GOVERNMENT FUNDING & NEWS

 U.S. tariffs are expected to cause declines in Canada’s GDP and job losses: Deloitte

Trade tensions are expected to cause back-to-back declines in Canada’s real GDP this year, down 1.1 percent in the second quarter and 0.9 percent in the third, according to a report by Deloitte. By definition, two straight quarters of negative GDP growth constitute a recession.

However, strong growth at the end of 2024 and the beginning of this year will keep annual growth for 2025 in positive territory with a gain of 1.2 percent expected, Deloitte’s latest economic outlook says.

All provinces are expected to experience growth this year, although gains will be subdued in the manufacturing-heavy provinces of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

However, it is a real possibility that the current tariff carve out by the U.S. under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement will be eliminated, resulting in Canadian products losing their preferential access to the U.S. market, the report says.

In this scenario, economic conditions would deteriorate in the near-term and Canada’s real GDP would be permanently lower by around three percent by 2030.

If Canada’s average tariff rate is lower or higher than other countries, Canada’s economy will generally fare better or worse.

Also, if tariffs are applied to products where Canada only has small production volumes, the aggregate impacts will be small. But if tariffs apply to Canada’s largest sectors (such as energy and motor vehicles and parts), Canada will see more significant impacts.

Tariffs can lead to job losses, especially in industries directly affected by tariffs, the report says.

The higher costs of exporting Canadian goods to the U.S. are expected to lower demand for Canadian exports and consequently result in layoffs.

“Strained trade relations could also deter investment in Canada and limit job creation. With fewer people working, the unemployment rate would rise.”

The Bank of Canada’s outlook survey showed a marked decline in hiring plans.

Deloitte says it expects employment growth to slow to one percent in 2025, with most of that gain having already occurred.

Job losses will push the unemployment rate above seven percent with the risk of steeper trade tariffs leading to large job losses.

Federal government policy changes will cut temporary residents by 30 percent and decrease annual permanent immigration from nearly 500,000 to 365,000 by 2027, the report says. “With that, we expect employment growth to remain flat in 2026 before picking up slightly in 2027.”

Uncertainties surrounding the magnitude, scope and duration of tariff policies are causing serious concerns for businesses, the report says.

According to the Bank of Canada’s latest Business Outlook Survey, investment intentions deteriorated sharply in the first quarter of 2025, especially in the manufacturing sector.

While the oil and gas sector is expected to be less impacted by the tariffs, the recent sharp drop in oil prices may affect investment in the sector, posing downside risks for medium-term capital expenditure plans.

Statistics Canada reported that growth in 12 of the 20 industrial sectors that StatsCan follows declined in February.

Deloitte says that after a strong first quarter, tariffs will likely significantly impact business investment in the second and third quarters of this year, leading to a 0.9-percent drop in non-residential business investment in 2025.

The tough reality of the current trading climate will manifest later in the year, as a series of U.S. sector-specific tariffs on steel, aluminum, lumber and autos act as major drags on the Canadian export and manufacturing outlook.

While the threat of large tariffs is very real and will have damaging economic consequences, there has been an unexpected positive consequence of those threats, the report says.

This includes a rallying of Canadians to support local businesses and products and of politicians to tackle some long-standing issues that are holding back Canada’s growth prospects.

“We must reduce our dependency on the U.S. market for our goods and services,” the report says.

Without significant productivity gains, a lack of innovation and a persistently devalued dollar, diversifying Canada’s customer base “has become a must to thrive in the new world order.”

Canadians need to actively inspire, collaborate and help execute with local governments to streamline permits, regulations and tax systems across all three levels of government, the report says.

Canada also must capitalize on this rare moment of provincial alignment to eliminate antiquated internal trade barriers, the report adds.

“While all the negative tariff news can be overwhelming, there have been some unexpected silver linings from the situation we find ourselves in with a renewed focus on boosting our productivity and diversifying our trade,” the report says.

