The Hon. Lisa Raitt welcomes colleague the Hon. Navdeep Bains to discuss his recent move to CIBC and the need for public and private sector collaborations to action strategic innovative opportunities and the growth of a strong ecosystem in Canada
Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I’m your host Lisa Raitt, former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government from 2008 to 2015. I’m here now at CIBC Capital Markets and in this podcast, I’m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business with some guests along the way. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the rates stuff. I hope you all had a great holiday and you got some rest over the break. Today, I have a very interesting guest. For me, it’s somebody that I have long wanted to question at length and not have him be able to squirm away from anywhere. And his name is Navdeep Bain now. Navdeep was a long time Mississauga member of Parliament. Most recently, he was the Minister of Innovation, Science and economic development in the Trudeau government from twenty fifteen, actually until two thousand and twenty one. And today he is my partner at CIBC. He’s a vice chair at Global Investment Banking, and I’m actually very delighted to welcome him here formally today to the right stuff. Thanks for joining me Nav.
Navdeep Bain: Delighted to be on. Very excited about our conversation today.
Lisa Raitt: And are you a little nervous that I now can ask you more questions that you don’t give 30 second answers to like in question, period?
Navdeep Bain: I am a bit nervous. Absolutely no doubt about it. It’s a very different format.
Lisa Raitt: It’s so true. So why don’t you tell us why? Cibc Why did you join CIBC?
Navdeep Bain: Great platform. And I say that because for me, as the Minister of Innovation, Science and industry, I worked very closely with businesses helping them scale and grow, and I was very proud of the work we had done to build a tech ecosystem in Canada. And so I’m motivated by that. It’s something that’s part of my DNA as a young kid watching my father, who was an entrepreneur who owned and operated his own business. So I’m just very excited to see individuals succeed, especially in business, because it creates so many opportunities. And the banker was just an amazing place where especially CIBC in particular with innovation banking and in the capital markets, the really committed to supporting the tech ecosystem in Canada. And so I wanted to be part of that journey post politics.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. And of course, President and CEO Victor Dodig is, you know, cutting edge when it comes to both management and in his desire to ensure that we’re part of the innovation economy.
Navdeep Bain: Yeah, he’s very much focussed on the new economy. You’re absolutely right. And if you look at the Canadian landscape, when I was a minister, we invested a lot in lifelong learning. We focussed a lot on talent and leveraged our immigration policies in a very thoughtful way. And because of that, we’re seeing a lot of capital now, a record VC financing over 15 billion last year. And that means more unicorns, more companies that are what we define as billion dollar valuations. That means more jobs, and that means they’re not going to the U.S. or other parts of the world, which is exciting.
Lisa Raitt: Very exciting. Now remind me now of how long were you a member of Parliament in total?
Navdeep Bain: So I was elected in two thousand and four and then I lost in twenty eleven and, as you mentioned, was re-elected in twenty fifteen. So my complete tenure was thirteen years as an elected official.
Lisa Raitt: That’s a long time and you were both in government and then opposition and then back to government again.
Navdeep Bain: Yeah, I would see I had seen it all. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen government benches, front benches, back benches, opposition benches, the virtual bench, you name it. I’ve seen it all. And just an amazing journey in a very rewarding journey, as I say, to to be involved in in government, particularly the last few years, to deal with the pandemic and building up personal protective equipment capacity here in Canada to developing industrial policy. It’s been it’s been very special.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. What advice would you give to the private sector in working with the government? I mean, I’ve given my advice in the past, but I’m wondering what your point of view is just in general, having been both in opposition and in government and and having so many years in the house,
Navdeep Bain: I would say the challenges that we’re dealing with in society and with governments are dealing with in the private sector. And I think, for example, the energy transition is a file that you and I talk often to our clients about requires collaboration in a partnership. And this is not about governments have to create all the solutions or this is not about the private sector on its own, having to find all the desired outcomes. This is about genuine public private partnerships, collaboration ways to work together, and I think you and I are in a unique position where we can bridge that world together and create opportunities. Yeah.
Lisa Raitt: Is there? Do you think that there’s things that we couldn’t do in government that we can do in private sector? Just sort of curiosity like what was your your tipping point when? You realised I want to go to the private sector because I can do this.
Navdeep Bain: Well, the governments are an amazing platform. Make no mistake, the resources that we have there and you know this as well, when you were in cabinet, the ability to set policy, the legislative agenda that you can pursue, the impact you can have on the international stage is very impressive. I just think with the private sector, the speed is the issue. I think governments take time to implement and design programmes. I think in the private sector, it’s the strategies implemented in a more timely manner. For me, that was important. It was time to not only just focus on pledges and promises and ambition, but really to focus on on on action.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. So you wrote a really I thought interesting op ed with elder Marcus, who used to work with in the Trudeau government on that kind of topic, which is trying to set out what is going to be needed for the innovation in the tech sector, especially in the clean tech sector coming. What prompted you to want to write the article?
