 I'll start off by saying a big thank you to the globe and all the people that are attending this morning and those that are viewing this virtually. I'll start off by acknowledging that we're here gathered on the traditional territory of the Coastalist people, the Muscovines, Slewa Tooth and Squamish Nations. I want to recognize my colleague, Minister George Heyman, who is here, Minister for Environment and Climate Change Strategy, and it's lovely to be here with Premier Horgan and my good friend, Professor Mariana Mazzucato, who's on the on the screen. I'll just start by sharing with everyone that it's been it's been a very challenging last two years. We know with the pandemic, the fires, the floods, the heat domes, that we've all been through a very traumatic experience and partly for us as a province, the work we've been doing is saying how do we take all the lessons we've learned from all these challenges we've faced and ensure that we're more resilient as we go forward and that's the main focus of our stronger BC Economic Plan. Our plan was about taking the lessons learned and making sure that we're positioning our economy in a way that we can both address those challenges but also see growth and the plan is focused on two key priorities which is inclusive growth and clean growth and of course we're going to jump into a little bit more about that but I'll introduce my first guest I don't think needs much of an introduction but we've got Premier John Horgan and our guest who on the screen is beaming in from the UK is Professor Mariana Mazzucato who is if I read her entire bio it'll take up the entire 28 minutes but I won't but I'll just say that she's the founder of the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose at the University College of London and I am so delighted to have her as a special advisor and sharing all her knowledge with us here in British Columbia. I do want to congratulate her and I say a big thank you to her for the report which she is launching this afternoon which is going to be called the Inclusive and Sustainable British Columbia a mission-oriented approach to a renewed economy which will help us advance our stronger VC economic plan and give us a pathway forward to ensure that we can see the type of growth that we want to see here in British Columbia. So we will now dive into the into a bit of a Q&A and and I'll start with the Premier because I know that when we had the conversation about what our economic plan will look like when we go forward we we definitely knew it was going to be different but certainly this economic plan is different than many in fact all economic plans that we've seen in British Columbia where we've talked about a whole host of things a child care and housing and etc. And so Premier maybe you can share some of your thoughts on on this economic plan compared to what we've done in the past. I'm all sure Robbie thank you very much for that and Dr. Mezzacato it's good to see you we've been on a screen. It is great to be in a room filled with people that have a common purpose to understand and focus on what our future is going to be and then shaping that future. And as Robbie said when we of course we came out of a fire season into a flood season and then another fire season and then before we could get into the flood season we were into the pandemic. And so I don't need to tell anyone in this room or anyone who's participating virtually what the past couple of years have been for people here in BC and indeed around the world. But the advantage for Ravi and I in government was that we were able to stay in place. Traveling was no longer what was part and parcel of our craft as elected representatives we were able to engage with people virtually which of course spurred the need to connect all of British Columbia. So we have initiated over the past number of months a province wide connectivity agenda that will connect every community in British Columbia so that we can benefit from the time we've had over the past two years to hone this technology and utilize it for economic activity social activity and indeed in some instances cultural activities. So connectivity is key to that. And when we talk about clean growth that has been the driving force of the governments of British Columbia for some decades now this is not a partisan issue. The good news in BC is that all political perspectives understand and recognize that in a carbon constrained environment we need to be innovative we need to be dynamic. So for us it's not just about clean growth it's about inclusive growth as well. What we learned through the pandemic as Ravi you know full well having tasked you with taking these this job on is that although we have been in the same storm we have not all been in the same canoe and we need to continue to paddle together we need to ensure that we're lifting everyone at the same time and historically economic plans in British Columbia have focused almost exclusively on our resource base. We have absolute extraordinary resources in British Columbia they're diverse they're needed around the world but we also have a life sciences sector that is transforming health care for people not just here in Canada but indeed around the world. Our quantum computing technologies our universities expanding our STEM seats is something I see Professor Petter in the crowd who every time I see Andrew he tells me we need more spaces we need more spaces that's part of the plan. We need to train the next generation of innovators and we do that in our thunderous applause from Dr. Petter but this is the future ensuring that we are lifting everyone up giving people the tools they need to succeed and for our economy to grow and be dynamic in a carbon constrained environment. Yeah and an exciting clean tech sector that we have here and and I know that we'll be talking a lot more about that a little bit later and I'll go to Professor Mazzucato you know of course you've got experience working with so many jurisdictions around the world. Perhaps you can share some thoughts with us on both some of the challenges and opportunities