Advocating for Small and Medium Manufacturers at Parliament Committee

Matt Weller
Founder, Naviga Supply Chain

Related links:
Parliament recommendation #1: National Reindustrialization Strategy 
Parliament recommendation #2: Realign investment and build executional knowledge
Parliament recommendation #3: Create an active, connected ecosystem for SME Manufacturers

Recently, I was invited by our Parliaments’ Standing Committee on International Trade to talk about Canadian businesses in supply chains and global markets. On April 30th I had the opportunity to discuss the challenges that face our small and medium manufacturers, and why it is vital to our long-term economic future that we work to support and grow these companies.

Key takeaways include:

• Our small and medium manufacturers make up 99.4% of all manufacturing in Canada (of those, 93.2% have 99 employees or less) These firms are an essential component to Canada’s national productivity, and they are under serious threat.
• These manufacturers are facing a “perfect storm”: A large retiring demographic, arbitrary taxation and regulatory policies, and the breakdown of globalization with rising geopolitical challenges.
• We are facing a “brain drain”. Executional knowledge is declining, having been outsourced or retired. Our young entrepreneurs (our future economy) are taught how to fund raise, market and sell, but not how to produce. And subsequently, most are discouraged from manufacturing at all. The few that do, struggle, and most often fail.

I offered three (3) solutions that I will expand on in future posts:

1. Create a National Reindustrialization Strategy to coordinate, prioritize and design a supply chain and business environment that is favourable to productivity and competition. And to support the industrial build-out (at a level we have never seen in Canada) that any future economy (green or not) will be impossible to sustain without. Time is of the essence. (read related post)
2. Fill the knowledge gap, and align investment strategy. Incentivize our institutions and incubators to develop productivity training as a priority, with supply chain system thinking for reindustrialization, and actively fill the knowledge gap. With this, align funding by incentivizing companies to become effective, reliably and repeatedly demonstrating realized profitability as a pre-requisite for scaling. This will help to de-risk investment in manufacturing since many venture capitalists will not invest in manufacturing at all.
3. Create a broad, collaborative, and active ecosystem for our small and medium manufacturers. We can look to our intangibles tech sector to understand how. They have become world class at this, and the benefits and advantages resulting from it are game changers. Its time to do the same for our small and medium manufacturers, and reap the same benefits which will sustain Canada’s future economic engine.

It was a privilege to participate in our Parliamentary Process!

Full committee meeting here (static at start is momentary):
https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20240502/-1/41452

Time stamps:

My address to the committee: 15:57:58 - 16:02:54

Discussions related to my address:

16:32:05 - 16:37:02

16:46:17 - 16:49:24

17:15:46 - 17:19:48​