Navdeep Bain: You know, Alden and I, as you, as you rightfully highlighted, work together early on in my capacity as a minister, he was instrumental setting up the innovation skills agenda, the new industrial policy that I allude to often. And we were talking about again, this broad challenge of getting to net zero. And in that conversation, we just realised that it’s it’s really intense out there in terms of the global competition that exists, how other jurisdictions are stepping up or in a global race, and how this is a unique opportunity for Canada, particularly again, as I said before, for the public and private sector to come together to really hone in on key technologies and drive meaningful outcomes to to reduce our carbon footprint. And so we wanted to put together a piece that spoke to those challenges and the opportunities as well.
Lisa Raitt: One thing you talk about in the piece is leadership and being brave, so expand on that a little bit for me.
Navdeep Bain: Well, you know, I think when the government, for example, says that we want to get to net zero or they set new targets for 2030, as we saw in Cop Twenty six, the challenge is that it’s easy to do that. And even after all those pledges and promises, emissions are going to rise by 14 percent by 20 30 compared to twenty 10 levels. So it requires real leadership in terms of now actually putting together that plan and executing it and betting on technologies. And so the focus on government is, look, they’re going to be accused of picking winners and losers, but they have to determine which areas they want to compete in and how do they create conditions with the private sector to really scale those technologies if we’re going to be able to reduce our carbon footprint? And the challenge is it’s not in the it’s not a small challenge, either. The issue is in the trillions of dollars like if you look at from a global context and it was mentioned in the article, it’s between one hundred to one hundred and fifty trillion dollars of investments that are going to be needed globally by 2050 to get to net zero. So it’s also a great opportunity to generate growth and to create jobs and to make sure that people coming out of the pandemic have hope.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, it’s really difficult to ensure that you’re striking a balance in terms of what you can do in the government and what you need private sector to do. And I think one of the aspects of your of your portfolio wasn’t just the innovation side or the industry side, it was the economic development side. Can I ask you just for a second to talk about how federal governments, yours and mine as well approach economic development when it comes to geographies?
Navdeep Bain: Well, as you know, I was responsible for the regional development agencies, and so that included five of them that currently exist and their unique geographical considerations, historical considerations and industries that have developed. And how do you? For me, the objective was we had this broad innovation and skills plan. How do you, in that broad framework play to our local strengths? And so we not only put more resources in those regional development agencies to promote more invention and development and deployment of technology, but we also complemented that with other programmes like superclusters. Again, it was about the government using its convening power to bring large businesses and small businesses together to solve common problems, to create a platform, to develop and develop technologies. And I think that takes time. I think the challenge with regional development, economic policies and innovation policies. It takes time for us to see the real benefits. It’s not going to happen overnight and I’m excited the fact that we’re starting to turn the corner. If you look at the tech ecosystem in Canada, it’s not only what’s happening in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, but it’s happening in other parts of the country, which is really exciting particular. Alone with remote work, and we’re seeing with the way immigration patterns are going towards some of these smaller and mid-size communities because of the affordability issue.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, that’s true. So that’s our time now. Can you believe it? How fast does that go by in the 10 minutes that we have to talk? But I think one of the questions that I got, of course, when it was announced that you’re coming to join us at CIBC was, well, how’s that going to work, you know, a liberal and a conservative working together? Well, it works together just fine, doesn’t it? I mean, although we haven’t been able to sit in an office together for long periods of time. It’s not like we’ve recast the House of Commons within our own offices and we ask for a dubcek to be the chair of the speaker of the House to keep us from arguing. Yeah. So why don’t you? I mean, you and I have talked at this at length, actually in terms of how how we can actually provide a really fulsome, I guess, piece of advice for clients now.
Navdeep Bain: You’re absolutely right. I mean, we’re in a very unique position where we can provide strategic advice and public policy insights and give that full spectrum. Really, when I joined Cabinet, you had just left. Yeah, you booted me out that
Lisa Raitt: You booted me out. You took my job, man.
Navdeep Bain: I’m not sure about that. I think the voters had something to say about that. It wasn’t me alone. But look, I lost in twenty eleven, so I’ve been there as well. And so as you know, there’s there’s it’s a function of our democracy. But the point I was making is that with your experiences in cabinet under Stephen Harper and myself under Justin Trudeau and over the last decade, plus the insights that we have in terms of public policy, in terms of the strategy we can provide in the bipartisan approach we can bring to some of the issues. It’s really exciting for our clients.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. And it’s no longer fighting about where we stand on issues. It’s about identifying the issues and being able to provide the risk analysis to clients as to what could be the difficulties or what can be the opportunities.
Navdeep Bain: That’s exactly it. And so it’s really solution oriented and finding that common ground where we know that regardless of what the political ideologies we hold, we know that this is a legitimate problem that our clients are also facing. And what insights can we bring? What kind of strategic insights can we bring to assist them in this journey?
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. And although we are both partisans, we are not known as being overtly partisan all the time and we get along with everybody. So that’s the that’s the other key.
Navdeep Bain: Absolutely.
Lisa Raitt: Well, thanks now for joining me. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to working with you on all of these larger files on energy transition and on clean tech and on everything that’s going to be important to the world in the next ten years. Thanks for coming on.
Navdeep Bain: Thanks very much for having me, Lisa.
Lisa Raitt: Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at lisa.raitt@cibc.com. Your interactions actually will make this better. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff. I’ll talk to you next week.
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Navdeep Bain
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