“If we can capitalize on this momentum, Canada’s economy may well find itself emerging from this shock stronger and more resilient.” Deloitte 

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Global Affairs Canada announced the launch of new resources from the Trade Commissioner Service (TCS) aimed at supporting Canadian exporters to help them benefit from the tariff-free treatment provided under the Canada-United States-Mexico (CUSMA) agreement. To better assist exporters, the TCS is providing new and comprehensive information on rules of origin and customs procedures under the Agreement, including:  

• a web page on understanding CUSMA compliance.
• a step-by-step guide to CUSMA compliance.
• self-serve resources for problem solving related to tariffs.
• a list of support programs available to businesses from federal and provincial partners.

Small and medium-sized enterprises can also call the Government of Canada’s dedicated phone line for information on CUSMA compliance. The new hotline, available at 1-833-760-1167, offers advice on:

• CUSMA rules of origin.
• certification of origin.
• resources for customs procedures at the U.S. border. Global Affairs Canada

Canadian auto parts traded under North American free trade rules will be exempted from U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25-percent auto tariffs, according to new U.S. guidance. A bulletin from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, issued to American importers, said auto parts that are eligible for preferential treatment under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) on free trade will be subject to a zero per cent tariff, “other than automobile knock-down kits or parts compilations.” All other parts, as well as non-U.S. parts in passenger vehicles completed outside the U.S., will still be subjected to a 25-percent tariff starting May 3, the bulletin says. The guidance appears to confirm language in Trump’s April executive order that said the 25-percent tariff would not apply to CUSMA-compliant auto parts and directed his administration to set up a process for that exemption. Despite the easing of tariffs on auto parts, General Motors is moving from a three-shift to a two-shift operation this fall at its Oshawa assembly plant, the CBC reported. There will be 700 workers laid off at the plant, in addition to 1,500 people who work in other places throughout the supply chain, said Jeff Gray, president of Unifor Local 222. The Oshawa plant assembles light- and heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado pick-up trucks for the North American market, which are also assembled at factories in the U.S. and Mexico. Global News

A bipartisan measure that sought to undo the sweeping tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on most countries narrowly failed in the GOP-led Senate. The vote ended in a tie, 49-49, with three Republicans – Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – joining all Democrats present in support of the resolution, which was designed to terminate the national emergency Trump declared to implement his global tariffs. Vice-President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote to table a Democratic motion that would allow them to force another vote next week on the tariffs resolution. Even if it passed, the resolution most likely wouldn't have been taken up in the GOP-controlled House. The White House also said Tuesday that Trump would veto the resolution if it reached his desk. The vote came the day the Commerce Department revealed that the U.S. economy contracted 0.3 percent in the first quarter of the year, a development that Trump and White House officials tried to downplay. NBC News

An open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney signed by executives from 38 energy companies said Carney’s pledge to make Canada an energy superpower will require major investment and substantial changes to the country’s energy and carbon policies in order to attract private capital. “Over the last decade, the layering and complexity of energy policies has resulted in a lack of investor confidence and consequently, a barrier to investment – especially when compared to the United States, which is taking steps to simplify its permitting process,” the executives said. It was their second open letter in a matter of weeks, with the first addressing all four major federal party leaders. The group called Carney’s commitment to limiting the federal review process for nationally significant projects to two years a “positive step” but insufficient, urging him instead to target a six-month timeline from the application. The companies also agreed with Carney’s pledge to double the federal Indigenous loan guarantee program to $10 billion. However, the companies want the current federal Impact Assessment Act (known as Bill C-69) and the ban on oil tanker traffic on British Columbia’s northern coast to be overhauled. The sector also wants the planned federal cap on oil and gas emissions eliminated and to let the provinces administer carbon policies and prices to enable emission-reductions investments. Enbridge

The Government of Alberta is launching a challenge in the Court of Appeal of Alberta to the federal government’s proposed net-zero Clean Electricity Regulations, alleging that they unconstitutionally stray into the province’s jurisdiction. Under Canada’s constitution, provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over the development, conservation and management of sites and facilities in the province for the generation and production of electrical energy, the Alberta government said. The regulations would make Alberta’s electricity system more than 100 times less reliable than the province's supply adequacy standard, the government maintained. The regulations are “ineffective, unachievable and irresponsible, and place Albertans’ livelihoods – and more importantly, lives – at significant risk,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said. The regulations’ reliance on unproven technologies makes it almost impossible to operate natural gas plants without costly upgrades, threatening investment, grid reliability and Alberta’s energy security, the government said. Govt. of Alberta

