CCI 2026 Pre-Budget Presentation to the B.C. Legislative Committee on Finance and Government Services

This week, CCI Director of British Columbia Affairs, Kiersten Enemark presented CCI's 2026 Pre-Budget recommendations to the British Columbia Legislative Assembly Committee on Finance. Below are the opening remarks from Ms Enemark:

Deputy Chair Sturko and Members of the Committee, thank you for having me here today on the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

My name is Kiersten Enemark. I’m the Director of B.C. affairs for the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national business council representing over 150 of Canada’s fastest growing tech companies, all headquartered in Canada —25 of which are based in B.C. — leading innovation in biotech, agritech, fintech, manufacturing and software.

Our members are major contributors to the economy by generating millions of dollars in revenue and employing over 10,000 people across the province. Our member businesses are leaders in B.C.’s innovation economy, and they are rapidly scaling up in both urban and rural parts of the province.

CCI is a unique business council in that our core mandate is to optimize the growth of Canada’s innovation sector through public policy-making. Too often policies favour foreign-owned businesses, undermining the growth of domestic industries. With the rise of buying Canadian, we applaud Premier Eby’s commitment to procure Canadian products. For 10 years, CCI has championed a sovereign economy, including strengthening public procurement, and it’s exciting to see our ideas gaining traction.

Innovation is key to prosperity. For Canadian innovators to scale up, we need policies that foster an ecosystem where domestic innovation can thrive. We need to shift focus from just job creation and tax cuts to value-add strategies across all sectors, including our resource sector, to strengthen a data-driven economy where we prioritize intangible assets like intellectual property, data and homegrown know-how. By better integrating innovation with productivity, our economy will grow, become more resilient and strong.

At CCI, we use four policy levers to create the right structures for innovators to scale up: access to talent, capital, customers and marketplace frameworks. In short, we agree with government that we must be bold, but to be bold means to create the right framework to foster innovation. To that end, we have three recommendations.

First is to improve strategic procurement. We commend government for adopting a strategic procurement approach, directing ministries and Crown corporations to prioritize Canadian-made products. Procurement is a powerful tool for economic growth by investing in domestic industries. For innovators, it is more effective than grants or tax credits in validating companies and driving rapid growth. However, the challenge is that procurement processes are often inflexible, slow and risk-averse and often favour large, multinational industries.

To be clear, Canadian businesses often sell to governments outside of B.C. and outside of Canada. Our members have a track record of successfully selling globally yet not at home. There is a lost opportunity. I was at web summit in which I heard that Vancouver is known as the Silicon Valley of health tech and biotech, and at the same time, 40 percent of our tax dollars go to health care. Yet, the B.C. government procures very little from our domestic innovators.

To improve procurement, not just in health tech but across all industries, we recommend the creation of an advisory board made up of domestic businesses to provide guidance on how to design procurement to be more inclusive of SMEs; domestic innovators, including possible set-asides; how to share risks; and maybe a negotiated procurement option.

Our second recommendation is to add value-add strategies to major projects. Canada ranks 14th in the Global Innovation Index, excelling in innovation but lagging in productivity and tech adoption. While we have the right ideas and the innovative capacity, our existing structures hinder commercialization. We need to better integrate innovation into productivity to see our economy grow.

For example, we see government has prioritized major projects to accelerate economic growth. Applying value-add strategies to major projects would further grow our prosperity. For instance, instead of merely extracting raw materials like critical minerals or simply building new infrastructure, we ought to ensure innovation and technology is a key part of the project. Innovation has been proven to not only bring more jobs and economic activity but also expand intangible assets such as intellectual property and data.

Lastly, we are seeking for government to improve our access to international talent. B.C. is losing talent to the U.S., and we are losing talent because housing is expensive and wages are lower. Further, our members are finding that bringing in high-skilled international workers is a slow and administratively burdensome process. We recognize that government is focused on balancing the budget and seeking low-cost solutions to drive economic growth. One such solution is removing duplication in the provincial process for hiring skilled international workers.

Our recommendations we’ve shared today aim to unlock the full potential of B.C.’s innovation economy. Thank you very much.

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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.

À propos du Conseil des innovateurs canadiens

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 150 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.

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