Manitoba’s NDP government has provided financial support to another private business, this time in the provincial tech sector.

Premier Wab Kinew’s cabinet authorized a $475,000 loan on March 18 to JasperVOCAL, a Winnipeg startup that offers artificial intelligence sales call screening to insurance companies.

The loan was extended under a provincial program designed to help Manitoba businesses that invest “in productivity-enhancing projects,” said Caedmon Malowany, a spokesperson for Jamie Moses, Manitoba’s minister of business, mining, trade and job creation.

The Kinew government provided a $10-million grant and a $13.4-million interest waiver on an existing $50-million loan to Winnipeg’s NFI Group in 2024 to help it expand its manufacturing capacity.

In 2025, the NDP government provided a $15-million loan guarantee to Palliser Furniture in what Moses described as an effort to “protect Manitoba jobs.” The company proceeded to reduce its Manitoba work force by a net 20 positions.

The grant to JasperVOCAL was made through the Manitoba Development Corporation, a Crown corporation that assists businesses and investors. JasperVOCAL made the request under the Trade Growth Investment Financing program, Malowany said.

The company, which has five employees, recently raised $995,000 from investors in Winnipeg, said Marco Soares, JasperVOCAL’s 21-year-old president and CEO.

The Winnipeg firm helps insurance companies contact potential customers by phone without having to outsource work to call centres, he said.

“Our systems automatically scale, based on how many people you need to call, and call them immediately,” Soares said in an interview from London.

“So, say if somebody is going to pick up within the first three minutes of being interested, we keep calling them up to eight or 10 different times.”

Soares said the AI service tailors questions to customers based on the ads those customers clicked on. If the person on the line ends up interested in buying insurance, they get transferred to a live agent, Soares said.

Company created for political work

The entrepreneur said the company’s technology was initially created to call people and identify prospective voters for political campaigns. 

“We pivoted to the insurance industry because we saw the same application was needed there,” said Soares, who describes himself as non-partisan.

JasperVOCAL provided campaign services for Damir Stipanovic, the Conservative candidate in the 2023 Winnipeg South Centre federal byelection, said Peter Smith, JasperVOCAL’s former president and CEO.

Smith stepped back from those roles in November 2025, when he became the president of Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Party.

Smith said he remains an investor in JasperVOCAL as well as a director. He’s listed as the chief financial officer on the company website.