The other day I went down a rabbit hole reading about the history of insulin, and learned about the Canada Development Corporation:

>The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto, created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment. It was technically not a crown corporation as it was intended to generate a profit and was created with the intention that, eventually, the government would own no more than 10% of its holdings; it did not require approvals of the Governor-in-Council for its activities and did not report to parliament. Its objectives and capitalization, however, were set out by parliament and any changes to its objects decided upon by the Board of Directors had to be approved by parliament.

The CDC was created as a result of Walter Gordon's Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, and the 1968 Watkins Report commissioned by Gordon, in an attempt to redress the problem of foreign ownership in the Canadian economy by stimulating the development of Canadian owned corporations, particularly in the field of natural resources and industry

About 31,000 private shareholders invested in the corporation. An early purchase of the corporation was Connaught Laboratories, the original manufacturer of insulin.

Major investments owned by the CDC included holdings in petroleum, mines and petrochemicals including Polymer Corporation, an asset transferred to it by the Canadian government. By 1982 the Canadian government had a 58% stake in the Savin Corporation.

In 1986 the Corporation was dismantled as part of the Mulroney government's program of privatization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Development_Corporation

Polymer Corp itself is a fascinating origination. Created in ww2 to create synthetic rubber - which the Germans had all of the ip of - it was a wildly successful research to commercialization entity. It was so successful after the war it was considered too important to privatize and it stayed as a crown corp for decades.

I believe they even did a run of $10 celebrating it.

I remember reading about something similar in the USA, where the federal government encouraged the creation of very large presses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program

A lot of USA investment in industry falls under defense spending. Canada doesn't spend nearly as much on defense, so has to be creative on how to cultivate domestic industry.