More Than 150 Business Leaders Are Coming to Vancouver. B.C.’s Next Government Should Take Note

By Kiersten Enemark
CCI's Director of B.C. Affairs

This week, Canada’s business leaders are gathering in Vancouver for Canada’s CEO Summit, right in the middle of a consequential provincial election.

British Columbians are choosing their next government at a moment when the province is being asked to play a bigger role in Canada’s economic future: opening new markets, building major projects, strengthening supply chains and helping Canada become less economically dependent on the United States.

Geography has always shaped B.C.’s economy. To the west, Vancouver is Canada’s gateway to growing markets across Asia. To the south, it anchors the Canadian side of the Cascadia corridor. And increasingly, as we wrote in our recent Field Notes from Vancouver, B.C. is moving from the edge of Canada's economic map toward the centre of its growth strategy.

That makes this election about more than who governs the province. It is also about what — and whom — B.C. chooses to build its next economy around.

When the election was called, we worked with technology leaders across the province to put forward specific and actionable policy recommendations: use strategic procurement to close the commercialization gap, connect local technologies to major projects, attract global talent by reducing red tape and reduce wildfires with homegrown technologies.

Some of these ideas are now entering the campaign conversation. The B.C. Conservatives, for example, have proposed a Wildfire Action Plan with a commitment to invest funds in early detection and prevention technologies, something we have consistently called for.

That is encouraging. But the bigger opportunity goes well beyond any one proposal or party.

B.C. is already building the technology Canada needs

The province is at the centre of a new generation of Canadian nation-building.

The Canada–British Columbia Cooperative Prosperity Agreement is focused on major infrastructure, energy, critical minerals and trade corridors designed to get more Canadian goods to global markets and diversify our economy.

But modern nation-building cannot only be about what Canada constructs. It also has to be about the technologies we deploy — and the Canadian companies we help grow along the way.

B.C. innovators are already demonstrating what that can look like.

Victoria's MarineLabs uses sensors to gather real-time coastal intelligence and weather data, modernizing the operations at ports and marine terminals.

Burnaby’s Novarc Technologies builds AI-powered welding robots already at work in Seaspan's shipyards.

Richmond’s Ideon Technologies uses cosmic-ray muons to map deposits up to a kilometre underground, so miners drill less and find more.

These are not hypothetical technologies waiting for a future economy. They are Canadian companies building capabilities the country needs today.

Across the campaign, the parties have recognized a shared challenge: B.C. needs to build, diversify its economy and create the conditions for homegrown companies to grow.

On October 24, voters will choose which party they trust to turn those ambitions into action.

The next government will have an opportunity to make B.C. not only a gateway for Canadian trade, resources and energy, but a place where more Canadian technology is built, bought and scaled.

As CEOs from across Canada gather in Vancouver this week, that is the opportunity worth keeping in focus. The companies are already building. The ideas are already on the table. The next government should be ready to put them to work.

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Kiersten Enemark is the Director of B.C. Affairs at the Council of Canadian Innovators – Canada’s business council for domestic scale-up innovation companies. She leads CCI's British Columbia work, including advocacy and engagement with innovators and provincial and local policymakers.

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