CCI 2027 Pre-Budget Presentation to the B.C. Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services

CCI Director of British Columbia Affairs, Kiersten Enemark presented CCI's 2027 Pre-Budget recommendations to the British Columbia Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services on June 8 2026. Below are the opening remarks from Ms Enemark:

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

My name is Kiersten Enemark and I am here on behalf of the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national business council that represents over 175 of Canada's leading technology scale-ups in AI, health tech, bio tech, clean tech, digital services and fintech.

Our B.C. members collectively generate an annual revenue of over $4B, members like STEMCELL, Clio, KOHO Financial, Jane App and many more. Companies founded here, built here, selling to the world.

B.C. is operating in a global market where economic policy, industrial strategy, and national security are becoming inseparable. Leading global economies are no longer treating innovation policy as a narrow research file. They are using procurement, capital, trade policy and standards to build domestic capacity. We need to do the same.

We are calling on the province for significant policy shifts to grow the economy. While the province focuses on tangible assets as economic drivers —construction of major projects, exporting resources and building infrastructure — we are calling on the province to develop industrial policies to equally grow our intangible assets — patents, intellectual property, data — to drive economic prosperity engines of a 21st Century economy.

Today, intangible assets make up over ninety two per cent of the S&P500 market value. While in the 1970’s tangible assets — property, equipment, physical capital —represented 83% of S&P 500, today tangible assets have been reduced to 8%. In today’s economy, it’s not just revenue and good jobs that drives prosperity — it’s about whether a company can control, defend and monetize what makes it valuable.

I’d like to tell you a story.

In the 1980s, a Vancouver company called Consumers Software was headquartered right here — on Water Street, not far from where we are now. Its Canadian founder built one of Canada's largest software companies. The company's product, Network Courier, was a pioneering email platform.

In 1991, Microsoft acquired Consumers Software. The Vancouver technology became the foundation of the Microsoft Office ecosystem — including Microsoft Outlook, which today serves 400 million users and commands 30 percent of the global email market. Worth tens of billions of dollars.

Built in British Columbia. The value was captured elsewhere.

This is not an isolated story; sadly, there are many others. British Columbia has no shortage of great ideas and innovations but too many B.C. firms are struggling to scale up, and the barriers are well known: access to customers, capital and talent.

When those barriers are not addressed, Canadian companies are acquired by foreign buyers, or leave for markets where it’s easier to grow, taking their IP, data, leadership and economic value with them.

Today, we are calling on the province to make Budget 2027 B.C.’s first Innovation Budget that includes fiscal commitments to address gaps that cause B.C. innovators to get acquired or leave rather than scale here at home.

Our first recommendation is to position government as the tech sector’s strongest customer through a “Buy Canadian” procurement policy.

Government is one of our largest buyers — especially in health tech — but we don’t use that purchasing power effectively to validate Canadian technology and create early customers. We ask for the government to adopt a Buy Canadian Policy that prioritizes Canadian-controlled, IP-owning companies, where mind and management resides in Canada. For example, it  should not be easier for a Canadian health tech company, or any other tech company, to sell in the U.S. or U.K. than in their own province — but that is the reality today.

Second, make B.C. the best place to scale and stay with new tax incentives strategies.

We recommend a Scale Up Tax Credit, a tax incentive for Canadian tech companies that acquire other firms, accelerating the accumulation of domestic intellectual property and assets that drive economic growth.

Lastly, we strongly advise government move forward in implementing new regulations where software engineers are exempt from needless licencing requirements.

B.C. is losing software engineers — and the tax revenue that comes with them — because of a needless licensing requirement that is making B.C. less competitive. Engineers and Geoscientists BC (EGBC) requires a "software engineer" to obtain a licence, burying candidates and tech companies in red tape, adding time and added costs. The province saw the problem and passed an amendment to the Professional Governance Act giving Cabinet the power to carve out the requirement for software engineers to hold a license. That was a year ago. The regulations still haven't come. and B.C. is losing talent to other provinces and countries.

B.C. is full of innovation. The next Consumers Software is being founded in B.C. right now.

The question is not whether British Columbia can produce world-changing innovation. We already do. The question is whether we will finally build the conditions to keep it.

CCI is ready to work with this government to design an Innovation Budget, and to ensure that British Columbia becomes not just a place where great ideas are born — but a place where they scale and stay.

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Kiersten Enemark leads CCI's B.C. Bureau and works on behalf of innovators in British Columbia to advance strategies that help domestic companies scale-up globally. To learn more about CCI's B.C. advocacy efforts, email Kiersten at kenemark@canadianinnovators.org.

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. CCI represents over 175 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and executives behind Canada’s most successful scale-ups in health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, and AI. We advocate for policies that increase access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers—fueling Canadian innovation at scale.