Murray gives Ontario Grits their "Innovation" candidate

Now that their membership drive is over, the focus of the Ontario Liberal Party will be on which leadership candidate has the right stuff to replace Premier Dalton McGuinty. You could lean different ways for a variety of reasons, but if you work in or around the Innovation economy, there’s no question that MPP Glen Murray stands out as an attractive choice among a mixed field. Sandra Pupatello, another top contender in the race, has always been a staunch public supporter of Ontario’s entrepreneurs (I like her folksy way), but Mr. Murray’s deep interest in the lifescience, IT and clean tech sectors, as well as early-stage capital formation on the macro level, makes him a unqiue candidate in a campaign that should be important to all Ontarians.

I first came across Mr. Murray when he was appointed Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation in 2010. During his first couple of weeks on the job, deep into his departmental briefings, he stumbled across a few blogs of mine on the subject of the Ontario government’s role in the start-up ecosystem (see representative prior posts “Welcome to the new job, Minister Murray” Aug 27-10, “Tories pounce on Grits over Ontario VC stats” Mar 2-10, “Summing up Ontario’s VC industry in 5 minutes flat” Jan. 31-10, “Why is Ontario getting into interest free corporate lending?” May 11-09 and “The great LSIF myth” July 2-08).

Then he did something quite unusual for a Minister in a new department. He asked his public servants what “the other side of the story” was (I’m paraphrasing). Specifically inquiring about my perspective on the meltdown that had befallen the Ontario VC industry, and, by extention, the regional start-up community. In the eyes of his Deputy Minister and key junior public servant, the blogs weren’t positive, and the criticisms certainly weren’t warranted. And I was to be ignored as a partisan (I was once a Tory staffer in Ottawa) trying to undercut the Liberal government’s noble efforts; or something like that.

In those days, if the MRI bureaucrats were putting together a list of 10 VCs to bring in to discuss industry issues, I’d have been the 11th, despite running the most active early stage capital provider in the province at that time.

The Minister reached out directly nonetheless, and we met in private on several occassions as part of his early fact-finding efforts. We agreed on some issues, and had different approaches on others (such as the LSIF – no surprise there). It was always confidential, and no one even knew until he outed me one day on Twitter. His passion for the new portfolio was palpable, and he understood how crucial the Innovation economy had become (or could become) to the province’s economic output. For him, the departmental file was an opportunity to bring Ontario into the modern age: jobs of the future versus jobs of the past. Just as his Premier had promised at the start of his mandate — but not quite succeeded at during his long run.

I was also struck by Minister Murray’s honesty.

It is one thing to share frank thoughts in private, but when Minister Murray gave a speech in Montreal and referred to the government’s Ontario Venture Capital Fund as “struggling”, you knew this guy did his homework and refused to ignore the facts of life (see prior post “No sacred cows for Murray” Oct. 26-10). Publicly criticizing NorthLeaf’s execution of the cornerstone MRI program that was to backfill the Premier’s cancellation of Ontario’s traditional tax support for the labour-sponsored fund industry — that took guts. The following year, Liberal Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told a Toronto breakfast audience that “things hadn’t worked out at OVCF like the government had planned” (see prior post “‘Struggling’ OVCF coming to an end?” April 24-12); but Mr. Murray was first out of the blocks on that, and had already made it his mission to fix the fallout of the sleepy OVCF with a new series of solutions in the 2011 budget.

Unlike prior MRI Ministers, Mr. Murray bounced his policy ideas and themes off the entrepreneurs, CEOs and VC GPs before putting them down on paper and shipping them over to the Finance Department. Murray wisely recognized that there was no point in launching a series of new programs if the sector itself didn’t think they would help solve the 4 year-old crisis that had, at that point, come to envelop the provincial ecosystem. Ontario’s share of national VC capital deployment had shrunk so much that it was smaller than Quebec’s, despite having a far larger population base (see prior post “Quebec’s VC world is rolling” Jan 28-10).

He reached out to VCs in Waterloo, Telecom CEOs in Ottawa, IT entrepreneurs in Thornhill, even tech i-bankers on Bay Street. New lines of communication were opened up, directly by the man himself. Industry experts, who’d never even met a previous MRI Minister despite being leaders in their own respective commuinities, were now being asked to help shape the policy tools that would help (finally/hopefully) restart the local sector. It didn’t matter the political stripe. All Murray wanted was creativity. And none of it ever made the papers or blogs, despite the MRI bureaucrats’ longstanding claim that they couldn’t consult with industry on policy changes for fear of leaks or breaching “budget secrecy”.

Unfortunately, the reality of the huge provincial deficit meant his policy dreams came crashing down that Spring. His party’s excitement for the sector was rekindled, however, in the provincial election of last Fall. The Ontario Liberals announced a platform that included a 35% tax credit for angel investors and institutions who put money into the start-up ecosystem. Despite winning the election, the VC topic is no longer at the forefront of the government’s legislative agenda. For his energy and initiative, Mr. Murray was promoted to the portfolio of Training, Colleges and Universities; while MRI was no longer a standalone portfolio.

If he wins the Premier’s chair, I’m confident Mr. Murray will quickly dust off his list of start-up and VC policy initiatives, do a reality check with his broad network of contacts, and drive ahead. The fact that former Research In Motion (RIM:TSX) Co-CEO Jim Balsillie attended Mr. Murray’s leadership campaign launch gives you a sense of how impactful he was at MRI.

And why, in Murray, the Ontario Grits have their Innovation candidate. You can follow him on Twitter at @Glen4ONT or donate here if you like the intensity that he brought to the ecosystem.

MRM
(disclosure – under Federal Conflict of Interest guidelines, I’m not allowed to advocate for a political party in a general election or even donate to a politician; so this blog, while an Opinion piece (as always), is neither a financial donation nor a piece of advocacy on behalf of the Ontario Liberals; I’m simply saying that Murray is their Innovation candidate)