GOVERNMENT FUNDING & NEWS

Canada needs to build a domestic market for Canadian AI solutions and pursue sovereignty-focused growth

Canada needs to build a domestic market for Canadian AI solutions and pursue sustainable, sovereignty-focused growth over hyper-driven scaling, the federally appointed AI Strategy Task Force heard from Canadians.

The country should improve access to capital, procurement opportunities and partnerships, and consider establishing strategic tools like a sovereign wealth fund, the task force heard. The task force published a report on the summary of inputs from a 30-day public consultation process.

More than 11,000 Canadians from across the country and 28 AI Strategy Task Force members shared their ideas to help shape the next chapter of Canada’s AI leadership. The task force heard from individuals and organizations alike, with representation across several industries and sectors, including:

• IT/technology/cybersecurity (35 percent).
• professional/scientific/technical services (20 percent).
• arts/entertainment/recreation (15 percent).
• small and medium-sized enterprises (12 percent).
• academia (12 percent).
• health care (10 percent).

The report includes analysis of both the public consultation and the 32 reports submitted by the 28 Task Force members, with some members contributing more than one report.

A key theme is that while Canada remains a leader in AI research, it lags in commercialization and currently lacks the domestic compute capacity and capital to adequately harness the full potential of AI.

Other key themes and suggestions from the consultation include:

1. Research and talent

• Strengthen Canada’s AI talent pipeline through competitive incentives and immigration support.
• Build sovereign compute and data infrastructure.
• Prioritize ethical, sustainable, human‑centred AI aligned with Canadian strengths.
• Protect Canadian intellectual property and support mission‑driven research.

2. Industry and government adoption

• Shift from pilots to real, productivity‑focused AI deployment.
• Ensure AI augments – does not replace – workers.
• Establish clear regulations and sector‑specific standards.
• Promote responsible AI adoption through incentives and public education.

3. Commercialization

• Retain Canadian control over IP, data and economic value.
• Support Canadian firms through funding, tax incentives and procurement.
• Modernize regulations to prevent foreign dominance and protect creators.
• Align commercialization with national priorities and ethical standards.

4. Scaling and investment

• Improve access to capital, procurement opportunities and partnerships.
• Build a domestic market for Canadian AI solutions.
• Pursue sustainable, sovereignty‑focused growth over hype-driven scaling.
• Consider strategic tools like a sovereign wealth fund.

5. Safe AI and public trust

• Require transparency, strong oversight and risk‑based certification.
• Address key risks: bias, privacy, job loss and environmental impacts.
• Enforce compliance and expand public AI literacy.

6. Education and skills

• Combine nationwide AI literacy with advanced training for specialists.
• Integrate AI into education systems and lifelong learning.
• Emphasize ethics, critical thinking and interdisciplinary skills.

7. Infrastructure

• Close compute, data and connectivity gaps, especially in rural areas.
• Develop sovereign, sustainable AI infrastructure through partnerships.
• Create a national infrastructure roadmap.

8. Security

• Strengthen AI-enabled cybersecurity and national defence.
• Protect Canadian data, supply chains and critical systems.
• Implement strict liability and human‑in‑the‑loop safeguards.

To stimulate the growth of Canada’s AI infrastructure, the federal government should help remove regulatory and paperwork barriers to data centres and fund the development of homegrown operators and suppliers, according to members of the AI Strategy Task Force.

BetaKit offered a synopsis of the 348 pages of submissions from individuals and organizations.

Among the suggestions were:

• Launch a comprehensive audit to determine how AI systems are being deployed across government, identify high-risk use-cases without safeguards, and gauge their impact on equality.
• Propose five moonshot projects that are defined by a singular objective that could help a broad selection of Canadians, could not be possible without AI, drive the creation of infrastructure that might produce wider-ranging social and economic benefits, and could not be delivered by the private sector.
• Build and maintain “as-Canadian-as-possible” compute and cloud capabilities with full legal control and domestic tech integrated across the AI infrastructure stack. Push back on foreign laws that allow foreign governments to demand information about Canadian citizens.
• Rebuild Canada’s digital foundation with an AI Readiness Fund to modernize public and private data infrastructure, because “AI cannot thrive on fragmented, outdated systems.”
• Review existing research funding programs like Tri-Council, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and Genome Canada to see whether AI excellence criteria should be included. Create a new multidisciplinary Canada AI Chairs program.
• Declare boosting Canadian AI literacy “a national imperative” and fund a national strategy to achieve this.
• Avoid launching new agencies and structures focused on AI – instead, create a time-limited, high-level task group to review national AI adoption and deployment strategies from elsewhere and develop a “superior integrated plan” for Canada.
• Create a Strategic Compute Cluster that may serve as a hedge against external shocks and a platform for domestic AI adoption.
• Launch a new, $2-billion pre-seed and seed-focused fund-of-funds, a $2-billion Canadian AI growth fund for Series A and B startups, and a $5-billion sovereign wealth fund targeted at growth equity companies.

The federal government said after it carefully considers the feedback received from the consultation, it will soon be launching a renewed AI strategy. Innovation, Science and Economic Development

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Federal government launches new automotive strategy, scrapping EV mandates and offering subsidies for EV buyers

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the federal government’s new automotive strategy, which includes scrapping electric vehicle mandates that would have required 60 percent of all new cars to be electric by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035.

Instead, the five-year program will give individuals and businesses up to $5,000 when they buy battery electric and fuel EVs, and up to $2,500 for plug-in hybrids. Carney also lowered Canada’s EV sales targets.

The rebate is available only on cars produced in Canada or countries with which Canada has free trade agreements, which includes the U.S. and Mexico (through the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement), Europe, Japan and Korea. It does not include vehicles made in China, such as any Teslas built in Shanghai. 

The government will support major industrial investment through fiscal and other policy levers, including dedicating up to $3 billion from the Strategic Response Fund and up to $100 million from the Regional Tariff Response Initiative to support investment in automotive manufacturing, including assembly and parts production.

In line with the Buy Canadian Policy, the government will look to leverage these investments to maximize opportunities for Canadian suppliers and Canadian-made goods and services, including steel and aluminum.

The government also will set new tailpipe emissions standards aimed at driving a 75-percent EV adoption rate by 2035 – lower than the previous target of 100 percent – while giving automakers the flexibility in how they meet these standards.

The government said it’s also setting an “aspirational goal” of 90-percent EV adoption by 2040.

Time Reuss, president and CEO of the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, said in a statement that the strategy “is a strong commitment by the government to the automotive industry and demonstrates their ability and willingness to respond to market realities and consumer demand.”

Reuss noted that the 3,500 dealer members across Canada are in no way turning away from EV adoption.

“Dealers have invested heavily in EV infrastructure to sell and service EVs in Canada. Consumer choice in terms of vehicle options for low-emission choices has expanded dramatically in Canada, and now manufacturers have the ability to deliver emissions solutions which are technologically neutral,” he said.

The federal government also pointed to tax measures to help manufacturers invest and expand in Canada, including accelerated capital cost allowances through Budget 2025's Productivity Super‑Deduction, investment tax credits for clean technology and EV manufacturing, and lower corporate tax rates for zero‑emission technology manufacturers.

Canada will also ensure its regulatory frameworks – including vehicle safety regulations that encompass connected vehicle technologies – have been modernized to facilitate the entry of new vehicles and new investment, Ottawa said.

The government said it will also develop a new national charging infrastructure strategy, which will focus on better attracting private equity, reducing barriers, making buildings EV-ready and ensuring skills training.

The strategy will include a $1.5-billion envelope at the Canada Infrastructure Bank and will seek to identify private sector champions to lead projects of national significance, building out charging infrastructure more quickly across the country.

Ottawa also announced it will establish a new automotive task force with key automotive stakeholders to facilitate coordinated action between the federal and Ontario governments and support the long-term competitiveness of Canada's automotive sector.

In consultation with industry, the task force will examine critical issues facing the industry, such as the future of vehicle manufacturing, investment, workforce protection and electrification, as well as future strategic investments.

The task force will also support the alignment of federal and provincial efforts on trade-related issues, including the forthcoming Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement review.

Following the federal government announcement of its new automotive strategy, the B.C. government’s energy minister said the province will not bring back its electric vehicle rebate – a program that for years offered buyers up to $4,000 off a new battery-powered car.

The province paused its CleanBC Go Electric Vehicle Rebate Program last May, effectively halting up to $4,000 in rebates meant to help B.C. consumers purchase a new battery-powered car. 

B.C. Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix hailed the federal government’s decision to renew its EV rebate program – part of a wider set of federal investments – as a move to position Canada as a world leader in electrification, Business In Vancouver reported.

EV registrations globally grew 20 percent last year, according to a report in January from energy market research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Around the world, 20.7 million EVs were registered in 2025, although growth is expected to slow a bit in 2026. CBC News, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada  

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Federal Court of Appeal upholds Ottawa’s decision to list plastics as toxic

The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the federal government’s decision to list plastics as toxic, enabling Ottawa to ban single-use plastic items.

The decision deals a blow to Canada's plastics industry, which had challenged the federal government's regulations aimed at stopping plastic pollution.

The unanimous decision said a lower-court decision had erred in ruling that Ottawa's decision to list plastic items as toxic was "unreasonable and unconstitutional."

The three appeal court justices said the Federal Court’s ruling was "predicated on an incorrect premise" and it did not infringe on provincial or territorial jurisdiction.

"There is no constitutional issue here," the Federal Court of Appeal justices’ decision stated.

“This decision supports the findings of the Science Assessment of Plastic Pollution that plastic pollution poses a threat of harm to Canada’s environment and gives the Government of Canada important tools to take informed action on plastic pollution,” Julie Dabrusin, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, said in a statement.

“We will work closely with provinces, territories, Indigenous leaders, civil society and industry to create long-lasting solutions,” she said.

The case was brought forward by major industrial players, including Dow Chemical, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals.

The legal battle is likely not over since plastic manufacturers could launch a final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Government of Alberta and the Government of Saskatchewan supported the legal challenge by the chemical industry groups.

The Federal Court of Appeal also found the federal government's decision was reasonable because plastics have the potential to be toxic to humans and the wider environment.

Federal Court of Appeal Justice Donald Rennie authored the decision backed by the two other judges on the bench.

It read as an overwhelming rejection of the 2023 Federal Court decision, which on one point Rennie described as "a classic example of a court engaging in a 'line-by-line treasure hunt for error.'"

