Last week, Foresight released an open letter to all federal parties with a clear message: cleantech isn’t a cost—it’s a growth strategy. With the federal election now just days away, this message feels more urgent than ever. The choices our leaders make in the coming months will shape whether Canada leads in the global economy or continues to fall behind.
Reviewing party platforms, there are some promising commitments on the table: stronger support for innovation, incentives for clean growth, and a renewed focus on competitiveness. Yet behind the buzzwords and promises, Canadian cleantech companies continue to face a familiar challenge: scaling their technology through domestic adoption.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be diving into a few of the high-impact policy recommendations Foresight outlined in our open letter and highlight how our programming can support action. To start, I’m focusing on two recommendations that will unlock significant value if implemented effectively:
- A National Innovation Procurement Strategy
- Adoption Incentives for Public and Private Sector Customers
What Does this Look Like?
Turning Public Procurement into a Clean Productivity Engine
Canada’s lagging productivity isn’t an economic issue— it’s a policy issue. Since 2019, we’ve seen a 1.2% average annual decline in productivity. Ask any policy expert why, and you’ll hear a mix of explanations: regulatory drag, underinvestment, skill mismatches. But the bottom line is that without major intervention, Canada’s economic resilience is at risk.
Governments are the biggest buyers in the country. If we want Canadian innovation to thrive, we need procurement policies that treat Canadian technology as the strategic asset it is. That means evolving procurement from a compliance-focused process to an outcome-driven strategy.
The solution isn’t simply deregulation or removing red-tape. It’s smarter procurement, accelerated adoption, and a clear national strategy to boost domestic demand for cleantech. This includes aligning public procurement with national priorities like emissions reduction, job creation, supply chain resilience, and productivity.
At Foresight, we call this approach clean productivity— this intersection where economic performance, innovation, and climate action reinforce one another. We believe Canada’s next productivity surge will come from working smarter with cleantech, allowing everyone to do more, with less.
Bridging the Gap Through the Cleantech Adoption Platform
To help with procurement barriers, we’ve engaged directly with municipalities and public sector buyers across the country in preparation for the launch of our Cleantech Adoption Platform. The sentiment is clear: the willingness to adopt cleantech is there, but the pathway to do so remains unclear.
The Cleantech Adoption Platform is designed to change that. As a centralized hub, it connects public buyers with vetted Canadian cleantech solutions, supports technology evaluations, and builds capacity to buy for long-term impact—not just cost or compliance. It's a platform to discover innovative solutions from across the country and accelerate connections that lead to tangible adoption where it's needed most.
But tools like this can only go so far without broader policy reform and support at the federal level. If Canada is serious about clean productivity—about building a future that is both economically and environmentally strong—we need to unlock the full potential of procurement as a strategic tool. This means:
- Developing a national innovation procurement strategy
- Reforming procurement rules to focus on measurable outcomes
- Empowering public sector buyers to take creative procurement decisions on innovation
- Investing in platforms that accelerate the path from pilot to deployment
Public procurement shouldn’t be an administrative exercise, and we shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time a procurement process is conducted. Canada needs a clear, consistent, and harmonized approach that reduces administrative burden and accelerates clean technology adoption. Done right, it should be a lever for transformation—a way to build our economy, strengthen our supply chains, and meet our climate goals all at once.
Economic Resilience Through Smart Procurement
Canada is a big country but our size isn’t a barrier, it's an opportunity. By streamlining procurement, we can break down interprovincial barriers and accelerate the adoption of homegrown solutions.
We have the talent, the technology, and the drive to lead in a future economy that prioritizes both people and the planet. What we need now is alignment across all levels of government to turn our potential into performance. Let’s use procurement not just to spend smarter, but to build smarter.
Clean productivity isn’t just a goal—it’s a roadmap for a stronger, more resilient Canada. And at Foresight, we’re just getting started. Because when we win on clean productivity, we don’t just lead at home—we become global leaders in innovation and exports, rising in the Global Innovation Index and securing Canada’s place in the clean economy of the future.
Learn more about Foresight’s Cleantech Adoption Platform.
