\nArticle content<\/h2>\n With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s next budget set for release on April 19, it might be a good time for a quick review of Bains\u2019 tenure.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last fall said she was prepared to spend as much as $100 billion on accelerating Canada\u2019s shift to an economy whose contours are shaped by digital technology and climate change. Those bags of cash that Bains originally dangled in front of our captains of industry are about to get bigger. Bains is gone, but he shouldn\u2019t be forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n The race to future-proof the economy: Navdeep Bains on the state of innovation in Canada <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n Navdeep Bains on how Canada is scoring in the global innovation race <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/section>\nIt\u2019s difficult to ascertain who deserves credit for what gets done in Trudeau\u2019s Ottawa, a place so tightly controlled by the Prime Minister\u2019s Office that many cabinet ministers are as invisible as the lowly backbenchers. Still, Bains\u2019 tenure marked the return of industrial policy, so he at least oversaw a monumental shift away from the decades-old assumption that the best way to stoke investment was through strategic tax cuts.<\/p>\n
The laissez-faire era that started in the 1980s aligned with some decent economic growth, but investment in innovation was mostly disappointing. The countries that were at the forefront of the digital economy were those where government and politicians had few hang-ups about their ability to pick winners and losers.<\/p>\n
In the United States, the Barack Obama administration backed some duds, but it also bailed out an ambitious electric-vehicle maker called Tesla Inc. in 2009. Tesla is now worth as much as all the big automobile makers combined, calling into question the notion that governments can\u2019t pick winners.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n\nArticle content<\/h2>\n Trudeau and his advisers weren\u2019t expecting to win the election in 2015, so their thinking on innovation was incomplete when they took office in November. One of the first things they did was change the name of the department to Innovation, Science and Economic Development, condemning Bains to spend his cabinet career as the minister in charge of a department called \u201cI-said.\u201d He doesn\u2019t seem to have minded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new title spoke to the ambition and it spoke to the new global reality of how countries were embracing industrial policy through the innovation lens,\u201d Bains said. \u201cIt has to be a partnership model. It wasn\u2019t exclusively government that was going to drive growth and create jobs. It was my job to create the conditions for growth and job creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
At some point over the past Christmas holiday, Bains decided he\u2019d rather spend more time with family than commit to another term as the member of Parliament for the Toronto-area riding of Mississauga-Malton. If he had hung around, he would now be a few months away from supplanting John Manley as the second-longest-serving industry minister in Canada\u2019s history, trailing only the legendary C.D. Howe.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a great cheerleader,\u201d said Mike Wessinger, chief executive of PointClickCare Technologies Inc., a Mississauga-based developer of software that helps long-term care homes manage data. \u201cHe would always proactively reach out. It was great that he cared.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to dismiss the importance of cheerleading. Canada\u2019s digitally native companies were struggling to be taken seriously in Ottawa a decade ago. Former prime minister Stephen Harper pitched in with the Obama administration to save General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC in 2009, but he let Nortel Networks Corp. fail. The technology industry needed a champion, and it found one in Bains.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n\nArticle content<\/h2>\n The question is whether Bains will be remembered for anything more than surviving Trudeau\u2019s propensity for mini-cabinet shuffles. The answer is complicated, partly because it depends on the extent to which Trudeau and Freeland embrace the idea that government must be an active player in the modern economy, not a passive one.<\/p>\n
Bains\u2019 legacy is undetermined because he left before the job was finished. He oversaw the creation of the Strategic Innovation Fund and the supercluster program, bold initiatives that might not be bold enough. Quarterly business investment in intellectual property averaged 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product during his tenure, compared with two per cent over the previous five years.<\/p>\n
Critics of Trudeau\u2019s industrial policy are on solid ground when they ask: what was the point?<\/p>\n
\u201cA `B,\u2019 I guess,\u201d Steven Denney, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto\u2019s Innovation Policy Lab, said when asked to assign Bains a grade. \u201cYou don\u2019t really see any outcomes yet. There\u2019s nothing really to assess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bains\u2019 most successful policy probably cost taxpayers the least. Software companies rave about the Global Skills Strategy, which allowed them to get visas for engineers and other high-skilled talent in weeks rather than months. \u201cThere\u2019s a real battle for talent,\u201d said Wessinger, who employs about 600 software engineers, most of them from abroad. \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough depth in Canada to keep up with demand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n\nArticle content<\/h2>\n The effectiveness of the big-ticket programs remains unclear. Denney observed that the Strategic Innovation Fund has partnered with international firms more often than Canadian ones, while the five superclusters, which split about $1 billion, have under-delivered on the initial hype.<\/p>\n
Bains argued that his programs deserve more time. Industrial policy was still derided when he took over the industry department. It\u2019s now mainstream. For now, that\u2019s his legacy. It\u2019s up to his former colleagues to write the final chapter.<\/p>\n
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