority for Minister Champagne must be to put in place strategies and policies for Canada to get the greatest benefit out of the post-pandemic economic recovery. Innovative Canadian companies are poised to lead the way, and we are eager to work with Minister Champagne on developing a national data strategy, increasing Canada’s intellectual property capacity, and enacting policies to ensure that Canadian companies are able to hire the highly-skilled workers who drive growth and prosperity in the knowledge economy.”

In September, CCI published A Plan For Economic Recovery and Reorientation, which lays out specific recommendations for Canadian governments to position our country’s economy to be in the best possible position to take advantage of the post-pandemic recovery.

In October, more than 130 CEOs sent an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling on the federal government to create a prosperity strategy, and embrace this approach as a nation building project.

Minister Champagne no doubt has a lot of reading material on his desk already, but both these documents are full of good ideas that would help the federal government drive innovation in Canada, and support high-growth companies.

On behalf of more than 130 member companies, we’re looking forward to working with Minister Champagne.

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