that we may face when we're talking about having a clean and inclusive growth here in British Columbia. Sure so first of all it's wonderful to be with you both and last time that Premier Horgan and I were on screen we ended up boring you all because we talked about lacrosse we will not do that this time. So yeah I mean what I have found so interesting in terms of also working with your team is first of all how open you've been to really kind of rethink some of the tools that we sometimes just take for granted say an industrial strategy and actually to transform it precisely in order to meet the goals that you have in your new economic strategy around inclusive growth and clean growth because I just want to go back to a point that Premier Horgan made in terms of sectors right you know resource-based sectors life sciences sectors digital and the tech sector quantum computing you know nutrition like we could go through all our different sectors and unfortunately often countries when they think about their industrial strategies will make like a list of their top sectors and then maybe brag about how well they're doing and we've tried to reverse that with your team which is to say what are your goals and then what can be done to make sure that all your different sectors and Premier Horgan just listed some of them can really become part of the solution also in terms of how they work together but also how they transform themselves. So Minister Champagne talked about the decarbonization of steel. I found really interesting that in Germany for example the decarbonization of steel didn't just happen because someone said it was going to happen it actually happened because there was conditions built into the loans that were provided by the German public bank in terms of what had to be done in the steel industry in order to receive that loan. Now they ended up decarbonizing lowering their material content in the way they decided to do so there was no micro managing but the fact they did it was important and it wouldn't have happened had there just been an industrial strategy saying we're going to be doing great steel. So actually having you know the German energy vendor or your clean growth strategy to really provide a vision a focus in terms of what it then means to transform all the different instruments whether it's procurement whether it's budgeting whether it's an industrial strategy and innovation strategy to meet those goals that's really the journey that we've been on with you. And a really key point there is really to kind of debunk this old myth that you have economic strategy here and then kind of societal and social concerns there. So how to actually use a mission oriented approach that's focused on very concrete goals like you know a carbon neutral city or globally a plastic free ocean and actually aligning the different instruments and creating a really dynamic innovation system where then the economic growth and the increase in productivity are outcomes of that because what I found globally is that when we just focus on these things like economic growth or productivity or having a startup community as an end in itself ironically doesn't actually then produce that growth in the same way that the moon landing could produce lots of you know commercialization opportunities on earth around camera phones foil blanket software not because they focus on those technologies but because each and every one of those technologies were solutions to problems that had to be solved along the way. And so your own challenges around inequality because unfortunately BC does have one of the highest levels after Ontario of inequality issues around structural racism with the indigenous community issues around climate change that you both spoke about fires floods the heat dome all these can be really used to focus our minds on problems that have to be solved in an intersectoral way and an all of government approach redesigning our tools to actually focus on the problems. And Dr. Moscato the challenge you raise is also a strength for us that the diversity of British Columbia we are citizens of the world a vibrant indigenous community two hundred and four nations across the province people from around the world make up the rest of the population. And that is a key strength but one that needs to be nurtured and cared for and part of our strategy going forward. How do we all work together to get our common purposes realized. And so we're trying to as you said flip some of these things on their head. We've had the time to do that as result of the pandemic to look at other jurisdictions to look at the work that you and others have been doing and incorporate that into government thinking which you know in defense of previous governments. They haven't had that that rest period if I could call a global pandemic a rest period to start to rethink how we look at the world and how are we going to come out of this transformative period. That's it's a real opportunity and I think instead of instead of focusing on the challenges we've turned them upside down and called them opportunities and that may sound like jargon to some but it's in fact what I think the public expect of us and and over time will demand of other jurisdictions as well. Yeah no and I think the points are fantastic and and thank you for mentioning Minister Champaña because he's been a fireball of energy and certainly we're going to need him and and the federal government support to ensure that the plan and the vision that we're working on together can be enacted. We're going to need their support. I know we've got their support so I want to thank Minister Champaña. But this idea that both of you have highlighted around having inclusive and clean growth at the core of the plan as opposed to dealing with it after the fact I think is vitally important and and I know with this plan you know partly we're talking about things that traditionally don't get discussed in economic plans whether it's child care and housing and building resilient communities and and premier I don't know if you want to share some additional