In 2021, the Liberal government listed all plastic manufactured items as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The listing was a precursor to enable the federal environment minister to proceed with regulations to ban single-use plastic items nationally on plastic checkout bags, cutlery, styrofoam containers, stir sticks and plastic straws. CBC News

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The Government of Canada introduced Bill S-5, the Connected Care for Canadians Act. This Act is part of Canada's plan to build up and protect the health care system, and empower Canadians to have more control over their health, the government said. “The fact that only 29 percent of providers share electronic information securely and seamlessly outside of their offices is entirely unacceptable,” Ottawa said. “The fact that fax machines are still used is entirely unacceptable. The fact that Canadians have to walk around with printed copies of their health information, while other sectors have moved fully digital decades ago is unacceptable.” The Act is about enabling different systems to connect. At its core, Bill S-5 is about patient safety, the government said. “It's about keeping pace with emerging international standards in digital health care to remain competitive globally. The legislation would require all information technology companies providing digital health services in Canada to adopt common standards to support protected and secure information exchange across various systems. The health care sector is also one of the fastest growing sectors in Canada's economy. “This legislation will establish the foundation needed for the health sector to benefit from AI innovations that can improve patient care, system efficiency and create economic opportunity for Canadian companies,” the government said. Ottawa said it is collaborating with its provincial and territorial partners in the development of the regulations to ensure the protection and secure sharing of Canadians' own health data and to improve patient outcomes, while ensuring existing strict privacy legislation is respected. Health Canada

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Update on hundreds of public servants who’ve received layoff notices across Canada

Hundreds of public servants have already received layoff notices in Ottawa and across Canada, as the federal government begins to issue notices of potential job cuts.

Federal Budget 2025 outlined a plan to cut another 28,000 positions from the federal public service over the next four years and find $60 billion in savings.

Also, the Treasury Board of Canada said last week on its website that Ottawa will require public servants to be in the office four days a week starting in July, while public service executives must be on-site full-time in May. 

Here are the “workforce adjustment notices” to date:

• The Public Service Alliance of Canada Agriculture Union said 1,371 workers at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have received a notice and 587 jobs will be cut. The agency had a workforce of 6,380 as of last year.
• The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) said 37 members at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency have received a notice. The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) said 16 members at the agency received notices. The agency had 579 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said 96 members who work at Library and Archives Canada have received notices. The organization was home to 1,138 workers as of last year.
• PIPSC said 133 members working at the Department of Justice have received notices. CAPE said 40 members of its members have also received notices. The Association of Justice Counsel, which bargains for federal government lawyers, said on it knew of 209 notices and 74 planned job cuts. That adds up to 382 notices sent. The department had 5,608 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said 85 members at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Services have received a workforce adjustment notice, out of a total 1,256 workers at that department.
• PIPSC said two of its members at the Administrative Tribunal Support Service of Canada have received notice. The federal government confirmed 39 employees and two executives had received notice their jobs are at risk. Ottawa is looking to eliminate 29 positions. The agency had 679 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said 19 people who work at the Privy Council Office (PCO) have received a notice. CAPE said 80 of its members there had received a notice. The federal government confirmed 221 employees and 18 executives at the PCO had received notice that their jobs are at risk, as PCO sought to use the workforce adjustment notice process to reduce 126 positions, including eight in management. A total of 1,208 people worked at the PCO as of last year.
• PIPSC said 477 of its members received notices from Global Affairs Canada. PSAC said 1,172 notices went to its members. CAPE said on 746 of its members had received a notice. The Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers said 709 notices had been sent to members. That adds up to 3,104 workforce adjustment notices. The federal government confirmed 3,295 employees and 406 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as 543 positions could be eliminated under the workforce adjustment process. The department had 7,657 employees as of last year.
• The federal government said the jobs of 589 employees and 61 executives at Public Safety Canada are at risk as it seeks to eliminate 357 positions.
• PIPSC said 304 of its members have received notices from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. CAPE said 103 of its members had received notices. The federal government confirmed 1,036 employees and seven executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 507 positions through workforce adjustment. The department had 5,690 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said 248 of its members have received notices from Environment and Climate Change Canada. CAPE said 294 of its members at the department had received notice. The federal government confirmed 998 employees and 37 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 594 positions through workforce adjustment. The department had 8,778 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said 172 of its members received notices from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. CAPE said 51 of its members had also received notice. The federal government confirmed 507 employees and 25 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 290 positions. The department had 14,451 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said one of its members received a workforce adjustment notice from the Canada School of Public Service. Five CAPE members had received a notice, according to a union update. The federal government confirmed 17 employees and three executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk. The School had 597 employees as of last year.
• PIPSC said one of its members received notice from Canadian Heritage. CAPE said knew of 29 notices sent to its members. The federal government confirmed 344 employees and eight executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 120 positions. The department had 1,910 employees as of last year.
• In a note that went out to Health Canada employees – and which was confirmed by CBC News – the department said it would be making workforce adjustments including "reductions to our indeterminate workforce." CBC News confirmed that 1,056 job cuts are planned. Unlike many other departments, that is the number of jobs affected, not the number of notices. PIPSC said 708 of its members had received workforce adjustment notices from Health Canada. CAPE said 331 members there had a received notice. The federal government confirmed 2,052 employees and 36 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 1,092 positions. The department had 9,628 employees as of last March.
• PSAC said 1,222 of its workers at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had received a notice. PIPSC said 42 of its members have received workforce adjustment notices. According to an update from the federal government, 406 employees and 10 executives have received notices. The department is seeking to reduce 166 positions through workforce adjustment. The department had 11,148 employees as of March 2025.
• IPSC said only two of its members have learned from Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (which had 371 employees as of last year) that their job situation might change.
• PSAC said 655 of its members at the Canada Revenue Agency have received a notice, while PIPSC said 77 of its members have received a notice. The agency had 52,499 employees as of last March.
• Notices have gone to 798 PSAC members at Transport Canada, the union said. PIPSC said 235 of its members have received notice. CAPE said 270 members had received a notice. That adds up to 1,303 notices. The federal government said it had sent out notices to 1,520 employees and 50 executives. The department had 6,666 employees as of last March.
• Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) confirmed that 1,100 employees will receive written notice indicating their positions are affected. The department estimates 569 non-management positions and 45 management positions will be eliminated over the next three years. PIPSC said 239 members received workforce adjustment notices. CAPE said knew of 186 members who had received notices. The federal government said 1,133 notices had been sent out, including to 32 executives, it looked to eliminate 592 jobs using workforce adjustments. ISED had 6,526 employees at the end of March 2025.
• At Employment and Social Development Canada, PSAC said 250 members had received a notice. PIPSC said 339 of its members were handed a notice. The Canada Employment and Immigration Union said about 3,000 total employees got a notice in one week. CAPE said 534 notices had gone to members. Those union reports add up to 2,523 workforce adjustment notices. The federal government confirmed 3,028 employees and 47 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 970 positions through workforce adjustment. The department had 39,154 employees as of last March.
• The Canadian Museum of History confirmed it is implementing "staffing reductions." The Canadian War Museum gave a similar comment. The museums later said they will be cutting permanent staff levels by 18 percent over the next three years.
• Public Services and Procurement Canadahas issued 735 notices to PSAC members. PIPSC said 110 of its members got notices, too. CAPE reported 139 members with a notice. Those add up to 984 workforce adjustments. The federal government said 1,153 jobs are on the line, including 39 executive positions, as it seeks to cut a total of 761 positions. The department had 18,936 employees as of last March.
• PSAC said the Treasury Board Secretariat has issued 125 notices to its members. PIPSC said 65 of its members have received notices. CAPE said 69 members had received a workforce adjustment notice. That's a total of 259 notices. The federal government said 293 notices had been sent out to employees and 27 to executives. The department had 2,374 employees as of last March.
• PIPSC said 737 members who work for Shared Services Canada have received notice. PSAC said 530 of its members have also received word from the department. CAPE reported on Jan. 27 that 23 of its members had received a notice. Those equal 1,290 notices for this department, plus another 49 executive positions, according to an update from the federal government. Shared Services Canada, which provides IT services and support across government, had a workforce of 8,894 in 2025.
• Statistics Canada told employees that 850 positions will be eliminated from the department over the next two years. In all, the department will send 3,274 workforce adjustment notices to employees whose services may no longer be needed. The federal government confirmed that figure. PIPSC said 940 of its members were among those to receive notices by January 23, while CAPE reported 1,906 members of its members receiving a notice. The agency had 7,274 employees at the end of March 2025.
• In December, PSAC said in a news release that 219 workers at Natural Resources Canada received warning that their positions could be cut. PIPSC said 199 of its members at the department had received notices of a potential layoff. CAPE added 260 workers to that tally. The notices shared by the three unions add up to 678, a number confirmed by the federal government. The department had 6,044 employees as of last March.
• The Public Service Commission of Canada announced in December that 157 of its members could lose their jobs as a result of the workforce adjustments. PIPSC said 48 of its members have received a workforce adjustment notice. Four CAPE members have received one. The federal government's update said 42 employees had received notice that their jobs are at risk as it looks to eliminate 38 positions. The agency had 803 employees as of last March.
• PSAC said 186 employees at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada were told in December about potential job losses. PIPSC said two of its members have received word, too. CAPE's update listed 75 notices. The federal government confirmed 173 employees and 13 executives had received notice that their jobs are at risk. The department had 1,892 total employees as of last March.
• PSAC members at the Department of Finance learned in December that 74 positions could be eliminated. CAPE reported eight notices among its members on Jan. 27. The federal government confirmed 82 employees at the department had received notice that their jobs are at risk. The department had 963 total employees as of last March. CBC News

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Despite indicating in Budget 2025 that accelerating investments will “put Canada on a pathway” to meet the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) five- percent commitment by 2035, the Government of Canada has not published supporting projection details. In a new report, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) estimates that meeting the NATO five-percent commitment by gradually increasing core defence spending from two percent in 2025 to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035 will require additional defence spending averaging approximately $33.5 billion per year in cash expenditures over the next 10 years. PBO estimates that the additional core defence spending required to meet the NATO five-percent commitment will increase the budgetary deficit by $63.0 billion (1.4 percentage points of GDP) in 2035-36 and the federal debt-to-GDP ratio by 6.3 percentage points of GDP in 2035-36. Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) announced the first two investments in Canadian dual-use innovators, following the launch of its $4-billion Defence Platform in December:

• Irréversible (Sherbrooke, Que.) – A semiconductor startup developing analog AI chips for next-generation computing. BDC participated in Irréversible’s pre-seed round, led by Quantacet with participation from Frostbite Capital and Tofino Capital. The company has already secured a $1-million IDEaS grant from the Department of National Defence. 
• Canada Rocket Company(Toronto, Ont.) – A space-tech venture building rockets to deploy satellites into orbit. BDC co-led a $6.2-million seed round with Garage Capital, joined by four other investors.

