QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Justice
Funding for Programs
May 28, 2026
Minister, welcome. Thank you for being with us. I’m down here by Her Honour. She likes to keep an eye on me.
My question is related to your role as Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, or ACOA. My office identified 140 programs intended to support innovation across 28 departments and Crown agencies, including 8 programs at ACOA. We found that these disparate funding programs, across the whole of government, which were intended to support innovation, are siloed across government and lack KPIs that focus on their individual impact. They have a cumulative budget of $4.5 billion annually.
ACOA is unique in that many of its programs provide non‑diluted funding; it is predominantly co-invested and uses third‑party, arm’s-length, private-sector due diligence and investment to assess investment viability. Could you speak to the effectiveness of ACOA’s approach and whether the government is considering establishing a coherent national innovation strategy based on impact measures?
Thank you. First, you’ve asked me to discuss the impact. These tools are essential to the well‑being of my region, not just the businesses that are directly served by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The ability to have not only program grants for community organizations but, as you correctly pointed out, non-diluted financing, often at 0% — or potentially non-repayable programs where the case can be made they will help grow the economy and provide an enormous advantage, particularly for early-stage, high-growth potential firms that have not yet demonstrated they can stand on their own two feet but have the potential to become region-leading economic powerhouses — places ACOA very well to meet their needs.
The approach we’re trying to take now, across a variety of programs, is to say there should be one door. The business owner who is working on securing venture capital, developing their technology and making sales should not be wasting time navigating a Byzantine series of government programs.
To the extent that you reach out to your local ACOA office, we are willing to act as a sherpa to help you navigate the variety of programs that may exist. In the longer term, there may need to be a more formalized effort to break down the silos, so to speak, to ensure it is a simplified and streamlined process to get businesses the tools they need to grow.
But before we reach that utopian view of a government landscape, making sure the person who answers the phone can direct the client to the appropriate place is an essential part of the path in the short term.
My concern is that unless bureaucrats utilize the private sector domain, due diligence and investment expertise, they aren’t catalyzing market forces. I worry that if we’re not tracking KPIs around the individual impact of a program, these 134 programs will continue in perpetuity and not have to demonstrate their value.
I’m just wondering what you see at ACOA as a way to streamline — rather than having navigation to 134 programs, or 8 or so programs at ACOA — the number of programs around private-sector investment.
Certainly, a range of different programs will demand that there is not 100% financing from the federal government on a given initiative. It’s essential that we leverage private investment, where we know someone who has assessed the risk thinks it’s a good idea to put their own money behind the project; that is an excellent predictor of potential success for the investment.
Certainly, I would be a supporter of the approach to streamline access to these programs. KPIs are actually something we do monitor. We seek to identify the jobs that can be tied to a specific investment, whether there are new market opportunities, increasing or seeking to measure the reach of ACOA into new clients, not just doing repeat business. We’d be happy to take your advice on how we can better measure success to ensure we promote it in the years ahead.
Thank you, minister.