thoughts on those measures. Well again when we were in that interminable 12 miserable years of opposition the good news about our adversarial system is that when you do have that reflective period of of throwing rocks at governments you get an opportunity to talk to people about what their expectations are and and although I would never want to revisit or wish upon anyone that length of time in opposition it does allow you to think outside of the day to day issues of managing government and and that's why I go I go back to this notion that the pandemic allowed government the bureaucracy the public service particularly to look at the world in different ways and instead of just inventorying our strengths as Dr. Mazzacato said the traditional approach this is what we do we do it well pat us on the back instead we said what do we need to do better and how do we get to that place and business after business said we need more people in the workforce child care is a a lack of child care is a disincentive to largely women to get back into the workforce we need to take away those disincentives remove barriers and make it easier for people to settle and engage in the economy and and the more people that are participating the more a quality we'll be able to achieve over time but have having those as the foundations of our plan a labor market strategy that looks at skills training providing housing which of course in a high cost jurisdiction like British Columbia is extremely challenging without these component parts the sectors that we we see thriving would not be able to continue to grow so my task to you Ravi was and and you're carrying it out expertly I might say is to incorporate all these component parts that make a strong and robust community so that we can have a strong and robust economy keeping in mind that inclusion is the key to success for everyone if we're not if we're leaving anyone behind in my opinion that's a failure and there's no need for that in a community as dynamic as British Columbia with access to our post secondary institutions that are second to none and an entrepreneurial class that has managed to to not just thrive but to to to have knock on effects as a result of the pandemic our life sciences section sector the obvious one because of the work at UBC and other places so for me the task is making sure that we're pulling on all of the strings together at the same time and and having buy-in from community and it for the for the industrial sector we're not leaving you behind but you need to know that innovation is imperative to your survival mass timber is the key to success on a forest land basin and also ensuring that indigenous peoples have full participation in economic activity on their territory all of that is imperative and there's buy-in from industry there's buy-in from communities there's buy-in from workers so that these found these pillars are in place now we just have to implement and and that's a course includes a global marketplace that we have to be attuned to as well we can't do all of this in isolation we have to do it while we're still being the gateway to the Asia Pacific which is an extraordinary advantage to us here in British Columbia and Petruppert and then Vancouver but also the gateway to North America for those products and services that are coming here and so British Columbia stands in my opinion in a unique position but we need to make sure we play our strengths and we acknowledge our weaknesses and we and we take our strengths to build on our weaknesses yeah thanks thanks for that Premier and I'll jump back to you Professor Mazzucato around perhaps you can share if we step back a second and maybe foreshadowing a little bit around the report you know you can you outline maybe a few examples of how we can both increase productivity while reducing inequality and tackling climate change sure and maybe I can just start with a concept that was just from the table which is entrepreneurship and I think what's central is to use that word to describe the whole system how can we build an entrepreneurial system throughout British Columbia and that really means that all the different tools that governments have at their disposal whether it's public procurement budgeting the ways we evaluate public investment so evaluation tools new types of public finance like you have your new NBC public bank how they can all become levers entrepreneurial levers that really catalyze change create additionality in other words making things happen that would not have happened otherwise the last thing you want is a policy that's just kind of you know taking the place of something else and or just giving out money guarantees and subsidies for allowing also inertia and the status quo to remain so just some examples maybe four quickly one I'm I'm kind of a become a geek around procurement because every country even those that have limited budgets or think they have limited budgets have a procurement budget in really using that as part of an innovation budget instead of seeing again innovation in one you know section of the room and then tools like procurement and another using all the different tools including procurement to become levers for innovation is something that needs to happen with a bit of a mind shift I'll give you an example in Sweden they have this very high level challenge of having a fossil free welfare state but then this lands on the very particular like school meals right school lunches have to be in Sweden in order to foster their fossil free welfare state healthy tasty so not just Ikea meatballs and sustainable so the fact that there's a real target a goal with something as simple as school lunch which of course is all over the country means that then the procuring in of that lunch becomes part of the sustainability strategy and it becomes part of the innovation plan because of course in order to meet the sustainability target you need to innovate you need to invest you need to do things differently another really interesting thing about that particular policies that they've involved school children so this