BDC is also joining forces with Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) to accelerate defence innovation, becoming the first partner of CDL’s global Defence program. The CDL Defence program is designed for early-stage companies developing dual-use technologies that directly address operational needs in defence, national security and critical infrastructure protection. Its purpose is to connect early-stage ventures with mentors, investors, and procurement experts to accelerate commercialization. It is run in partnership with six CDL sites across Canada and Europe, with additional partners to follow. The inaugural program year will conclude in May 2026, with applications for the next cohort opening in April 2026. BDC

The first part of the Government of Canada’s strategy to boost biofuels and shore up domestic demand for canola came into force on January 1. The $370-million Biofuel Production Incentive will be given to biofuel producers over the next two years. A fuel producer could receive a maximum of $40.2-million per year. The subsidies are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports, whose producers receive hefty tax credits. Ottawa’s payouts are also intended to shore up demand for the Canadian crops used as feedstock in clean fuel, including canola. The incentives are the first part of a two-stage strategy announced last September. Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations came into force in 2023. As part of the regulations, fuels that measure below the carbon-intensity mandate earn credits, and the lower the intensity, the more credits earned. At full output, Canada’s biofuels sector would generate more than $18 billion a year in economic activity and support 30,000 jobs, according to Advanced Biofuels Canada. The Globe and Mail

 Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) announced a $4-million federal investment in Sherbrooke, Que.-based ORPC Canada for a demonstration project showing how the natural flow of the river can generate clean, reliable energy. Beginning in 2026 and continuing through 2029, ORPC Canada will deploy and operate its RivGen^® Power System in the St. Lawrence River. The project will focus on operating the system in real-world conditions, examining its integration with the river environment and its contribution to local clean energy needs. The goal is to support urban and remote communities with clean, reliable energy that matches local resources to needs. NRCan

The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor) announced a federal contribution of up to more than $2.8 million toward four digital literacy and AI projects in Canada’s North. This funding will support digital literacy and AI adoption in communities across Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. These projects include: an AI-driven entrepreneurship and business support centre; a digital literacy, online safety and AI training program; developing two AI and machine learing tools for community-level economic development; and developing an AI platform for Arctic sensor. CanNor

Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) in celebration of Black History Month, said the federal government’s Black Entrepreneurship Program has supported more than 24,000 Black entrepreneurs across the country through mentorship, training and financing, Through the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund alone, over $70 million in financing has been approved across more than 800 loans. The program recognizes the realities that many Black entrepreneurs continue to face, particularly Black women and 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurs, who often encounter compounded barriers when seeking to access capital and growth opportunities. In October 2025, the federal government renewed the program with an investment of $189 million. ISED

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has told Congress that Alberta must revisit its “unfair treatment of electrical power distribution providers in Montana.” Montana representatives contend Alberta’s rules sometimes block Montana electricity from being sold into Alberta, which they say hurts their power producers and discourages cross-border transmission investment. Alberta said it isn’t treating Montana any differently than it does its Canadian neighbours. Last year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative listed Alberta's non-profit electrical grid operator, the Alberta Electricity System Operator (AESO), as a trade irritant. Daniel Zolnikov, a Republican state senator from Montana and chair of a Montana legislative committee studying technology and energy, told CBC News that uncertainty around how transmission lines between Alberta and Montana are used is deterring investment in new infrastructure. Alberta has limited connections to other grids, with three transmission lines, or interties, that run between British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Montana, allowing power to flow across borders. From Alberta’s perspective, grid rules apply equally to all suppliers. When electricity supply exceeds what the system can safely handle, AESO has to curtail power, said Ian Nieboer, managing director and head of energy transition research with Enverus Intelligence Research. Jason Wang, a senior electricity analyst with the Pembina Institute, said connections between regions are important because they lower electricity costs and make the system more reliable, and Alberta currently has too few of these compared to other places. CBC News

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Trump administration pitches new strategy on critical minerals, plans to deploy US$12 billion to create a strategic reserve of rare earth elements

The Trump administration plans to deploy nearly US$12 billion to create a strategic reserve of rare earth elements, a stockpile that could counter China’s ability to use its dominance of these hard to process metals as leverage in trade talks.

The White House confirmed the start of “Project Vault,” which would initially be funded by a US$10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly US$1.67 billion in private capital.

The minerals kept in the reserve would help to shield the manufacturers of autos, electronics and other goods from any supply chain disruptions.

The Trump administration also has pitched a pact that U.S. Vice-President JD Vance called the Agreement on Trade and Critical Minerals, to be negotiated with partners and allies.

The administration convened more than 50 countries, including Canada, as it sought to create a trade zone for critical minerals, in which participants would use tariffs to maintain minimum prices – or price floors – and ease reliance on China for these resources.

But Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told The Globe and Mail in an interview that Canada will wait until Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement trade negotiations later this year before deciding whether to join a U.S.-led critical minerals trading coalition.

Anand suggested that a one-off deal on critical minerals could remove Canada’s bargaining leverage as it prepares for that review, noting this country is a major producer of critical minerals – key elements needed for everything from fighter jets to smartphones.

The U.S. also announced it was drawing up critical mineral action plans with Mexico, the European Union and Japan that include setting price floors. It made no announcements about similar co-operation with Canada.

During trade talks last year spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the Chinese government restricted the exporting of rare earths that are needed for jet engines, radar systems, electric vehicles, laptops and phones.

China represents about 70 percent of the world’s rare earths mining and 90 percent of global rare earths processing. That gave it a chokehold on the sector that has caused the U.S. to nurture alternative sources of the elements, creating a stockpile similar to the national reserve for petroleum. BNN Bloomberg

RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) are gradually transitioning from the Canadian Common CV (CCV) to a new narrative-style tri-agency CV for their funding opportunities – as announced in October 2024. The new tri-agency CV will be implemented in the 2027 Discovery Horizons and the 2027 Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships competitions, NSERC said. The tri-agency CV replaces the CCV, which has long been a source of concern for applicants due to usability challenges, the burden of multiple templates and its focus on traditional research outputs. The tri-agency CV has been developed through extensive consultations with the research community and reflects a more inclusive, flexible, and user-friendly approach. NSERC

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Risks of general-purpose AI are growing: second International AI Safety Report

Real-world evidence for several risks of artificial intelligence is growing, including malicious use, malfunctions and systemic risks, according to the second International AI Safety Report 2026.

The report is led by Canadian AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio and authored by over 100 AI experts, backed by more than 30 countries and international organizations.

This report focuses on the most capable general-purpose AI systems and the emerging risks associated with them. “General-purpose AI” refers to AI models and systems that can perform a wide variety of tasks.

“Emerging risks” are risks that arise at the frontier of general-purpose AI capabilities. “Some of these risks are already materializing, with documented harms; others remain more uncertain but could be severe if they materialize,” the report said.

Since the publication of the 2025 Report, general-purpose AI capabilities have continued to improve, driven by new techniques that enhance performance after initial training, according to the report.

AI developers continue to train larger models with improved performance. Over the past year, they have further improved capabilities through “inference-time scaling,” allowing models to use more computing power in order to generate intermediate steps before giving a final answer.

“This technique has led to particularly large performance gains on more complex reasoning tasks in mathematics, software engineering, and science.”

At the same time, capabilities remain “jagged:” leading systems may excel at some difficult tasks while failing at other, simpler ones, the report noted.

General-purpose AI systems excel in many complex domains, including generating code, creating photorealistic images, and answering expert-level questions in mathematics and science.

Yet they struggle with some tasks that seem more straightforward, such as counting objects in an image, reasoning about physical space, and recovering from basic errors in longer workflows.

“The trajectory of AI progress through 2030 is uncertain, but current trends are consistent with continued improvement,” the report said.

AI developers are betting that computing power will remain important, having announced hundreds of billions of dollars in data centre investments.

Whether capabilities will continue to improve as quickly as they recently have is hard to predict, the report said. Between now and 2030, it is plausible that progress could slow or plateau (e.g. due to bottlenecks in data or energy), continue at current rates, or accelerate dramatically (e.g. if AI systems begin to speed up AI research itself).

According to the report, general-purpose AI risks fall into three categories: malicious use, malfunctions, and systemic risks.

Malicious use:

• AI-generated content and criminal activity: AI systems are being misused to generate content for scams, fraud, blackmail and non-consensual intimate imagery.
• Influence and manipulation: In experimental settings, AI-generated content can be as effective as human-written content at changing people's beliefs. Real-world use of AI for manipulation is documented but not yet widespread, though it may increase as capabilities improve.
• Cyberattacks: AI systems can discover software vulnerabilities and write malicious code. In one competition, an AI agent identified 77 percent of the vulnerabilities present in real software. Criminal groups and state-associated attackers are actively using general-purpose AI in their operations.
• Biological and chemical risks: General-purpose AI systems can provide information about biological and chemical weapons development, including details about pathogens and expert-level laboratory instructions. In 2025, multiple developers released new models with additional safeguards after they could not exclude the possibility that these models could assist novices in developing such weapons.

Malfunctions:

• Reliability challenges: Current AI systems sometimes exhibit failures such as fabricating information, producing flawed code and giving misleading advice. AI agents pose heightened risks because they act autonomously, making it harder for humans to intervene before failures cause harm.
• Loss of control: “Loss of control” involves scenarios where AI systems operate outside of anyone’s control, with no clear path to regaining control. Current systems lack the capabilities to pose such risks, but they are improving in relevant areas such as autonomous operation. Since the last report, it has become more common for models to distinguish between test settings and real-world deployment and to find loopholes in evaluations, which could allow dangerous capabilities to go undetected before deployment.

Systemic risks:

• Labour market impacts: General-purpose AI will likely automate a wide range of cognitive tasks, especially in knowledge work. Economists disagree on the magnitude of future impacts: some expect job losses to be offset by new job creation, while others argue that widespread automation could significantly reduce employment and wages. Early evidence shows no effect on overall employment, but some signs of declining demand for early-career workers in some AI-exposed occupations, such as writing.
• Risks to human autonomy: AI use may affect people’s ability to make informed choices and act on them. Early evidence suggests that reliance on AI tools can weaken critical thinking skills and encourage “automation bias,” the tendency to trust AI system outputs without sufficient scrutiny. “AI companion” apps now have tens of millions of users, a small share of whom show patterns of increased loneliness and reduced social engagement.

Managing general-purpose AI risks is difficult due to technical and institutional challenges, the report noted.

Technically, new capabilities sometimes emerge unpredictably, the inner workings of models remain poorly understood, and there is an “evaluation gap:” performance on pre-deployment tests does not reliably predict real-world utility or risk.

Institutionally, developers have incentives to keep important information proprietary, and the pace of development can create pressure to prioritize speed over risk management and makes it harder for institutions to build governance capacity.

Risk management practices include threat modelling to identify vulnerabilities, capability evaluations to assess potentially dangerous behaviours, and incident reporting to gather more evidence.

In 2025, 12 companies published or updated their Frontier AI Safety Frameworks – documents that describe how they plan to manage risks as they build more capable models. While AI risk management initiatives remain largely voluntary, a small number of regulatory regimes are beginning to formalize some risk management practices as legal requirements.

Technical safeguards are improving but still show significant limitations. For example, attacks designed to elicit harmful outputs have become more difficult, but users can still sometimes obtain harmful outputs by rephrasing requests or breaking them into smaller steps. AI systems can be made more robust by layering multiple safeguards, an approach known as “defence-in-depth.”

Open-weight models pose distinct challenges. They offer significant research and commercial benefits, particularly for lesser-resourced actors. However, they cannot be recalled once released, their safeguards are easier to remove, and actors can use them outside of monitored environments – making misuse harder to prevent and trace.

“Societal resilience plays an important role in managing AI-related harms,” the report said.

Because risk management measures have limitations, they will likely fail to prevent some AI-related incidents.

