CANADA has never been short on talent, ideas, or intellectual ambition. Yet, despite a legacy of groundbreaking discoveries – from deep learning to insulin – our nation consistently fails to commercialize its intellectual capital. This is not a failure of capability but a failure of structure. The very systems that should be accelerating innovation instead strangle it with bureaucracy, risk aversion, and an unwillingness to embrace the high-stakes nature of true disruption.
Canadian Senator Colin Deacon, a rare political figure with an entrepreneurial background, has spent years dissecting this problem. His verdict is damning: “We have the ingredients, but we don’t bake the cake.” While other nations aggressively invest in scaling transformative industries, Canada remains trapped in an antiquated economic mindset, where incrementalism is prioritized over transformation.
If the world is an arena of exponential change, Canada is the cautious observer, measuring every step while others sprint ahead.
THE COST OF PLAYING IT SAFE
Unlike the United States, where venture capital thrives on risk and rewards moonshot ideas, Canada’s investment culture is fundamentally conservative. Government grants and tax incentives sustain early-stage research, but funding dries up before companies can scale. This has created a paradox: we are a nation of invention, but not of ownership. Our greatest ideas – whether in AI, clean energy, or biotechnology – too often find their commercial success abroad, enriching foreign economies while Canada remains a talent exporter rather than an innovation powerhouse.
This is not simply a matter of policy – it is a structural defect in how Canada perceives economic security. Too much emphasis is placed on sustaining legacy industries rather than creating new ones. “We’re great at writing reports about the future,” Deacon quips, “but we don’t act on them.”
A SYSTEM DESIGNED FOR MAINTENANCE, NOT MOMENTUM
At the heart of the issue is a bureaucratic ecosystem designed for stability rather than dynamism. Procurement policies favor large incumbents over emerging players. Regulatory frameworks move at a glacial pace, stifling industries that require rapid adaptation. Government funding mechanisms are designed to mitigate risk rather than fuel ambition. The result? A nation that watches its homegrown unicorns gallop away to more fertile ground.
Senator Deacon argues that Canada needs an entirely different approach – one that prioritizes urgency over incrementalism. “We need to rethink what we measure,” he says. “Instead of counting patents filed, we should be counting global market share. Instead of tracking grants distributed, we should be tracking the number of companies reaching billion-dollar valuations.”
This is the language of competition, not complacency. And Canada, if it is to remain relevant in the 21st-century economy, must start speaking it fluently.
RECALIBRATING FOR ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY
Canada’s reliance on foreign capital and ownership is not just an economic issue—it is a question of sovereignty. If we do not own the industries of the future, we do not own our future at all. Consider AI: Canada pioneered deep learning, yet the companies monetizing these breakthroughs – OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic – are not Canadian. The same is true for quantum computing, where our research institutions lead, but our market influence lags.
Without a decisive shift in how we approach industry-building, Canada risks being permanently relegated to the periphery of economic power. Our most pressing need is not another government committee or research paper. It is action – a shift in mindset from maintenance to momentum, from regulation to reinvention.
SECURING CANADA’S FUTURE THROUGH AMBITION
Economic dominance in the digital age belongs to nations that are willing to take calculated risks, break old paradigms, and aggressively scale their innovations. Canada has the potential to be one of those nations – but potential is meaningless without execution.
For Canada to reclaim its future, we must embrace a philosophy that rewards ambition, removes barriers to scale, and builds industries that can compete on a global stage. We need leaders willing to champion this transformation, investors willing to place bigger bets, and policies that reflect the exponentially growing urgency of our time.
“Canada has always had the talent,” Deacon asserts. “The only question left is whether we have the will.”
That is the defining question of our era. And the answer will shape the century ahead.
