This is long overdue.  Historically, Canadian government programs ostensibly promoting industrial innovation have, in most cases, fallen short. There are many horror stories of truly innovative Canadian companies that couldn't get any traction no matter what they did - one example being Ferranti-Packard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti-Packard).

One of the features of the SBIR program is that program participants can be fast-tracked for procurement - this gives an extra incentive to do a good job. It will be interesting to see if this feature is included.