Societal resilience-building measures to absorb and recover from these shocks include strengthening critical infrastructure, developing tools to detect AI-generated content, and building institutional capacity to respond to novel threats. International AI Safety Report

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Toronto-based AI developer Cohere won a $339,000 contract with Shared Services Canada to supply its Command A model for CANChat. Some 11,500 federal employees across 20 departments are currently signed up for the AI assistant, and the federal government is set to start rolling it out across the rest of the public service this quarter. The deal is Ottawa’s first publicly-disclosed contract with Cohere, which it is keen to champion and with whom it has pledged to work to apply AI to government operations. CANChat users can still pick from several large language models to run their queries and prompts, according to Shared Services’ guidelines, including a fine-tuned version of Meta’s Llama, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s GPT-5. The department suggests public servants use Cohere’s model to generate text or run AI agents, and notes that it’s conversant in both English and French, ensuring they comply with language rules. The Logic

Canada can fully electrify every public transit bus in the country affordably, sustainably and without straining the electricity grid, according to a new national study led by McMaster University. The research team, led by Moataz Mohamed, associate professor of civil engineering and director of the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics, conducted the first bottom-up national assessment to examine what it would take to convert all of Canada’s transit buses to battery-electric power. Drawing on real operational data from 102 of the 110 transit agencies across the country, the analysis, published in Nature Scientific Reports, offers the most detailed national picture to date of the costs, energy needs and environmental benefits of a fully electric transit fleet. The findings directly challenge three persistent assumptions, Mohamed said: that Canada lacks the funding, the grid capacity and the emissions advantage to make nationwide bus electrification feasible. The study puts the national price tag at approximately $2 billion annually, including more than $1.7 billion for purchasing electric buses and the additional expense of building the charging infrastructure needed to support them. Electrifying the fleet would also require a 17-percent increase in the number of buses to accommodate charging times while maintaining current service levels under a depot-charging strategy. Canada is uniquely positioned to become the first country in the world to fully electrify its public transit bus network, thanks to its strong heavy-duty vehicle manufacturing capacity and relatively clean, low-cost electricity, Mohamed said. McMaster University

Netherlands-headquartered Stellantis is selling its 49-percent stake in battery manufacturing plant joint venture NextStar Energy in Windsor, Ont. for US$100 to South Korea-headquartered LG Energy Solution, according to regulatory filings. Stellantis had invested US$980 million in the plant as part of a $5-billion joint venture with LG. More than $5 billion has been invested in the facility to date, and it employs over 1,300 employees, with a long-term target of 2,500 employees as it scales to full production. Stellantis remains a committed customer for the facility and will continue to source battery products from NextStar Energy. The sale comes as Stellantis announced a US$26-billion write-off across its business amid “significantly reduced” EV sales expectations. Stellantis’ hybrid Chrysler Pacifica and electric Dodge Charger are two of the few Canadian-made consumer EVs to qualify for the federal government’s new EV purchase rebate program. LG Energy Solution

Corporate renewable energy procurement in Alberta has virtually disappeared, with deals plummeting 99 percent from 2023 levels, according to Business Renewables Centre-Canada's (BRC-Canada) annual 2025 Renewables in Review report. Meanwhile, Nova Scotia has emerged as Canada's most active market for corporate clean energy deals, marking the first time a province outside Alberta has led in annual procurement. The report, which tracks corporate renewable energy power purchase agreements Canada, reveals that only one deal was publicly announced in Alberta throughout 2025, a stark contrast to the province's historical dominance as the country's leading corporate renewables market. "Alberta's renewable energy market remains stalled," said Jorden Dye, director of BRC-Canada. "Three years of ongoing policy uncertainty, spanning market design, transmission access and carbon pricing, have frozen the commercial transactions that previously drove billions in clean energy investment." Alberta implemented a seven-month moratorium on renewable project approvals, banned projects from certain classes of agricultural lands and within 35 kilometres of protected areas such as provincial parks, instituted a new upfront recycling fee for wind and solar equipment, and imposed new reclamation security requirements for developers. Nova Scotia's Green Choice Program delivered 262 megawatts of new wind capacity in 2025, with all projects co-owned by Mi'kmaw communities. The program's 11 participating buyers include both public institutions and private corporations, demonstrating the province's successful model for enabling corporate renewable procurement. The report identifies three major areas of policy reform creating ongoing uncertainty for Alberta's market: the Restructured Energy Market, which will weaken revenue opportunities while applying new regulatory costs; transmission policy reform that overhauls Alberta's long-standing compact with generators around market access; and changes to the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction Regulation carbon pricing system, including a frozen carbon price and new compliance pathways that undermine renewable credit demand. "Nova Scotia's success proves that well-designed provincial programs can unlock significant private sector demand. We need Alberta to restore the policy certainty that made it a renewable energy leader,” Dye said. BRC-Canada

San Francisco-based Y Combinator has once again revised its standard deal terms, this time to add Canada back to its list of accepted countries of incorporation. The accelerator’s standard deal terms webpage was revised at some point between November and January to remove Canada as a supported country, which would have forced Canadian founders to reincorporate their startups in the United States, the Cayman Islands, or Singapore to participate. The change sent shockwaves through a Canadian tech community already struggling to keep “high-potential” startups in the country. After more than a week of backlash and discourse, Y Combinator posted on X that it had added Canada back to its list of accepted countries of incorporation. In a blog post accompanying the announcement, Y Combinator president and CEO Garry Tan said that the accelerator initially decided to remove Canada from the list because its top-performing Canadian companies all reincorporate in the U.S. That’s likely because Y Combinator gives them easier access to investor capital at the program’s penultimate Demo Day. News of the reversal garnered immediate positive reactions from Canadian tech leaders, including Build Canada CEO Lucy Hargreaves, Amiral Ventures partner Nectarios Economakis, and former Shopify vice-president Bram Sugarman. According to data compiled by Toronto firm Leaders Fund,  32.4 percent of Canadian-led “high-potential” startups (companies that have raised more than US$1 million) created in 2024 were headquartered in Canada, while almost half were located in the U.S. BetaKit

Bitfarms is redomiciling from Canada to Delaware and will rebrand as Keel Infrastructure as part of its pivot from bitcoin mining to data centre development for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence workloads. To support its new focus, the company has begun repaying a $300 million credit facility from Macquarie Group, starting with $100 million tied to Bitfarms’ Panther Creek site in Pennsylvania. The rebrand and relocation follow a year-long strategic review by Bitfarms, which assessed market trends and investor sentiment, CEO Ben Gagnon said. The U.S. move will help the company access a broader pool of capital, simplify its corporate structure, and position it more directly in front of institutional investors, he said. Following the move, Bitfarms will maintain its operational sites in Canada and the U.S., but its New York City office will become its sole headquarters. CoinDesk

Burnaby, B.C.-founded and California-headquartered quantum computing company D-Wave Quantum Inc. announced it has selected Florida as the location of its new corporate headquarters and a key U.S. research and development facility. A U.S. company since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2022, D-Wave plans to transition its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Boca Raton, Florida before the end of 2026. The move to Boca Raton comes amid increased interest in and demand for D-Wave’s quantum computing technology and systems, the company said. By establishing a key development hub in Boca Raton, D-Wave expects to support the advancement of its annealing quantum system roadmap with core R&D, testing and support functions housed in the new facility. In addition, the move provides D-Wave with bicoastal presence for system redundancy in the case of disaster recovery. The new corporate headquarters will be located at the historic Boca Raton Innovation Center (BRiC). D-Wave also announced an agreement to install an Advantage2 ^TM annealing quantum computer at Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Boca Raton campus. The agreement represents a $20-million commitment from FAU, aiming to accelerate and solidify the state of Florida’s position as a leader in quantum computing. D-Wave Quantum

David Silver, a well-known Google DeepMind researcher who played a critical role in many of the company’s most famous breakthroughs, has left the company to form his own startup. Silver is launching a new startup called Ineffable Intelligence. Ineffable Intelligence was formed in November 2025, and Silver was appointed a director of the company on January 16, 2026, according to documents filed with U.K. business registry Companies House. Silver’s personal web page now lists his contact as Ineffable Intelligence and provides an Ineffable Intelligence email address. In addition to his work at Google DeepMind, Silver is a professor at University College London. He got his doctorate at the University of Alberta under reinforcement learning pioneer Richard Sutton. Fortune

London, Ont.-based VersaBank signed an agreement with Toronto-based Stablecorp Digital Currencies Inc. to store and manage Stablecorp’s QCAD, Canada’s first regulatory-compliant Canadian-dollar stablecoin. VersaBank said its VersaVault® digital vault is unique in its technological approach to the security of digital assets with proven performance and validated by SOC 2 (Type I) certification, considered to be the gold standard in data security. VersaBank will earn both a fee based on the value of QCAD assets held in custody and a spread based on the QCAD deposits.  Net interest income earned from stablecoin custody activities will be included in net interest income on cash and securities, and will not impact net interest margin on credit assets. The QCAD Digital Trust is an Ontario trust that holds the reserve assets on behalf of holders of QCAD. VersaBank

The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) issued new interim guidelines for trading platforms holding crypto assets on behalf of clients. It introduces a tiered model that lets high-quality crypto custodians hold a larger percentage of the platform’s assets. Trade platforms holding crypto assets are required to register as securities dealers. Historical failures in the crypto sector, including losses due to hacking, fraud, inadequate governance and insolvency, have demonstrated that custody arrangements are a critical point of investor vulnerability, CIRO said. In the absence of formal rules specifically tailored to crypto asset custody, CIRO said it has imposed custody requirements on dealer members operating crypto-asset trading platforms through terms and conditions of membership. CIRO said this approach allows it to respond more quickly to emerging risks, tailor requirements to specific business models and risk profiles, and provide regulatory clarity and investor protection while broader policy work continues. CIRO

CIBC announced it is backing the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, becoming the latest Canadian lender, after Scotiabank and RBC, to pledge capital and expertise to the new international agency. The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is a newly established multilateral financial institution focused on providing financing for defence, security, and infrastructure projects for NATO members and allied nations. CIBC

Western University in London, Ont. is the first university to partner with Germany’s TKMS, the world’s largest non‑nuclear submarine builder, to advance defence research and strengthen Canadian sovereignty. Western signed a memorandum of understanding with TKMS, affirming its commitment to international and private-sector partnerships that support innovative, made-in-Canada solutions and positioning Western as a core academic partner in TKMS’s newly launched Canadian Defence and Dual-Use Innovation Ecosystem. The national initiative, linking universities, Indigenous businesses and industry partners in Canada, Germany and Norway, is designed to strengthen Canada’s ability to translate advanced research into deployable defence capabilities and scalable civilian applications. The partnership will accelerate technology in areas aligned with Canada’s priorities, including Arctic research, maritime capability, clean technologies, AI, autonomous systems and multi-domain operations, which link activities across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. It will also help translate research into real-world applications. As part of the collaboration, Western and TKMS will help strengthen Canada’s defence and dual‑use innovation ecosystem. TKMS, along with South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean, is a finalist for a multibillion-dollar contract to provide new submarines to replace the Royal Canadian Navy’s aging fleet. Western University

