Robert Tercek didn’t see Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week share a Beijing stage with Chinese e-commerce billionaire Jack Ma during a trade mission that included Canadian media execs.

But Harper may be onto something as Tercek, the U.S. digital guru, on Thursday called on Canada to buck a trend in government-backed media industries falling behind market-driven ones by creating the next global e-commerce giant.

“If I was doing industrial policy in Canada, I would ask myself how can I foster the next Alibaba here,” Tercek told the Merging Media 5 conference in Vancouver while delivering a keynote address.

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, is a rarity among global media businesses in being the product of a state-controlled entertainment sector, the former U.S. media exec said.

“Alibaba went public a month ago and they’re bigger than Amazon. China did that with government policy,” Tercek observed.

He urged the Canadian government, which sets the rules for this country’s media sector, to aim to do more “digitally focused programming,” rather than look to shore up traditional media in an increasingly borderless global business.

“When I see governments making interventions in markets, it’s almost always to protect the past at the expense of the future. That’s not a good prescription for a country that wants to grow its businesses in the future,” Tercek told Merging Media delegates in Vancouver.

He defended Canadian government funding as essential to ensuring a diversity of cultural voices.

“If your government didn’t aggressively support the arts, there would be no Canadian culture, no Native Canadian culture and that would be a great tragedy,” Tercek said.

But he insisted that government support should not be defensive or reactive.

“Very often, when government gets involved in a business, they create a framework that gets ossified, and then business gets used to that. It’s hard to work around government. They set the rules,” Tercek said. “The question you should ask is, what is the government money supporting? Is it supporting us in a march into the future, or are they linking us to the past, to an old business model from the 20th century?” he argued.

“If that’s case, then even those who benefit from that money should be careful and think twice about how much of that money you should depend on,” Tercek warned.

The Merging Media 5 conference continues through Friday in Vancouver.