"Even though Harper’s Conservatives never stopped pumping out industrial subsidies, they often argued government’s best role was to get out of the way, by lowering taxes or cutting regulation, and they had a philosophical aversion to picking winners and losers."

You're joking, right?

The Conservatives picked one winner & flogged it like a dead horse:  Oil.
For them, everything else was a loser.

In the Canadian economy, there is only so much investment capital. In the Harper era, there were basically three choices:

1.  Housing in Toronto or Vancouver.
2.  Oil & Gas.
3.  Sit on the sidelines.

Why invest in the incredibly risky field of technology start-ups when:

(a) the tax system is skewed to subsidize mineral extraction; and
(b) low mortgage rates make houses in the GTA and Greater Vancouver a one-way bet?

End the oil incentives in the Income Tax Act to fix no. 2
Let interest rates rise to their normal levels to fix 1 & 3..

Let technological investment be competitive again.