The Government of Quebec provided Montreal-based incubator-accelerator Centech with $4.5 million to help early-stage deep tech and medtech startups jump the hurdle from research to commercialization. The new commitment is allocated through the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, and Energy’s five-year, $7.5-billion innovation strategy, which is set to expire in 2027. Centech, a non-profit organization housed at engineering-focused university École de technologie supérieure, seeks to support early-stage startups, particularly in deep tech, robotics, and medtech. Along with the new funding, Centech is making a move this summer and establishing an office at Ax-C, an innovation hub set to open in June on the former trading floor of the Montreal Exchange. Ax-C is backed by government and private sector partners such as Bell, Desjardins, Google, and Fonds de solidarité de Québec. The centre is meant to serve as a co-working space for entrepreneurs and other tech ecosystem players, following the closure of Notman House, a hub for tech startups, last year. BetaKit

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Western Standard advocates for Western separation while proposed Alberta government legislation makes securing a referendum easier

The time has come for the West – led by Alberta and Saskatchewan – to declare its independence and choose a new path, the Western Standard editorial board said.

Given the re-election of the federal Liberals, “the East has decided that it will continue down the path of destruction that Canada is currently on. It is a path that will lead to the ruin of that once great and proud country. It is a path that has been consistently rejected by Westerners, and one that we can no longer stay on with them.”

Canada has a federal government that does not practice federalism, the editorial board maintained.

“It preaches rights but practices coercion. It promises to build, but all it produces is debt. And so we must examine both the West's appetite for independence, and the constitutional mechanism provided under Canadian law to achieve it — the Clarity Act.”

The East has voted to “continue plundering the prosperity of the West while strangling its ability to generate new wealth,” the editorial board said.

Saskatchewan must either hold a referendum or introduce citizens’ initiative legislation to allow for one to be triggered, the board said.

Alberta must likewise amend its citizens’ initiative legislation to make it logistically feasible for a referendum to be held.

“It is time to raise the flag of independence. The West wants out,” the board said.

The day after the federal election delivered a fourth consecutive Liberal government, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's government tabled electoral reform legislation that makes it far easier for activists to put Alberta's existence within Canada on the ballot for voters.

The proposed legislation would require 170,000 people, or about 3.5 percent of Alberta’s population, to sign a petition required to force a separation referendum designed to take the province’s five million people and their land out of Canada.

The United Conservative Party amendment would give referendum-seekers 120 days to gather enough signatories.

Alberta independence groups had already been gathering online registrants who were keen to add their names to a petition drive when the law required far more Albertans – around 600,000 – to sign up to trigger a constitutional referendum, CBC reported.

Alberta Prosperity Project, a group that was already plotting a referendum petition drive before the Mark Carney Liberals' win, claims that it now has a sufficient number of people registered online to become signatories to meet this lower threshold.

An Angus Reid poll in early April showed 25 percent support among Albertans for separation and 75 percent opposed.

"I'm not going to prejudge what citizens are going to do for a petition," Smith told a news conference, despite all the recent activism and publicity developing around one such petition in particular.

Multiple First Nations chiefs have warned Smith to tamp down separatist threats, because Alberta is on the land of Treaties 6, 7 and 8.

"Those are treaties with the Crown, and Alberta lacks the authority to interfere with or negate those treaties," Troy Knowlton, chief of the Piikani Nation, said in a statement. "Proceeding down a path toward separation cannot be undertaken without the consent of Alberta's First Nations."

Former premier Jason Kenney posted a long message on X denouncing the Alberta separatist threat as a doomed movement that distracts from a productive conversation about Alberta's place in Canada.

