OTTAWA — Canada’s nation-building mission hinges on ambitious industrial strategies for defence, housing, automotive, and critical minerals. Building competitive industries is difficult enough, but these strategies also must achieve multiple goals at once, diversifying trade, securing geopolitical autonomy, achieving climate competitiveness, and producing tangible economic benefits for Canadians.
To deliver, Canada needs integrated analysis informed by high-quality information. Launched today with an event at Ottawa’s Fairmont Château Laurier, the newly refreshed Centre for Industrial Policy (CIP) will help create an integrated strategic vision for Canada’s economic future, translate that vision into smart policy design, and provide the rigorous analytics needed to evaluate and update Canada’s industrial strategy.
To achieve those goals, the CIP will bring researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders together with the country’s best analytical talent to provide an unbiased assessment of Canada’s industrial policy: where it’s working, and how it can be improved.
Today’s launch event demonstrated that approach in practice. The Centre gathered 50 of Canada’s leading industrial policy experts from industry, government, Indigenous leadership, and civil society to discuss four new reports on topics that will shape Canada’s economy in the decades to come:
- Bentley Allan introduces a new framework to clarify and evaluate the effectiveness of industrial policy.
- Grieg Mordue (McMaster University) and James Meadowcroft (Carlton University) look to the history of Canada’s auto sector to put today’s policy debates in context.
- Matthew da Mota (Canadian Shield Institute) and Laurent Carbonneau (Council of Canadian Innovators) argue for the development of a Canadian dual-use defence-industrial commons.
- Michelle German (StrategyCorp) and Derek Eaton (The Transition Accelerator) explore Canada’s industrialized construction advantage.
The event also marked the announcement of David Wolfe as the CIP’s new chair. A leading figure in the study of industrial policy in Canada, Prof. Wolfe currently serves as co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and as a professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He brings an unparalleled blend of practical experience and scholarly knowledge to the Centre, which he will lead alongside Transition Accelerator VP Future Economy Bentley Allan.
Without an effective, coordinated strategy, Canada risks investing its limited resources in projects that add up to less than the sum of their parts. The Centre for Industrial Policy aims to elevate the industrial policy conversation, connecting systems-level strategy with high-quality information and rigorous analysis to equip Canada’s leaders for the opportunities ahead.
To effectively respond to generational challenges like climate change, enduring problems like the productivity gap, and geopolitical disruptions that continuously shift the rules of the game, Canada needs a more robust industrial policy conversation backed by rigorous analytics. With the stakes raised higher than ever before, The Centre for Industrial Policy is here to help make sure Canada has the right policy mixes to actually achieve its goals.
Bentley Allan, VP Future Economy, The Transition Accelerator
At a time when Canada faces the most severe economic disruption since the mid-20th century, the Centre for Industrial Policy aims to support policy analysis and public debate to chart a new course for our economy by convening expert analysts and policy practitioners to provide insight into conceptual frameworks to help craft effective policies and evaluate how well those policies are achieving declared objectives.
David Wolfe, Chair, Centre for Industrial Policy
Not long ago, the debate in Canada was whether industrial policy even had a role to play. Today, the question is how to do it right. This next phase of the Centre for Industrial Policy is built for that moment — giving Canada the practical insights and rigorous analysis it needs to win, economically and geopolitically.
Moe Kabbara, CEO, The Transition Accelerator