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But even at $1 billion a year, what will Canada get for its money? How will a voter, getting set to head to the polls in the fall of 2019, look back at the Trudeau government’s first four years in office and assess whether or not the country has, in fact, become more innovative?

The budget has only partial answers on that front.

First, exports should be growing. The budget’s target is to have exports grow by 30 per cent by 2025. That would mean an average of just under 3.5-per-cent growth per year — which would mean exports would be growing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the economy.

Second, the program laid out in the budget has the goal of doubling the number of high-growth companies from 14,000 today to 28,000 by 2025. A high-growth company, for this purpose, is one in which revenues have been growing at an annual rate of 20 per cent for at least three years.

But after that, the benchmarks become a little more hazy. In a section titled “What Success Will Look Like,” Morneau aspires to a workforce that will be the “most skilled, talented, creative and diverse” working for companies “that will be strong, growing, and globally competitive.” How do you measure “strong” or “most talented”? The budget is silent on that front.

Other measures of innovation mentioned in the budget have not yet been invented. For example, the budget argues Canada will have become move innovative if the share of economic activity generated by the clean technology sector increases.

But the government can not say what share of GDP is currently generated by clean tech; it cannot say how big the share of GDP owned by clean tech will be in a few years; and it cannot even provide a definition of clean tech.

Statistics Canada is expected to work all that out in time for the 2019 election.

• Email: dakin@postmedia.com | Twitter: davidakin