The Metlakatla First Nation in British Columbia is withdrawing its support for a $1.35-billion liquefied gas export terminal, arguing that its consent for the project was “unlawfully obtained.” Chief Robert Nelson said the Metlakatla First Nation has told the provincial and federal regulators that it will “oppose all future authorizations and permits required for the operation” of the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility, which is currently under construction near Prince Rupert. The export terminal, a joint venture between Calgary’s AltaGas and Netherlands-based Vopak, will ship liquefied propane and butane to Asia when it begins operating later this year. But the Metlakatla First Nation said it can no longer support the project after learning of what it calls an undisclosed “export monopoly” agreement between the companies and the Prince Rupert Port Authority, where the project is located. The port authority granted exclusive rights to export liquefied petroleum gas to Vopak in 2015. The Dutch company subsequently entered into the joint venture with AltaGas. The Metlakatla First Nation said the agreement gives the companies the power to “arbitrarily veto” any other project that proposes to export energy through the port. In a statement, Nelson said the nation “would have strongly opposed” the Ridley Island project had it known about the exclusivity agreement beforehand. In 2024, the Metlakatla First Nation filed a civil suit against the port authority over the exclusivity rights, seeking damages for alleged misrepresentation, breach of duty to consult and unjust enrichment. The Metlakatla First Nation is an equity partner in Trigon Pacific Terminals, which wants to construct another such terminal at the same northern B.C. port. The port authority has rejected Trigon on the grounds that it promised AltaGas and Vopak theirs would be the only one. CTV News

Hundreds of farmers and property owners in Clearview, Ont., a township of nearly 15,000 people about 40 kilometres west of Barrie, are opposing being chosen as a receiving site for the federal government’s over-the-horizon radar project. The radar system, with an estimated cost of $6 billion, is being built to monitor airspace from the Canada-United States border to the Arctic for incoming missiles. It is part of Canada’s commitment to spend $38.6 billion over the next two decades to bolster the North American Aerospace Defence Command. The radar system is being acquired through a partnership with Australia, utilizing technology based on its Jindalee Operational Radar Network. In addition to the radar receiving site in Clearview, the Department of National Defence (DND) has chosen Kawartha Lakes, northwest of Peterborough, as the location for a transmitting station. The sites will include large antennas, up to 45 metres tall in some cases, with supporting infrastructure. DND said it has been in “regular contact” with local communities, Indigenous rightsholders, municipalities and provincial officials about the project, sharing details as they become available. Those who received letters from DND but refused to sell their properties are anxious about displacement and expropriation of their land, although the department said that it has no expropriation plans at this time. In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, DND said it has purchased the required land for the preliminary receiving site in Clearview and the transmitting site in Kawartha Lakes. Work on both sites is expected to begin early this year, with initial capabilities to be installed by the end of 2029, the department said. The Canadian Press

Canadian satellite manufacturing company MDA Space Inc. is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit that alleges the company’s leaders made misrepresentations under Ontario’s Securities Act and engaged in insider trading related to the announcement and subsequent cancellation of a major contract last summer. In the plaintiffs’ court documents, two MDA shareholders allege that MDA failed to properly inform investors of the risks related to a $1.8-billion contract with U.S. telecom EchoStar Corp. to build satellites for a low-Earth orbit constellation. The agreement collapsed just over a month later when EchoStar pulled out on the basis that it was selling the wireless spectrum that its constellation would have relied on to SpaceX. In their statement of claim, plaintiffs Robert Yoon and Liu Yizheng, both retail investors in Canada who purchased MDA shares after the contract was announced but before it was cancelled, claim they are owed $340-million in damages, plus costs, according to documents filed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice by Toronto-based law firm Sotos LLP. MDA has yet to file its defence and the allegations have not been tested in court. The lawsuit names current MDA executives and board members, including CEO Mike Greenley, chief financial officer Guillaume Lavoie and chair of the board Brendan Paddick. In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, MDA spokesperson Amy MacLeod said the company finds the allegations unfounded and will defend itself in court. The next step for the plaintiffs will be to seek a certification order, in which it must prove to the court that it has met the requirements for a class-action lawsuit. It must also seek an order for leave to proceed under the Securities Act, in which it needs to demonstrate a reasonable possibility of success should the lawsuit go to trial. The Globe and Mail

The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) will be appearing at the Federal Court of Appeal on February 23, to argue that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has jurisdiction over uranium mine waste rock that has been moved off of licensed uranium mining sites in the Elliot Lake area and used as fill on residential properties. Uranium mine waste can cause indoor radon levels to rise and can expose residents to radiation above regulatory limits. Residents have called the presence of radioactive waste at their homes “an egregious failure of Canada’s nuclear regulatory system.” Uranium mine waste was widely used as fill for construction in the 1960s in Elliot Lake, and came from uranium mines, now closed. Expert testing conducted at the residents’ homes indicate they are being exposed to radiation well above allowable limits. The clients requested that the CNSC  issue an order against the mining company, BHP, responsible for the uranium mine waste. The order would require BHP to remove uranium mine waste from the properties of residents of Elliot Lake and place the waste at a licensed waste facility. CNSC denied the request. CELA and Blaise Law filed an application for judicial review of the CNSC’s decision. An oral hearing at the Federal Court of Canada took place in the summer of 2024. The application was denied due to the Court’s interpretation of section 10 of the General Nuclear Safety and Control Regulations. CELA, on behalf of a local resident, filed a notice of appeal of this most recent decision with the Federal Court of Appeal. CELA

Spain plans to ban access to social media for children under the age of 16, joining France and Australia in attempting to curb the potentially harmful impact of online content on young people. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the move as he railed against “crime and misconduct” on social media platforms, which he said were run by companies that were “wealthier and more powerful than many nations, including mine.” Decrying the “digital wild west,” he said: “Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone. A space of addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence. We will no longer accept that. We will protect them.” France has been leading the charge against social media access for children in Europe. President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants a ban for under-16s and age verification measures in place by the beginning of the next school year in September. Sánchez said Spain would also require social media platforms to implement age verification systems. He added that Spain would join France and four other European countries in a “coalition of the willing for digital affairs” created to regulate social media platforms in a coordinated way. U.K. ministers are also considering an Australia-style ban on social media for children alongside curbs on addictive app features as part of a consultation on restricting harmful internet use. Financial Times

VC, PRIVATE INVESTMENT & ACQUISITIONS

San Francisco-based Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, raised US$16 billion. Alphabet took a big part in the funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group, joined by Silicon Valley venture capital titans like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Waymo – which is backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board – is now valued at US$126 billion. Waymo's focus is on spreading its robotaxi service throughout the United States and internationally this year, the company said. Its service, available in 10 U.S. cities as of early 2026, aims to expand to about 20 metropolitan areas within a year, including London, U.K. Last year, Waymo more than tripled its annual volume to 15 million rides and now provides more than 400,000 rides weekly in the six major U.S. metropolitan areas where it operates, according to the company. Ride-sharing giant Uber last month unveiled a Lucid robotaxi, aiming to put a fleet of them to work in San Francisco later this year. New StraitsTimes – Business Times

San Francisco-headquartered AI accounting platform Fieldguide raised US$75 million, with participation from new investor Geodesic Capital and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, 8VC, and Thomson Reuters. The deal values the startup at US$700 million. Fieldguide’s AI agents are replacing functions that are typically outsourced to offshore firms in countries such as India and the Philippines, effectively acting as extended teams to chartered public accounts in the U.S. Functions can include testing revenue figures in financial statements; planning how to carry out an audit based on a client’s industry; and writing procedures that an audit team needs to go through. Fieldguide currently has 160 employees with plans to double in the next year. Yahoo!finance

Former Cohere executives Sara Hooker and Sudip Roy raised US$50-million in a seed round for Adaption, a startup building AI models that can learn continually. The round included Emergence Capital, Mozilla, Fifty Years, Threshold Ventures, Alpha Intelligence Capital, E14 Fund and Neo. Adaptation says on its website that the company believes in “on-the-fly malleable datasets, gradient free and continual learning. The most intelligent system will increasingly be defined by building an algorithm that can interact with the world.” Adaptation LinkedIn post

San Francisco-based startup Turnstile emerged from stealth operations with US$29 million in Series A round funding, to help software businesses handle pricing and payments. The round included First Round, Canadian firm OMERS Ventures, and Illuminate financial and several angel investors. Turnstile bills itself as the first self-service quote-to-cash platform: startups can sign up, connect their customer relationship management system, and generate their first quote in minutes. Turnstile uses AI to transform deal terms into structured data and automates everything downstream: invoicing, subscription management, revenue recognition and reporting. Turnstile said the funding will accelerate the company’s product roadmap and go-to-market expansion. Turnstile

Former retail startup Tulip executives Ali Asaria and Tony Salomone raised a pre-seed round of undisclosed size for Transformer Lab, which makes software and tools for machine-learning researchers. Participants in the round included Hawktail, Ripple Ventures, Garage Capital and others. Transformer Lab is designed to streamline research into artificial intelligence by replacing outdated, sometimes decades-old operating systems with a unified, modern operating system. The platform brings together a single dashboard, scalability across personal hardware and high-performance computing clusters, robust customization and a privacy-first design, according to Transformer Lab’s announcement. BetaKit 

Calgary-based Brilliant Harvest raised US$4 million in seed financing to expand its AI-powered customer experience platform for heavy equipment dealerships. New investors include FTW Ventures, Alpaca VC, Automotive Ventures, SVG Ventures, and NYA Ventures, alongside returning backers Builders VC and AltaML. Unlike generic large language models, Brilliant Harvest relies on a proprietary ingestion engine combined with a human-in-the-loop verification layer, ensuring that specifications, part numbers and service data remain accurate and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)-compliant. The company said its platform now supports dealerships representing more than 50 percent of CNH Industrial’s large dealer stores. Founder Remi Schmaltz said the funding will support product expansion beyond service teams, while maintaining capital efficiency. Calgary.tech

Halifax-based pHathom Technologies, a climate technology company developing carbon capture solutions for existing coastal bioenergy and industrial facilities, raised $4 million in a seed financing round. The round was led by Propeller Ventures, with participation from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, Invest Nova Scotia, and strategic investor Carmeuse Ventures The company said the capital will accelerate deployment of pHathom’s platform for verifiable carbon capture and durable storage using existing coastal infrastructure. Combined with the company’s lead role in the $16- million Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Marine Storage Project supported by Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, the financing brings pHathom’s total committed capital to more than $12 million. Founded in 2024 by Dr. Kimberly Gilbert, pHathom was recently named one of CleanEnergy.ca’s 10 Canadian Clean Energy Startups to Watch in 2026. CleanEnergy.ca

Montreal-based logistics fintech Velix emerged from stealth operations with a $2-million investment. Luge Capital led the pre-seed round, with participation from Stand Up Ventures and Accelia Capital. Velix also welcomed Nicholas Richards, co-founder of ShipHero, as an advisor. Velix runs a financial operations system that helps logistics businesses automatically track, reconcile and bill for shipments, so they get paid accurately and faster. The company said the funding will help grow the Velix team and further enhance the company’s financial platform for logistics finance and operations teams. Velix

