VANCOUVER — Despite concerns that a mass of mail-in ballots could delay B.C.’s election result for weeks, incumbent premier John Horgan delivered a victory speech Saturday night, after media projected an NDP majority government shortly after polls closed. While politicians await the final count, Horgan said he was “grateful” for Saturday’s returns, “giving the opportunity to me and my colleagues to continue our work on your behalf.” 

Horgan becomes the first New Democrat to lead B.C. for two consecutive terms. Much of the government’s focus remains on helping people and businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic. But the NDP also made some hefty promises around helping B.C.’s businesses avoid the common pitfalls of failing to scale and selling too early, as well as a commitment to clean energy and a pledge to boost gig workers. Here’s what you need to know about what the election result means for B.C.’s innovation economy.

The matter at hand

“COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down,” said Horgan, adding the province will continue to grapple with the coronavirus “for the foreseeable future.”

“We need to focus on making sure that we’re keeping ourselves safe, our family safe and our community safe.”

In its election platform, the NDP government highlighted spending it’s already unveiled during the pandemic in what it called an effort to fill the gaps in federal support. For individuals, that included a $1,000 emergency benefit for some workers, temporary rent relief and supplements for people on disability and income assistance. Businesses saw property-tax cuts, deferred tax payments and utilities relief. It also created an economic recovery plan that focused on hiring more health-care workers, investing in skills training, offering a refundable tax credit to some businesses for new payroll and other measures.

The NDP promised to expand its COVID-19 plan by providing free vaccines to anyone who wants one when one is approved and available, and continuing to develop a pandemic-prevention plan to tackle the next crisis.

A $500-million investment fund

“There’s quite a lot in the NDP platform generally around technology and innovation,” said Jill Tipping, president and CEO of the BC Tech Association, in an interview with The Logic ahead of Saturday’s election.

She pointed to the NDP’s $500-million InBC strategic investment fund promise, announced in its mid-September economic recovery plan. The fund, according to the NDP, will “invest in small and medium-sized BC businesses to help them scale up, and to anchor talent, intellectual property, and good jobs in the province.” An independent chief investment officer will make the fund’s investment decisions, focusing on high-growth potential firms.

Tipping was also pleased to see the party’s promises to make 2,000 “tech-relevant” spaces in the province’s post-secondary institutions and to provide more grants to businesses hiring new graduates.

She called them her “top two policy priorities” and “number-one recommendation.”

Technology companies of all sizes will say they need access to talent, she said, and despite the province’s healthy startup sector, many local companies either fail to scale or sell too early, often to American ownership. “So we really want to solve that problem in B.C. and help companies through the growth stage to become … anchor companies,” she said.

The NDP’s plan to support so-called “innovation clusters” in the province is also “really interesting,” Cameron Burke, managing director of the technology sector at PwC Canada, told The Logic ahead of Saturday’s results. The party said it will foster collaboration between companies, academics, researchers and entrepreneurs from emerging industries where the province is taking an early lead. It pointed to life sciences, cleantech, artificial intelligence and virtual reality technologies as examples, among others.

Clean energy commitments

Beyond those investments, much of the NDP’s technology and innovation platform centred on clean energy.

The NDP launched a CleanBC strategy in 2018 in an effort to slow climate change. Its platform expands on that commitment, saying the party will work to achieve net-zero emissions in the province by 2050. It plans to pass legislation to do so.

“I can’t see any bad side to that,” said Burke. “I think it’s putting a stake in the ground and trying to rally around ambitious, broad goals.” He added he thinks it is possible to achieve that target.

The NDP wants to invest in locally made carbon-capture technology in an effort to further the goal.

Both Tipping and Burke pointed to Squamish, B.C.-based Carbon Engineering as a great example of a local company developing such technology. Its direct air-capture technology “removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere,” according to its website. Its Squamish pilot facility demonstrated the technology, and the company is now commercializing it, working to build industrial-scale facilities. Each one will capture one million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to 40 million trees.

The cost and complexity of carbon-capture technology is not to be underestimated, said Burke.

“It requires capital and time and support, but it does provide huge opportunities for us regionally just because of the expertise that exists in B.C.,” said Burke.

Five years from now, in Western Canada, “we could look back and this as a moment where we became a real clean-energy hub in the world,” he said. But that will require support from all levels of government, venture capital and public markets, he added.

The NDP’s clean-energy commitments also focus on housing and transportation. For example, it wants to let local governments set their own carbon-pollution performance standards for new buildings, and will require realtors to provide energy-efficiency information on listed homes. The party plans to work toward a net-zero-emission bus fleet in the province and make electric vehicles and e-bikes more affordable, as well as increase the number of chargers in the province.

Big focus on small- and medium-sized business

The NDP touted its efforts to support small- and medium-sized businesses so far in the pandemic through tax credits, grants, rebates and other relief.

“We will make sure these critical supports remain available through the duration of the pandemic, and we will not hesitate to expand or enhance them as further needs are identified,” reads the party’s platform.

It promised to expand mentorship and export-navigator programs, increase support for new companies innovating in agriculture and expand funding to help communities build new or renovate existing arts and cultural spaces. For restaurants, it will turn some temporary measures into permanent ones, such as expanding patios and allowing liquor delivery with takeaway sales.

It plans to keep investing in adding high-speed internet connectivity throughout B.C. and to help precarious and gig workers plan for retirement and have the right to join a union. “We will develop a government-backed, collective benefit fund for independent contractors, the self-employed and part-time workers,” the NDP said, as part of a broader strategy for these types of workers.

“It’s a good topic,” said Tipping. “It’s a question that governments do need to grapple with.”

That theme came out of a March report from the Emerging Economy Task Force, she said. But she did feel some recommendations from that report, as well as a January one from the province’s innovation commissioner, were missing from the campaign policy discussion.

The innovation commissioner’s report, for example, recommended “innovation precincts” for collaboration and idea-testing in the province, and specified creating one around the new St. Paul’s hospital campus. Using the new hospital “as a real catalytic project” to advance technology is “a really intriguing idea,” said Tipping. Meanwhile, the task force’s report highlighted the need to help businesses from all sectors adopt technologies to benefit from innovation.

“I’d love to see even more of those recommendations implemented as government policy,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll see that in the future.”