"Separatists can't elect a dog catcher in Alberta," he wrote. "So why allow their futile ranting to dominate the debate, distract from the real issues, and distort Alberta's real identity as a proud, confident, patriotic province?" Western Standard, CBC

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U.S. President Donald Trump wants to end funding for TRIO, federal work study and other grant programs that help students from disadvantaged backgrounds access college and support the students on campus, as part of a broader plan to cut $163 billion in non-defense programs. The funding cuts were outlined in a budget proposal released on May 2. The document, considered a “skinny budget,” is essentially a wish list for the fiscal year 2026 budget for Congress to consider. The proposed budget plan slashes nearly $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $12 billion from the Education Department, and nearly $5 billion from the National Science Foundation. The skinny budget also eliminates funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, AmeriCorps, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Humanities. NASA’s budget would be cut by nearly 25 percent, from about US$25 billion to US$18 billion, and the Lunar Gateway project would be terminated, SpaceNews reported. Gateway is a small lunar space station, in development with international partners, that would have been used to support future Space Launch System and Orion missions. Also being phased out are the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, and operations at the International Space Station would be reduced. As part of the Artemis program, Canada is contributing the Canadarm3 and health technology to Gateway. The skinny budget proposal kicks off what will likely be a year-long effort to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year, which starts October 1. Inside Higher Ed

 RESEARCH, INNOVATION & COLLABORATION

 The partners of Quantum Days issued a “Call to Action” to advance quantum in Canada and amplify its global impact. Partners in the Call to Action are Deep Tech Canada, Institut Quantique- l’université de Sherbrooke, Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control - University of Toronto, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute – University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, and Quantum City - University of Calgary. To maintain Canada’s leadership in quantum science and technology, strategic actions must be taken to retain talent, invest in Canadian SMEs and grow anchor companies, the partners said. “The next phase of the National Quantum Strategy must be informed by industry needs, global competition and the evolving landscape of quantum technologies.” Key actions required to drive impact are:

• Incentivize the growth of anchor companies in Canada to create dense ecosystems with local supply chains.
• Fund bold initiativesto accelerate quantum technology development.
• Strengthen investment in fundamental quantum research to sustain long-term innovationas there are still important knowledge gaps to enable quantum solutions.
• Create safe sandboxes for collaborative innovation with trusted partners to de-risk and fast-track the commercialization of dual-use quantum technologies in Canada.
• Invest in ecosystem development through cross-sector partnerships, attracting capital and amplifying quantum innovation.
• Incentivize the integration of quantum technologies to existing platformsto accelerate commercialization.
• Establish manufacturing capabilities for quantum technologiesto ensure Canada’s technological sovereignty.
• Enable the protection and retention of Canadian intellectual property.
• Transform government procurement policies to create testbeds for Canadian quantum innovations, reducing risk and driving adoption.
• Develop a future-ready National Quantum Strategy 2.0with a bold mindset focusing on excellence to maintain Canada’s leadership.
• Support industry participation in standards development to ensure Canadian quantum innovations align with global market requirements. Deep Tech Canada

Toronto-based photonic quantum computing company Xanadu Quantum Technologies announced a new strategic research and development partnership with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The partnership aims to accelerate the development of silicon photonic integrated circuits for quantum applications, with the goal of delivering transformative technologies for both military and commercial applications. The four-year R&D agreement combines AFRL's expertise in deployed advanced technologies with Xanadu's work in photonic quantum computing and chip-scale integration. Through the agreement, AFRL will provide Xanadu access to its Process Design Kit (PDK) for silicon photonic circuits. Xanadu will evaluate the PDK within its software ecosystem and offer technical feedback to help AFRL tailor its chip designs for quantum-specific applications, including entangled photon generation and “squeezed” light sources – critical elements for quantum computing and communication systems. Beyond technological advancements, the partnership will facilitate joint exploration of commercial applications, manufacturing roadmaps and other knowledge exchanges. Xanadu also said it is collaborating with California-based materials engineering firm Applied Materials, Inc. to develop the first 300-millimetre, high-volume-compatible process for building superconducting transition edge sensors (TESs). These TESs are a core component of photon-number-resolving detectors, which are key elements that enable the qubit state preparation process in Xanadu’s photonic quantum computers. Xanadu