Digital health care company Vancouver-based WELL Health Technologies Corp. paid $33 million in cash for 61 percent of E-Consult Canada, a platform for primary care doctors to get guidance from specialists without sending patients with referrals. WELL Health said the addition of an e-consult platform diversifies WELL’s care delivery model and positions the company to expand its e-consult services within Alberta and into additional provinces, territories, and/or Indigenous communities over time. WELL Health also bought  eight primary care clinics in Alberta, adding about 30 health providers to its network in Alberta. WELL Health announced it has upsized and extended its senior secured credit facility under WELL Health Clinics Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of WELL, to $400 million, an increase of more than $200 million over the capacity previously announced in July 2025. The credit facility was extended by a further three years to 2030. The credit facility is led by Royal Bank of Canada, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (National Association), and Toronto-Dominion Bank. WELL Health

Toronto-based vertical farming technology Elevate Farms acquired Ottawa-based Fieldless Farms, making Fieldless Farms a 100-percent wholly-owned subsidiary of Elevate Farms. Launched in 2019, Fieldless uses indoor farming technology and renewable energy to produce pesticide-free leafy greens through controlled environment agriculture. Fieldless operates a facility in Cornwall, Ont. and sells its product to Farm Boy and independent grocers across Ontario and Quebec. Elevate Farms runs a similar indoor farming operation, using hydroponics, automation, and photobiology to grow leafy greens in a climate-controlled environment. Canadian Grocer

Waterloo-Ont.-based OpenText Corporation, which offers secure information management for AI, announced an agreement sell its analytics business Vertica to Massachusetts-based Rocket Software Inc., a Bain Capital portfolio company, for US$150 million in cash. OpenText intends to use the proceeds from the sale of Vertica to reduce its outstanding debt. The deal comes one month after OpenText sold its eDOCS unit to Utah-based NetDocuments for US$163 million, amid a broader strategic reshuffle. OpenText

Toronto-based Vena announced an agreement to acquire Australia-based Acterys, a power BI-based operational planning and app platform (a Microsoft business intelligence ecosystem that connects to diverse data sources). Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Vena offers a financial planning and analysis platform powered by agentic AI and purpose-built to amplify the Microsoft technology ecosystem. Vena said by combining its Excel-native financial planning and analysis financial planning and analysis capabilities with Acterys’ proprietary Power BI write-back engine and unified analytics within Microsoft Fabric, Vena is creating the first Microsoft-native environment for “Orchestrated Planning,” an operating model that moves organizations beyond simple integrated planning into fully orchestrated and agentic AI-powered execution. Vena

BDC wants to address a financing gap in the medtech industry with its recently announced life sciences fund, Isabelle Hudon, president of BDC, said at the Medteq+ Health Innovation Summit in Montreal. The fund envelope will be a little more than $100 million, though the number isn’t confirmed yet, for exclusively direct investments into companies. The fund is expected to launch before April, Hudon told BetaKit. On stage, Hudon explained that BDC, which is Canada’s largest venture capital investor, once had a dedicated fund for investing in medical and health technologies (its Healthcare Venture Fund, launched in 2013). This fund spun off as the independent entity Amplitude Ventures in 2019, with BDC as its anchor investor, taking on portfolio management of several companies from the original fund. “We believed at a certain point that we had played our role as a development bank with this first fund, with successful investment . . . that were such a success that this fund took off outside of BDC,” Hudon said in French-language remarks (which BetaKit translated into English for publication). Now, Hudon acknowledged, there is a “flagrant lack” of capital for the medtech sector – from the early-stage to the late-stage – and a lack of technical expertise for investing in the industry. Faced with these issues, “there’s still a role for us to play in this sector and, probably, we pulled out too quickly, too early from this sector,” she said. BetaKit

Funds with ESG (environmental, social and governance) investment goals saw $84 billion in outflows last year, marking the first time the global market for such products was hit by net redemptions, according to a report by Morningstar Inc. The historic pullback coincides with the first ever net withdrawals in Europe from products claiming to take ESG factors into account, the report showed. In the U.S., ESG funds lost client money for a third consecutive year, Morningstar said. “The wider environment remains challenging, as persistent headwinds, including geopolitical tensions, the ESG backlash, regulatory backpedaling, and mixed performance, continue to weigh on investor appetite,” Hortense Bioy, head of sustainable investing research at Morningstar Sustainalytics, said in a statement. The global retreat from ESG-labeled funds comes despite significant gains in clean energy stocks, with sales of green debt also hitting a record high. Financial Post

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Last year was a good one for venture capital activity for Canadian software companies, driven by AI development

Global venture capital funding increased by roughly 31 percent year over year in 2025, driven primarily by AI as the dominant investment theme in North America, according to Montreal-headquartered venture capital firm Inovia’s State of Canadian Software Report.

Generative AI and foundation models captured about 50 percent of all global VC dollars, propelled by U.S. megadeals such as OpenAI ($40 billion), Anthropic ($13 billion), and xAI (about $15 billion).

Excluding the U.S. market, global VC activity contracted by roughly three percent, reflecting broader macroeconomic pressures affecting most regions.

Against this backdrop, Canada remains a notable outlier, recording approximately 29-percent growth and outperforming other major international hubs.

“2025 was an encouraging year of recovery for owners of software companies, even if it came up short of the sky-high expectations going into the year,” the report said.

“For companies that were able to preserve optionality [flexible and multiple future paths] through 2025, market recovery in the second half of 2025 provides reason for optimism heading into 2026. With momentum increasing in Q3 and Q4, companies, investors, and advisors are all preparing for what they expect to be a busy 2026 in capital markets.”

VC funding in Canada experienced a sharp acceleration in the second quarter of 2025, driven by a combination of AI mega-deals (most notably Waabi, which raised one of the largest rounds ever in the country) and significant global investments in scaled Canadian unicorns with durable fundamentals (such as Wealthsimple, Canada’s most recent decacorn) that are unlocking meaningful secondary liquidity.

These landmark rounds pushed total 2025 VC funding deployment above 2024 levels, positioning Canada as a market still gaining momentum.

At the same time, average deal size jumped nearly 70 percent, from $24 million in 2024 to $40 million in 2025, signaling a clear shift toward fewer, higher-conviction bets.

Cumulative Canadian VC funding since the first quarter of 2021 saw $28 billion-plus invested, 1,100+ deals, and more than 30 unicorns created.

AI-native deals have steadily gained share in Canada, increasing from  about 12 percent of total software deal value in 2015 to 40 percent in 2025, the report said. “This reflects that much of the new software being created today is inherently AI-native, underscoring how AI is structurally reshaping the country’s software funding landscape.”

Among non-AI-native Canadian companies, the strongest fundraises have come from AI-enabled businesses integrating AI into products and operations to drive growth, efficiency and margin improvement.

AI-native companies (i.e. core product built on AI) are reshaping Canada’s software funding market, and fueling larger rounds with higher valuations, the report said.

Looking at public software markets, companies with AI tailwinds have been trading in 2025 at about 16 times next-twelve-months revenue versus about four times for peers – nearly a four-times premium.

Canada punches above its weight in high-ROI, vertical GenAI applications, especially in legal tech and enterprise productivity. According to Deloitte, the country ranks 4^th globally in GenAI companies per capita.

Canada is increasingly positioned to support durable AI companies at scale, including early national compute access initiatives. Favourable data-centre economics, supported by clean energy availability and climate efficiency, reinforce these conditions.

• In March 2025, the Canadian government launched the AI Compute Access Fund, a $300-million initiative designed to provide SMEs with affordable compute power.

• In May 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed first-ever Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon.
• Provinces are increasingly implementing AI data centre strategies. In late 2024, Alberta announced its official strategy to attract data centre investments.

Achieving quantum sovereignty, where nations can create, control and benefit from their own quantum technologies, has emerged as a top priority.

Canada's 2025 budget proposes $334 million over five years to strengthen the quantum ecosystem, linking it directly to national security and economic sovereignty.

The Canadian Quantum Champions Program, launched in December 2025, has funded four key companies.

Similarly, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a multi-stage program designed to rigorously test different approaches. Of 11 companies in stage B, three are Canadian.

The United Arab Emirates’ pledge to invest $70 billion in Canada’s energy and AI infrastructure, along with the Canada-UAE Memorandum of Understanding on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Infrastructure, is expanding the runway for Canadian technology to compete globally.

The Canadian venture capital market has consistently delivered standout companies across various sectors.

A recent RBCx report shows that following a historic VC fundraising peak in 2021-2022, Canadian VC fundraising has softened.

As capital has increasingly concentrated among established managers, emerging managers, which play a critical role in backing new ideas and supporting the earliest stages of the ecosystem, have come under disproportionate pressure. They have longer fundraising cycles and are often raising smaller amounts than initially targeted.

As for talent, the latest CBRE Tech Talent Scorecard evaluates markets across 13 metrics, assessing depth, vitality, and attractiveness for employers and tech workers.

Six Canadian cities rank in the Top 20 overall rankings, including three that rose year over year. Toronto, the Waterloo Region, and Ottawa also rank among North America’s leading tech talent markets, with tech talent concentration above 10 percent versus a 5.3-percent average across the top 50 hubs.

Canada’s AI ecosystem is anchored by world-class institutes such as Mila, the world’s largest academic deep learning research centre, and the Vector Institute, which explicitly focuses on building the skills and talent base for AI adoption with extensive industry partnerships.

This foundation has produced dense, globally relevant talent clusters, with Canadian hiring and salary data showing sustained demand and wage premiums for AI, data, cybersecurity, cloud, and software roles.

Said the report: “These signals reinforce Canada’s position as a source of high-impact technical talent that is competitive on a global stage.” Innovia

REPORTS & POLICIES

AI and quantum technologies offer huge opportunities for Canada’s ocean economy

COMMENTARY

By Kendra MacDonald

Kendra MacDonald is the CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, based in Atlantic Canada.

I recently explored why ocean observation underpins a strong ocean economy. With advances from seabed mapping to real time sensors, we’re seeing the ocean in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago.

But observation is only the start. AI and quantum technologies are reshaping decision‑making at sea, and this is Canada’s moment to lead.

Our ocean is becoming increasingly digitized. Sensors are now deployed on vessels, autonomous drones, buoys and underwater platforms. Low-cost satellites are multiplying the scale and fidelity of Earth observation.

For the first time, we’re generating meaningful ocean data at a scale that AI systems can use.

Historically, lack of usable data has been one of the biggest barriers to applying AI in the ocean. Now the challenge is how we structure, share and act on that data, particularly in real time, in extreme conditions, and across jurisdictions.

AI in ocean isn’t just about building a good model. It’s about sustaining intelligent systems in remote, disconnected and unpredictable environments. What does that unlock?

• Smarter weather prediction to improve safety and operations, from ship routing to offshore wind optimization.
• Autonomous inspection of vessels, subsea cables and offshore platforms using drones paired with agentic AI.
• Adaptive digital twins that update with real time data to forecast biodiversity shifts, support stock assessments and guide infrastructure planning.
• Smarter resource management, from monitoring protected areas and detecting illegal fishing to enabling selective gear that reduces bycatch.

