Moderator:

Speakers:

Bentley Allan
Transition Pathway Principal

Heather Exner-Pirot
Senior Fellow and Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment, MacDonald-Laurier Institute

Getting Strategic About Net-Zero Growth: A Prioritization Framework

Webinar Summary

As countries pivot towards decarbonization, Canada faces a challenge: which investments will drive Canadian competitiveness over the long run? With limited public funds and the absence of a strategic framework, Canada risks ad-hoc decision-making, leading to inefficiencies and missed economic opportunities. In this conversation, we explored how Canada can adopt a structured approach to investments that drive long-term economic growth.

Heather Exner-Pirot, Senior Fellow and Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, underscored the urgency of reducing dependency on China for critical industries. “Now, we’re all scrambling a little bit to reduce our dependence on China in areas where we need to have our own capacity. You cannot offshore everything. If you cannot compete globally with China…then you need some industrial policy to fill the gap between what the private sector can do and what’s competitive on the market.”

Bentley Allan, Transition Pathway Principal at The Transition Accelerator, reflected on Canada’s historical strengths in industrial policy. “We’ve really allowed our strategic capacities in governments across the West to completely atrophy because we believed this idea that everything was done by the free market. We almost lost this knowledge that we had about our own history. This Canadian tradition of industrial policy built up our mining sector, our forestry sector, our nuclear sector and our oil and gas sector.”

Both panelists examined what effective industrial policy could look like in Canada’s evolving political and economic landscape. Says Exner-Pirot, “We’re going into a very different time with the Trump administration, likely a Poilievre government here [in Canada]. I think the green industrial policy that we’ve seen for the last 10 years is not going to go on.”

Allan added, “Regardless of which government is in power, each of those governments is going to have the temptation to misuse or spend too much money or choose projects that are not actually needed. The framework that we put forward in this paper, is absolutely critical not only to the Canadian Government but also to the American government.”

Presented with

Moderator

Dan Wicklum, PhD

CEO

Dr. Dan Wicklum has spent more than 25 years performing and managing research, driving innovation, and fostering collaboration between industry, government, academia, and civil society. He is the CEO of the Transition Accelerator, a pan-Canadian charity that works with groups across the country to solve business and social challenges while building in net zero emission solutions. Dan was also the inaugural co-chair of Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body (NZAB), the statutory independent body that advises the federal government on setting interim emission reduction targets on the way to a net-zero emission Canada by 2050 and on the most likely pathways to net zero.

Prior to joining the Transition Accelerator, Dan was the CEO of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, Executive Director of the Canadian Forest Innovation Council, and a senior manager at Environment and Climate Change Canada and at Natural Resources Canada. He was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Montana, and holds a PhD in Aquatic Ecology from the University of Montana. His initial career was in professional football, as a linebacker for the Calgary Stampeders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Bentley Allan, PhD

Transition Pathway Principal

Bentley Allan, PhD, is a Transition Pathway Principal at the Transition Accelerator, as well as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Allan is an award-winning scholar who has written on the dynamics of international order, science and politics, climate policy, and the political economy of decarbonization. He provides regular advice to government and industry on geopolitics, industrial strategy, and policy.

He has co-lead the development of three sector strategies and roadmaps in collaboration with industry partners. He is the co-coordinator of the Centre for Net-Zero Industrial Policy which advances research and action to strengthen and mobilize Canada’s expertise in modern industrial policy, enabling strategic collaboration between government, industry, indigenous communities, labor, and financial institutions in pursuit of good jobs and a competitive economy.

Heather Exner-Pirot

Senior Fellow and Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment, MacDonald-Laurier Institute

Heather Exner-Pirot has over fifteen years of experience in Indigenous and northern economic development, governance, health, and post-secondary education. She has published on Indigenous economic and resource development, energy security, Indigenous workforce development, First Nations taxation and own source revenues, distributed & distance education, Arctic human security, regional Arctic governance, the Arctic Council, and Arctic innovation.
Exner-Pirot obtained a PhD in Political Science from the University of Calgary in 2011. In addition to her role at MLI, she is currently a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, a Special Adviser to the Business Council of Canada, and a Research Advisor for the Indigenous Resource Network. She has published over 45 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and edited volumes, and presented at over 75 conferences and events nationally and internationally. She has chaired or moderated dozens of provincial, national and international panels, workshops and conferences.

Dec 16, 2024