IBM announced it will invest US$150 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, including more than $30 billion to advance American manufacturing of its mainframe and quantum computers. “We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago, and with this investment and manufacturing commitment we are ensuring that IBM remains the epicenter of the world’s most advanced computing and AI capabilities,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement. The company said it operates the “world’s largest fleet of quantum computer systems” and will continue to build and assemble them in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Government of Canada is providing IBM with another $210 million in financing to help the tech giant upgrade and expand its semiconductor packaging plant in Bromont, Que., according to news reports. The money, from the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) will help IBM pay for equipment upgrades. The company will also work with Centre de Collaboration MiQro Innovation (C2MI), a nearby R&D non-profit, to develop new hardware manufacturing technologies. In April 2024, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the SIF would award IBM $59.9 million for the Bromont facility expansion as well as its work with C2MI on quantum technologies. At the time, the Government of Quebec committed $40 million in support for IBM, including a $30-million forgivable loan to buy equipment. Last month, more than 150 CEOs of Canadian scale-up companies signed an open letter to the leaders of the major political parties calling for reforms to government procurement to prioritize Canadian companies. “Why is the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund still writing cheques to multibillion-dollar foreign nationals when it was created as a signature ‘Canadian innovation program?’ the CEOs asked. IBM, CNBC

A new international study that includes Toronto AI developer Cohere accuses California-based LM Arena, the organization behind the popular crowdsourced AI benchmark Chatbot Arena, of helping a select group of AI companies achieve better leaderboard scores at the expense of competitors. The study also included Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Waterloo, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the University of Washington. According to the authors, LM Arena allowed some industry-leading AI companies like Meta, OpenAI, Google and Amazon to privately test several variants of AI models, then not publish the scores of the lowest performers. This made it easier for these companies to achieve a top spot on the platform’s leaderboard, though the opportunity was not afforded to every firm, the authors say. “Only a handful of [companies] were told that this private testing was available, and the amount of private testing that some [companies] received is just so much more than others,” study co-author Sara Hooker, Cohere’s vice-president of AI research, told TechCrunch. “This is gamification.” Created in 2023 as an academic research project out of the University of California Berkeley, Chatbot Arena has become a go-to benchmark for AI companies. It works by putting answers from two different AI models side-by-side in a “battle” and asking users to choose the best one. Votes over time contribute to a model’s score – and, consequently, its placement on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard. One AI company, Meta, was able to privately test 27 model variants on Chatbot Arena between January and March leading up to the tech giant’s Llama 4 release, the authors allege. At launch, Meta only publicly revealed the score of a single model – a model that happened to rank near the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard. In an email to TechCrunch, LM Arena co-founder and UC Berkeley professor Ion Stoica said that the international study was full of “inaccuracies” and “questionable analysis.” In a post on X, LM Arena said several of the claims in the study don’t reflect reality. “If a model provider chooses to submit more tests than another model provider, this does not mean the second model provider is treated unfairly,” the post said. “Any model listed on the public leaderboard must be a production model available to everyone and intend to have longer-term support.” TechCrunch

Intellectual Property Ontario (IPON) is providing nearly $3.4 million to 14 initiatives across 16 postsecondary institutions to strengthen their intellectual property capacity. The recipient institutions will use the funding to develop, protect and commercialize research and innovations. Paul Paolatto, CEO of IPON, said this will, in turn, contribute to job creation and long-term prosperity in the province. IPON said this investment builds on previous funding, raising the organization’s total investment to more than $9.5 million since April 2023. IPON’s funding aligns with the Ontario government's Commercialization Mandate Policy Framework, which aims to ensure publicly funded research is effectively translated into market-ready products and services that fuel economic growth and local impact.  IPON

XPRIZE, a global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s greatest challenges, selected the University of Calgary (UCalgary) as the home of its Canada Hub. UCalgary received $1.5 million in funding from Alberta Technology and Innovation, and an additional $1.5 million from the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, contributing to a five-year initiative to operate the hub. The XPRIZE Canada Hub is a $10-million, five-year initiative and the first international hub to launch as part of XPRIZE’s mission to establish a physical global presence and deepen collaboration with innovators worldwide to drive exponential change. UCalgary’s leadership in research, innovation and entrepreneurship, along with its status as the top startup creator among Canadian universities over the past five years, were factors in the selection as the location for the XPRIZE Canada Hub. The hub will expand the capacity of Canadian innovators by connecting, supporting and accelerating teams to engage in XPRIZE activities that will help de-risk and validate new technologies for investment, adoption and implementation. UCalgary

