Over 130 Canadian tech leaders are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to form a prosperity plan, as reported by The Canadian Press.
The leaders penned a letter to Trudeau saying that the government has been slow to offer any help, and that the country won’t be able to excel without support for innovators.
Executives who have signed the letter include the leaders of WattPad, SkipTheDishes and Lightspeed. They argue that the government needs a plan to help create new jobs, especially during the on-going pandemic.
“When your government took office in 2015, we received encouraging signals that you understood the importance of Canada’s overdue transition to a knowledge economy … but in the years since 2015, innovation is barely mentioned,” the letter reads.
“We see less of a bold, cohesive plan for innovation in Canada and more of a patchwork — pilot programs and furtive policies rolled out in hope they will amount to something greater than the sum of the parts.”
The executives say that they want the government to create a prosperity plan that would help commercialize Canadian ideas and create an ecosystem that allows innovators to grow in Canada and abroad.
They’re also calling for a plan that includes strategic investments for businesses that have the potential to be successful.
The letter also cites the fact that Canada recently fell two spots to 22nd place in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index. The executives say that failure to act puts the country in danger of reversing the progress it has made.
Source: The Canadian Press
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