The federal government tabled an overtly innovation-centric budget Thursday, rolling out a new innovation agency, a $15-billion public investment fund, a review of a major tax credit for research and a bump in funding for the superclusters program, among a long list of other things.

Here’s how Canadian business and innovation leaders are responding to the budget:

Tech gets its day: “This is an innovation budget through and through,” said Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, in a statement to The Logic. The CCI noted a number of new policy changes they view as positive, including a potential patent-box regime aimed at keeping intellectual property in Canada and new funding for biotech and clean energy—“all measures that address outstanding asks from innovators,” Bergen said.

Technation in a release praised Ottawa’s promise to bolster cybersecurity spending, which includes $263.9 million over five years to help the Communications Security Establishment prevent and defend against cyber attacks.

So many CCUS projects, so little time: Industry groups were broadly supportive of a massive new tax credit for carbon-capture, -utilization and -storage (CCUS) projects, which will allow heavy emitters to write off 50 per cent of equipment and building costs. But some raised concerns about the federal government’s plan to cut the tax credit in half after 2030, saying it could overwhelm Canada’s project review process.  

“Our current regulatory system will not allow Canada to hit our targets,” Adam Legge, president of the Business Council of Alberta, said in a statement. “We have less than eight years to build an unprecedented amount of low-carbon infrastructure, and at our current rate of approvals, Canada won’t hit that timeline.”

In a research note, RBC analysts estimated the federal government is targeting $18 billion in CCUS investment by 2030—possibly a “hard sell,” given that about 20 per cent of CCUS costs come from elements that are only eligible for the smaller 37.5 per cent write-off.

Definitely not DARPA: The budget was sparse on details about proposals to establish the $15-billion Canada Growth Fund and new innovation agency, the latter of which officials said was not modelled off of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), even if it may sound like it is.

Robert Asselin, senior vice-president at the Business Council of Canada and an advocate for a DARPA-like innovation program, said the new agency appears to have potential, but only if it’s adequately removed from government bureaucracy. If not, the program is “likely to be a total trainwreck,” he told The Logic. 

Not working for workers: Dennis Darby, head of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, said in a release the budget “did not offer any substantial measures to address ongoing and acute labour shortage” happening in the manufacturing sector, which faces “a record-high 81,000 job vacancies.”