We’ve also seen tangible commercial results. ThisFish, an early Ocean Supercluster investment, has boosted efficiency in fish processing through automated quality inspection, proving AI can drive both sustainability and profitability.

As well, OnDeck AI, once a $10,000-Ocean Idea Challenge winner, is now emerging as a leader in marine object identification for defence, showing how small AI bets can scale into major outcomes with the right ecosystem.

Building AI for the ocean isn’t like building for fintech or e‑commerce. The ocean is open, unpredictable and interconnected; it ignores borders and bandwidth limits. To accelerate ocean intelligence, we need to design with those realities in mind.

Some things AI innovators should consider:

• The ocean moves in seasons. Missing a weather window can delay your testing by a year. Seasonality affects everything from data collection to validation and deployment.
• You’re operating in a contested, regulated space. From Indigenous data sovereignty to international maritime law, AI tools need to be designed with permission, security and compliance in mind.
• Context matters. A model trained in the Pacific might underperform in the Arctic. AI systems must adapt to local conditions and evolving baselines.
• Many ocean tech projects still stall between research and real-world deployment. There is still work to do to develop paths from pilot to product, including investments in market validation, procurement pathways and deployment infrastructure.
• Collaboration: success in ocean AI means working across sectors, engineers, Indigenous leaders, regulators and researchers. Building trust across these communities is just as important as technical performance.
• Designing with AI ethics at the core: respecting data sovereignty, minimizing environmental impact, and ensuring autonomous systems act responsibly. Ethics also means inclusion: rural, remote, and Indigenous communities must have the tools, training and insights to benefit from ocean innovation, not just experience its effects.

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster has co-funded over 150 projects, half of which now feature AI.

• Forecast AI: A $4.5-million project led by MarineLabs to deliver hyper-local marine weather forecasts using AI, improving safety and operational planning for maritime operators.
• Oceanic Digital Twin Maritime Autonomy: A $6-million initiative blending digital twins with autonomous maritime systems to increase efficiency, develop predictive maintenance algorithms and support next-generation communications frameworks.
• Enhanced Aquaculture Health Monitoring: A $5.9-million AI-driven initiative to track fish health in real time and reduce stock losses, helping future-proof global food supply.
• Maritime Emergency Response System: A $1.4-million AI system to enhance Canada’s ability to respond to maritime incidents with real time data and decision support.
• Environmental Genomics for Aquaculture: A $2.9-million project leveraging AI to interpret eDNA for improved pathogen detection and environmental performance in  salmon aquaculture.
• Smart Hook: A $4-million project to build an autonomous recovery system for  underwater assets, merging robotics and AI to tackle one of ocean tech’s most operationally difficult problems.

These are commercial-scale projects built with partners, co-investment from industry and global applicability.

Quantum computing could dramatically accelerate what’s possible (see the Canadian National Quantum Strategy). Optimizing marine logistics, simulating ocean-climate interactions, managing high-volume sensor data – these are computationally intensive problems that could be ideally suited to quantum computing as capabilities mature.

Combine quantum with autonomous systems and real time analytics, and we move from reactive to predictive ocean intelligence.

Canada has the world’s longest coastline, vast ocean territory and strong AI and quantum ecosystems, but these strengths are still too often siloed.

Ocean innovators rarely connect with quantum labs, AI founders don’t know the ocean’s urgent challenges, and investors haven’t yet recognized the ocean economy as a major data and intelligence frontier.

It’s also a key moment for dual‑use ocean technologies, where civilian, environmental and defense needs converge in areas like surveillance, maritime awareness and autonomous systems. Canada’s reputation for trusted, secure and resilient tech gives it an edge.

The task now is to build the bridges, linking people, platforms and capital, so Canada doesn’t just participate in this convergence but helps lead it globally.

Canada has a generational opportunity to lead in ocean intelligence. With world‑class AI and quantum talent, rapidly expanding ocean datasets, and one of the planet’s most complex marine environments, including an Arctic coastline that spans nearly half the country, we’re positioned to turn this advantage into a global export.

But we need to move quickly and responsibly. For AI and deep‑tech investors, the next frontier isn’t land or space, it’s the ocean. Canada’s Ocean Supercluster

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Federal cuts to foreign aid conflict with the need for Canadian scientific innovation to have global engagement

The federal government’s cuts to foreign  aid – especially in global health and infectious diseases – are at odds with the need for Canadian scientific innovation to have global engagement to have impact, says Phaedra Henley.

In an interconnected risk landscape, gaps in global surveillance create blind spots not only for countries most exposed, but also for Canada’s own health security, said Henley, an associate professor and senior adviser for global partnerships (Canada) at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda.

The experience during the COVID-19 pandemic “underscores why research excellence alone is not enough and why policy choices about global health funding matter,” she said in a commentary in Policy Options.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian researchers contributed to the development and refinement of genomic tools used to track SARS-CoV-2 variants internationally.

Yet in many low- and middle-income countries, those tools could not be deployed at scale, Henley said.

Laboratories lacked sustained funding, data platforms were fragmented, and trained personnel were in short supply. Samples accumulated faster than they could be sequenced, and early warning signals arrived late.

“The limitation was not Canadian science, but the fragility of the global health systems needed to carry it into practice,” Henley said.

Robust investment expands research infrastructure and deepens links to global knowledge networks, she added.

“But when these investments occur alongside cuts to global health funding, it reveals a disconnect between the goal of building scientific capacity at home and Canada’s willingness to make an impactful contribution to the global systems that make that science effective.”

Federal Budget 2025 announced a $2.75-billion reduction to Canada’s International Assistance Envelope over four years. The cuts specifically target development funding for global health, a sector where Canada previously held a strong international reputation.

For example, Canada announced a 16-percent reduction in its pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for its next funding cycle ($1.02 billion, down from the previous pledge), reversing a trend of increasing support.

The reduction to the Global Fund is expected to hinder progress against HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, potentially resulting in fewer people receiving life-saving treatments.

Organizations like Doctors Without Borders warn that cutting funding for infectious disease control weakens global health systems, leaving the world and Canada more vulnerable to future pandemics.

Henley noted that progress in genomics, epidemiology, climate modelling and environmental surveillance circulates internationally.

These advancements inform global monitoring systems and shape how governments prepare for emerging risks. Canada both contributes to and depends on this shared scientific landscape, a reality reflected in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s emphasis on international research partnerships as essential to improving health outcomes for Canadians.

Yet research only achieves real-world impact when the institutions capable of applying the advancements it delivers are adequately resourced, Henley said.

A reduction in Canada’s contribution to global health programs has two negative consequences, she said. First, it weakens surveillance networks, response capacity and health-system readiness in places facing the highest risk. In turn, this widens the gap between discovery and implementation.

Pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, food-system disruptions, climate-driven emergencies and ecosystem degradation cannot be managed through domestic strategy alone, Henley pointed out.

Research done by Canadian institutions is indispensable in addressing these challenges. “But to work, it needs to be connected to health systems worldwide, functioning multilateral institutions and policies that support the flow of data, tools and resources.”

An example of this is genomic surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian research expertise proved indispensable, but its impact depended on functioning laboratories, data-sharing platforms and reporting systems beyond Canada’s borders to detect variants early enough to inform effective response.

When domestic science budgets grow while global health commitments decline, the architecture that turns research into action becomes less effective, Henley said. “Scientific insight without operational capacity is like a blueprint without the builders or materials required to make it real.”

By contrast, ensuring ongoing support for international entities such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria actually helps optimize the impact of research excellence at home.

Going forward, Henley said, this can be achieved not just by ensuring funding, but also by applying a more coherent approach that links new research investments to:

• Global risk priorities, ensuring that funded projects address cross-border threats.
• Long-term partnerships with institutions in low- and middle-income countries, so knowledge is produced and applied collaboratively.
• Systems that translate research into practice, including surveillance platforms, data-sharing mechanisms and public-health capacity.
• Equitable scientific policy, recognizing that global threats cannot be managed if only wealthy countries are equipped to study them.

“In an era of intersecting global risks, science and global responsibility cannot move in opposite directions,” Henley said.

On top of that reality, Canada enjoys a strong reputation as a science-driven country on the world stage, she noted.

“To sustain that reputation, and to ensure Canadian research contributes meaningfully to global stability, scientific ambition must be matched with predictable and sustained global health commitments.” Policy Options

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Ransomware threat is growing and threatens all Canadian Organizations: Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

The ransomware threat against Canada continues to increase and evolve quickly, as threat actors adopt sophisticated tactics to carry out cybercrime, according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre).

“All organizations in Canada are at risk. Threat actors are opportunistic and financially motivated,” said the Cyber Centre’s Ransomware Threat Outlook 2025 to 2027, its latest assessment of ransomware threats facing Canada. The Cyber Centre is part of Communications Security Establishment Canada.

For the purposes of the Cyber Centre’s assessment, ransomware generally refers to a type of malware that denies a user access to a system or data until a sum of money is paid. However, the Cyber Centre recognizes that ransomware has evolved to also include incidents where data theft and extortion are used in place of encryption.

The Cyber Centre's report covers the early history of ransomware, highlights emerging and projected trends, outlines its impact on Canada and Canadian organizations, and debunks common myths and misconceptions.

All Canadian organizations, regardless of size or sector, are at risk of being targeted by ransomware, according to the report.

In addition to impacting the infrastructure, data, supply chain, and operations of organizations, a ransomware attack can also impact Canadians’ livelihoods by disrupting the critical services they depend on.

Other key points in the report include:

• Threat actors are evolving:They are leveraging new technologies – like artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency – while developing new extortion tactics to increase their financial reward
• Basic cyber hygiene is effective:Regular software updates, multi-factor authentication, and caution with phishing attempts are simple steps that help protect organizations and increase their cyber threat readiness.
• Collaboration is essential:Tackling ransomware requires continued cooperation and diligence among law enforcement, government agencies, private organizations, and the public.

Ransomware threat actors have demonstrated adaptability to changes in the digital landscape and will very likely continue leveraging advancements in areas like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency while developing new extortion tactics to increase their financial reward, the report said.

Threat actors have been leveraging improvements in generative AI, particularly large language models, across various stages of ransomware attacks, including:

• developing malware.
• generating deepfakes.
• automating negotiations with victims.
• conducting vulnerability research.
• implementing social engineering strategies.

Ransomware actors often leverage initial access points such as unpatched software, compromised credentials, phishing or remote desk protocol. This can generate particular vulnerabilities for entities with minimal capabilities to invest in information technology infrastructure or cyber security training for employees

The impacts of ransomware – including operational downtime, supply chain delays, diminished consumer trust and recovery costs – can have serious impacts on small and medium businesses and could be the deciding factor on whether these businesses are able to remain commercially viable.

The Cyber Centre assesses that that ransomware actors will continue to leverage cryptocurrency because of the anonymity it offers compared with mainstream financial assets.

Increased regulatory pressures and law enforcement action against virtual financial crimes have further encouraged threat actors to find ways to hide their transactions.

Geopolitical conflicts are increasingly extending into the digital environment as more governments engage in cybercrime, including ransomware, as an alternative means to retaliate against adversaries or bypass international sanctions. 