issue of participation and co-creation has to be real it can't be tokenistic and so kids are actually learning about sustainability through their school lunches through the curriculum and also have an opportunity in some schools to participate in the design of those lunches so really you know bringing that issue of participation co-creation co-design to the table is also really interesting but the public procurement budget used as part of the innovation budget around very concrete goals but leaving open the how and crowding in the willing you might have heard you know some concepts like picking winners is sometimes talked about as problematic because we're picking sectors or technologies ex ante that then don't meet our expectations but we need to transform that to pick those who are willing not picking winners picking the willing so all those different organizations that are willing to move with you in the direction of a cleaner more inclusive economy and using that lever quickly some of the other ones because I took too long on that one how do we evaluate these policies that are mission oriented that are challenge oriented around goals well it can't just be through cost benefit analysis and that present value it can't just be by asking which market failure did we fix the old questions we need tools that are much more dynamic than that I mentioned before the moon landing that required so many different sectors and a lot of the innovations that occurred along the way happened across many different sectors how do we capture through the our evaluation methods those dynamic spillovers because that should be even in the cases where we don't meet the mission right away the process through which we try to do so if it can catalyze new forms of collaborations across different sectors that should be seen as part of the success or the failure to do that third public finance you know there's plenty of finance globally there's no finance problem in terms of quantity we often don't have the right quality there's not enough patient long-term committed finance so you've now set up an NBC public finance fund we need to make sure that that fund isn't again just handing out money to sectors that lobby their way up the list of being seen as priority sectors but really that it's used to crowd in and provide that patient long-term finance to those organizations willing to move with you again in that direction and that means as I mentioned before in the case of Germany conditionality linked to the loans but also measures to make sure that you really are catalyzing and creating that additionality between different types of organizations in the economy and lastly just building on Premier Horgan's point about indigenous people you know we can talk about co-creation and stakeholder engagement but it's often unfortunately done in a tokenistic way so I think it's really important to take seriously what Premier Horgan talked about which is bringing different voices to the table ex-ante not just asking people or telling them that it's going to be good for different communities or you know asking them ex-post what did you think how did it go really bringing different voices together even to debate and to have sometimes uncomfortable discussions about what it actually means to live together in a more sustainable and inclusive way and I think you know given how seriously I think you're taking this challenge and this opportunity it will be very important to also focus on social innovations not just technological innovations to create those kind of citizen assemblies and discussions that might be uncomfortable but are very needed in order to get things right so they're good for people I just need to say that Dr. Mazzacato and I didn't just talk about La Crosse every time we get to engage you can see how provocative she is and how stimulating it is to hear her and you touched on a half a dozen things I'm gonna knock you off your script firstly on the procurement side these are fundamental issues and I know it's not the usual talk around the think tanks what are we gonna do about procurement opening up government expenditures to small and medium enterprises allows them to scale up if we just let the biggest dog in the room have all of the government procurement then we're not building up these new and innovative transformative transformative industries or companies within our within our ecosystem similarly the the strain on our supply chains as a result of the pandemic as a result of the atmospheric river highlighted the imperative of agri-tech in our agricultural sector and we have it's extraordinary potential here because of the farsighted view of former politicians to create an agricultural land reserve we now need to use that reserve not just to bank the land for some time in the future but to use it today to feed not just British Columbians but indeed our surrounding communities these are innovations that are a result of the trauma of the past couple of years and on procurement as basic as public infrastructure we put in place a thing called community benefit agreements that ensure that if you get a contract to build something it's a bridge a school a hospital we get that public asset as a result of the public expenditure but you're required to have a fixed number of apprentices that are indigenous women people of color so that we are inclusive in our growth training the next generation of workers skilled workers to meet the challenges that's the power of government we shouldn't fritter it away on lowest cost bid and these other things we need to get more out of our dollars than just the end product that's the innovation and transformation that missions allow us to do what are our multiple purposes in expending that dollar on your behalf and Dr. Mazzicato's approach to this has shaped how we're going to go forward and it's very exciting and I know again procurement usually has people nodding off at the cabinet table Ravi's not one of them but for many it's so yeah yeah someone else is dealing with that but and the expenditure of a public dollar has a benefit to all of