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the ransomware group Conti publicly threatened to retaliate against Western countries that launched cyber attacks against Russian critical infrastructure.

According to open-source reporting, amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East, a ransomware group linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran began offering higher proceeds to actors who engaged in cyber attacks on Iran’s adversaries.

The majority of the top ransomware groups impacting Canada are almost certainly financially motivated and opportunistic. The Cyber Centre assesses that the core membership of these groups is most likely Russian speaking and operating out of the Commonwealth of Independent States, although their affiliates operate globally.

Based on information gathered in 2023 from a sample of over 12,0000 Canadian organizations:

• 13 percent of businesses reporting cyber security incidents identified ransomware as the method of attack, a two-percent increase since Cyber Centre’s 2021 report.
• Following an increase of $200 million from 2019 to 2021, the total recovery costs associated with cyber security incidents in 2023 doubled to $1.2 billion.
• Approximately 22 percent of businesses reported that formal training was provided to non-IT workers to improve and progress their cyber security skills.
• There was an 11-percent decrease in organizations employing cyber security workers, primarily due to the use of third-party cyber security consultants and managed service providers.

“The Cyber Centre assesses that ransomware attacks will remain a significant threat to Canada in the next two years. With the rise of AI, these threats have become cheaper and faster to conduct and harder to detect.”

“It is crucial that Canadian organizations looking to safeguard their systems and information consider cyber security at the core of everything they do,” the Cyber Centre said.

This includes implementing fundamental cyber security practices such as patching operational technology, enabling automatic updates and multi-factor authentication, and encouraging secure-by-design.

“Continued collaboration between domestic law enforcement, the private sector, and international allies will be required to bolster understanding of the threat ecosystem and to coordinate appropriate proactive and responsive actions to prevent the global impact and spread of ransomware.” Communications Security Establishment Canada

******************************************************************************************************************************Why drug approval in Canada should not rely on foreign regulators

Canada needs to evaluate whether using decisions from other countries and jurisdictions on whether or not to approve new drugs will actually be beneficial for this country, says Dr. Joel Lexchin.

Australia has been using such a system since 2018. One of the benefits touted by the Australian government was that new drugs would be submitted faster to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the equivalent of Health Canada, he wrote in a commentary in The Conversation.

But comparing the gap in the timing of submissions to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the TGA since Australia began using foreign regulator decisions doesn’t provide any convincing evidence that this has actually happened, he said.

Lexin is associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and professor emeritus at York University. His book, Private profits versus public policy: the pharmaceutical industry and the Canadian state, was published by University of Toronto Press in 2016 and his most recent book, Doctors in denial: why Big Pharma and the Canadian medical profession are too close for comfort, was published in 2017 by Lorimer. 

Lexchin said his new study, currently under peer review, looks at the 29 drugs that have so far used the Australian system.

Twenty-two of those drugs have been evaluated by one or more organizations that look at how much additional therapeutic value new drugs provide compared to existing therapies. Sixteen of the 22 offered only minor new gains and just two were a major benefit.

Health Canada announced in the Canada Gazette Part 1 on December 22, 2025 that it was beginning a 70-day consultation period on using the decisions of foreign drug regulators such as the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to approve new drugs in Canada.

If the proposal is approved, Health Canada will evaluate reports from the other regulators, and provided those reports are satisfactory and that the drugs met certain conditions (for example, the drug being considered by Health Canada has the same strength, dosage form, route of administration, medicinal ingredient and indications as the foreign drug), the new drug will be approved, Lexchin said.

Health Canada’s announcement appears to be a continuation of the federal government’s Red Tape Review launched in July 2025, he noted.

According to a report on this initiative, Health Canada’s rationale for this change is that “industry stakeholders have indicated that they face undue burden due to overlapping or unclear regulatory requirements, complex regulatory approvals, and onerous reporting and information demands” and have “raised concerns about the time it takes to get products to market.”

Health Canada states that “enhanced international regulatory alignment reduces burden for industry and can support increased health product submissions to Canada” and increase the number of new drugs available to Canadians.

These views reflected in the Red Tape Review align with those of the pharmaceutical industry, Lexchin pointed out.

In its 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government, Innovative Medicines Canada,  the main pharma industry lobby group, said that “reliance on trusted foreign regulatory reviews where appropriate . . . will streamline drug approvals and enable Health Canada to be a global regulatory leader.”

Faster drug approvals would also mean a shorter timeline to revenue generation for drug companies.

The U.S. approves more new drugs than Canada does. However, a recent study that compared Canada and the U.S. found that many drugs available in the U.S., but not north of the border, already had existing alternatives that are therapeutically and chemically similar, Lexchin said. “The small number of drugs that were unique to the U.S. were not very clinically important.”

If Canada were already using foreign decisions, aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm) might have been put on the market in Canada as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

In the U.S., the FDA approved aducanumab despite a lack of evidence that it would benefit Alzheimer’s patients, and despite and the negative vote of 10 of the 11 members of the FDA’s advisory committee – the 11^th member abstained – and the subsequent resignation of three of the committee members.

The manufacturer eventually pulled Aduhelm from the U.S. market because almost no doctors were prescribing it.

Some industry observers think the standards that the FDA uses to approve new drugs have been declining over the past 15 to 20 years, Lexchin said.

The FDA has increased its reliance on what are called expedited drug approval pathways in recent decades. These allow drugs onto the market with lower levels of evidence, he said.

Although they were initially designed for drugs that treat rare conditions or life-threatening illnesses that don’t have effective treatments, researchers have found that these expedited pathways are being increasingly used for drugs that may not be innovative.

Canada also needs to think about the consequences of the homogenization of drug approval standards, Lexchin said.

 Homogenization ignores the development of different regulatory cultures in different jurisdictions that arise from networks of individuals who produce regulatory policy, determine testing standards and ultimately decide on market access for new drugs, he said.

When presented with essentially the same evidence, the FDA and the EMA often make different decisions about oncology drugs. A 2020 study found frequent discordance between the FDA and the EMA.

Another study compared the approval of 42 cancer drugs between 1995 and 2008 by the FDA and the EMA, and showed that in almost 50 percent of cases, there was a discrepancy between EMA and FDA decisions.

“So far, there is no evidence to back up the claim that using decisions made by foreign drug regulators will lead to faster access to newer and better drugs,” Lexchin said. “Before Canada proceeds down this pathway, Health Canada needs to show that it will improve public health.” The Conversation

THE GRAPEVINE – News about people, institutions and communities

 Calgary-based clean startup Carbon Upcycling named Markus Kritzler as CEO. Kritzler, who joined the company as chief revenue officer in the spring of 2025, will lead its North American and European expansion plans. The company’s co-founder Apoorv Sinha, who was CEO, will become president and focus on investor and external relations among other priorities, the company said. Carbon Upcycling turns carbon dioxide emissions and industrial waste materials into cement products. The company has been building its first commercial facility in Mississauga, Ont., which it expects to begin operations this year. Carbon Upcycling is targeting deploying 5 million tonnes of annual clean cementitious capacity over the next five years. Carbon Upcycling

Bindu Dhaliwal, senior vice-president, corporate governance & ESG at CIBC, has joined the Ottawa-based Institute for Sustainable Finance’s (ISF) board of directors. A lawyer by training, Bindu joined CIBC in the spring of 2021, bringing over 15 years of leadership experience and subject matter expertise to her current role. Prior to joining CIBC, she served as Ombudsperson and Associate General Counsel, ESG, at another major financial institution, where she led a sustainability team, managed a global whistleblower program, and advised academic programs on sustainability and social finance. ISF

Substack, the newsletter platform co-founded by University of Waterloo and Kik alumni, has added Mark Swierszcz as its first head of partnerships in Canada. In his new job, he’ll lead Substack’s expansion and partner strategy across Canada. Swierszcz, based in Toronto, joins Substack after six years as Google Canada’s creative effectiveness lead, where he helped “elevate the creative impact” of Canadian advertising across Google and YouTube. Before that, Swierszcz led YouTube’s creator strategy in Canada and ran digital operations at MTV and MuchMusic. BetaKit

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) announced the reappointment of Samantha Haverkamp, as a member of the Farm Products Council of Canada for a term of three years, effective April 21, 2026. Haverkamp is a hatching egg producer on her family farm outside of Vanessa, Ont. She holds a diploma in Horticulture from the University of Guelph, a Bachelor of Science (Honours) Degree in Agriculture, and a Certificate in Business. Her extensive sector experience also includes work with an agriculture input company, where she purchased grain and sold fertilizer, as well as with a financial lending institution serving agricultural and commercial businesses. AAFC

New York City-headquartered Brookfield Asset Management named Connor Teskey as CEO and a member of the board of directors, taking over from Bruce Flatt, with Flatt remaining CEO of the overarching Brookfield Corp., as well as chair of the board of Brookfield Asset Management. Thirty-eight-year-old Teskey was appointed head of Brookfield’s renewables business in 2020. He grew up in Vancouver and attended Western University. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Canadian physician, longevity influencer and author Dr. Peter Attia stepped down from a role as chief science officer with nutrition bar maker David Protein and has been scrubbed from the website of Biograph, the company he co-founded, after his name appeared in more than 1,700 Epstein file documents, including in emails Attia called “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible.” However, Attia said he wasn’t involved in any criminal acidity and his interactions with Epstein “had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone.” Peter Attia post on X

The federal government appointed risk-management professional Lorraine Audsley as the CEO of Canada Enterprise Emergency Funding Corporation (CEEFC), the new federal agency meant to help companies hit by U.S. tariffs, effective February 24. Audsley is the former chief risk officer at Export Development Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. CEEFC, a subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, is in charge of the $10-billion large enterprise tariff loan facility that Prime Minister Mark Carney first announced in March, 2025, to help businesses affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. So far, the facility has only issued two loans totalling $515-million – $400 million to Algoma Steel Inc. and $115 million to Arctic Canadian Diamond Company Ltd. – representing barely five percent of its funding capacity. The Globe and Mail

Rick Christiaanse stepped down as CEO at Invest Alberta after four years, the organization said in a statement (which was later removed) on its website. Keith Bradley, the organization’s former chief operating officer who joined Invest Alberta in November 2023, was named acting CEO. Invest Alberta was established as a crown corporation by the province in 2020 to help Alberta recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a $17-million budget, the corporation’s mandate is to attract investment from a diversity of industries. It reports directly to Alberta’s premier. BetaKit

Radia Johnson and Artem Cherkasov joined CQDM’s scientific committee. Johnson is a computational biologist and life sciences executive specializing in biomarker and target discovery, as well as the application of artificial intelligence to biopharmaceutical research. She is currently senior director of computational discovery science at Tempus AI and previously held strategic roles at Gilead Sciences and Genentech. Cherkasov is a full professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and a life sciences researcher specializing in AI-assisted drug discovery and translational research. An internationally recognized leader, he has translated numerous academic discoveries into concrete innovations, holding over 80 patents and having transferred several drug candidates to industry, including three currently in clinical trials. CQDM

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