us if we if we do it correctly if we're just throwing them out the door to meet an objective then we're failing I think in the long term yeah thanks for that thanks to both of you because that's that's bang on on the things that we need to focus on as we move forward I just I do want to touch on two points one thank you Professor Mazzicato on your support with NBC we are so excited about our new half a billion dollar strategic investment fund which will help provide patient capital to address the challenges that we want to address and I know that you've been instrumental in supporting that and and yesterday the premier launched with Indigenous leaders our reconciliation action plan which is the next steps co-developed on how we address both wellness and economic opportunities within Indigenous communities but address the historical wrongs and I think that was an exciting moment for all of us now we have just a few more minutes left so perhaps we can maybe give each of you a couple minutes just to share some wrap up some takeaways from the stronger BC economic plan things that that are highlighted and key that you think are important for us to share with the audience here today I'll start with you Premier well I would say that I think delegates would agree that another two hours with Dr. Mosecata would be a great benefit to Globe this year but it is always illustrated I think for policy makers to engage with people who want to get you out of a box and historically governments tend to follow patterns over time you're elected with a with a dynamic platform that is created with the view of forming a government and doing good deeds and creating a better world but you get caught up in the mundane after a time and I think it's important for policy makers to always reject conventional wisdom and look at how we can build a better stronger more inclusive society with all of the constraints that this room knows full well as we transform our energy sectors our buildings our transportation infrastructure and networks we need to do it with a view to making sure there's maximum benefit to all British Columbians and I'm very excited about the challenges ahead because of the people in this room and the innovative and entrepreneurial class we have in British Columbia we have extraordinary potential at our fingertips but we all need to be focused on doing this in a way that benefits everybody not just the select few and I'm very excited about the work that Rabi and his team and with Dr. Mazakata and others have put together with our stronger BC economic plan and it is a plan that's not a garden variety it will not be like plans from previous governments in British Columbia because we acknowledge we have been hearers of wood and drawers of water to good effect for some but not for everyone particularly Indigenous people so the work plan that we laid out yesterday was not a plan from government to Indigenous communities it was a plan built with Indigenous communities as part of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and we British Columbians are the only people on the planet to have embraced the declaration and now put in place a work plan to make it happen and we didn't do it by ourselves we did it together that's how our economy will continue to grow and that's how BC will prosper in a carbon constrained environment with clean growth and inclusive growth here here thank you for that Premier great comments I appreciate it and more seats in universities over to you Professor Mazakata sure I mean maybe just at the risk of repeating myself will say something a bit different instead of summarizing one thing that neither of us touched on but I know that we both believe strongly in is that none of this could be done without a stronger public sector and stronger doesn't necessarily mean bigger it means more capable so it's quite extraordinary if you go to business schools and you look at the courses that managers and entrepreneurs take you know strategic management decision sciences organizational behavior thinking creatively out of the box often we don't have that kind of ambition in the kind of training that we provide to the civil service itself and we've gotten kind of stuck in this idea that at best the public service can fix different types of market failures and you and I Ravi have talked a lot about this need for a market shaping a market co-creating approach well that requires specific types of training and skills within the civil service so I really hope that you can accompany your BC economic plan which is really really inspirational and as Premier Horgan said driven by opportunities in the future it needs to be accompanied also by an investment within and perhaps you know an investigation or not investigation that sounds criminal I can only say a plotting a mapping of just how much has been outsourced because this is really you know outsourced public capabilities to whether it's consulting companies or other bits of the private sector it's fine to do that a bit but when we do it too much we really rid the kind of you know needed learning by doing trial and error and error and that need to be creative and thinking out of the box in order to redesign procurement do outcomes-oriented budgeting have a dynamic mission-oriented public banks so on and so forth none of that can be done without the investment within or organizations and yeah I just you know really welcome you to undergo that process because it's absolutely needed to go hand in hand with ambitious policies yeah well we certainly have a lot of work to do you know as as we've discussed having a plan as the start and doing the work is going to require lots of time and energy and and certainly we're all committed to that with that I want to say a big thank you to you Premier I want to say a big thank you to Professor Masakato and a big thank you to everyone here for being here this morning and and the Globe Conference has been a huge success maybe just to wrap up we can give a big applause to the organizers who have done just a fantastic job of this conference so a big thank you to everybody