Companies interested in testing tidal energy projects in the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia will be able to apply for a site in the Minas Passage later this spring. Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world and there is great potential to harness them to generate clean electricity, create more green jobs and attract more investment, the Government of Nova Scotia said. The government is hiring consultant Power Advisory LLC to manage a procurement to fill two vacant berths at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) near Parrsboro. Power Advisory will start the procurement this month. The provincial Department of Energy will grant licences and power purchase agreements with Nova Scotia Power to successful applicants. Licence holders will develop agreements with FORCE to use the facility. Govt. of Nova Scotia

Toronto-headquartered lithium-ion battery resource recovery company Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. announced it is putting itself up for sale and may seek bankruptcy protection after a potential takeover by Swiss miner Glencore PLC fell through. CEO Ajay Kochar will step down from that role and resign from the board of directors as the company shuts recycling facilities in Arizona and Alabama and lays off several employees to preserve cash. “Considering the Company’s current circumstances, Li-Cycle will need to significantly modify or terminate its operations and may need to dissolve and liquidate its assets under applicable insolvency laws or otherwise file for insolvency protection,” Li-Cycle said in a statement. The company is hiring Hilco Corporate Finance LLC, a financial services company, to assist Li-Cycle in seeking buyers for its business or its assets, including the company as a whole or any part. Li-Cycle

The Government of Quebec won’t put any more public money into St-Jérôme-based electric vehicle maker Lion Electric, making the company unlikely to survive. Economy Minister Christine Fréchette told reporters in Quebec City that the government had to make a "difficult decision" about whether to invest more government dollars in the beleaguered company, which manufactured electric school buses and trucks. She said the governing Coalition Avenir Québec had received a proposal from a group of buyers interested in Lion Electric, which sought creditor protection in December amid financial struggles. "It would have been irresponsible to go ahead with another significant injection of public funds into Lion, based on the plan that was presented to us," Fréchette said. "I would have expected the private sector to be more involved." Quebec stands to lose about $140 million it invested in Lion Electric. CBC

Canadian electricity systems are increasingly vulnerable during extreme weather due to anticipated load increases and the changing resource mix, according to a report by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC). Transmission limitations and the potential for energy inadequacy were identified in all 12 weather years studied. Enhancing transmission interfaces [interties] could reduce the likelihood of energy deficits during extreme conditions. Reliability risks are highly dependent on regional weather conditions. An additional 12 to 14 gigawatts of transfer capability may be an effective vehicle to strengthen energy adequacy under extreme conditions. Quebec faces energy deficits due to projected demand growth, especially during extreme winter conditions, with a maximum deficiency of 10 gigawatts. Nova Scotia faces shortages in all the weather years studied. Expansion of transfer capability with New Brunswick would address these deficits. Energy deficits were also identified in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick. There are multiple options that could address these deficiencies via additional transfer capability, including expansion of cross-interconnection capability, new connections and upgrades to existing interfaces. Higher-than-expected retirements (without replacement capacity) would lead to increased energy deficiencies and potentially more transfer capability additions if surplus energy is available from neighbours. A broad set of solutions should be considered, including transmission, local resources, demand-side and storage. NERC

RBC said it’s scrapping its $500-billion sustainable finance commitment and holding back on other climate disclosures in part because of federal regulatory changes. The bank said in its latest sustainability report that, following an evolution in industry practices, it has concluded that its methodology “may not have appropriately measured” some of its sustainable finance activities. RBC said its conclusion, as well as amendments (so-called anti-greenwashing provisions) to Canada’s Competition Act that set expectations around environmental claims, led to it “retiring” its commitment to facilitate $500 billion of sustainable finance by this year. RBC said it also will not be publicly disclosing its findings of how its high-carbon energy financing compares with its financing of low-carbon energy, something it committed to following shareholder pressure, nor how it’s making progress on its commitment to provide $35 billion to low-carbon energy by 2030. Richard Brooks, climate finance director at Stand.earth, said the scrubbing of data is a disappointing and concerning step backward by Canada’s biggest bank. The Canadian Press

A climate lawsuit brought by seven young activists will proceed in Ontario after Canada’s Supreme Court declined to hear the Ontario government’s appeal. The decision allows the case to proceed in Ontario’s Superior Court for a full hearing that could redefine governments’ legal obligations to combat climate change under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The lawsuit, filed in 2019, challenges the Doug Ford government's rollback of its 2030 emissions target – from a 37-percent reduction below 1990 levels to just 30 percent below 2005 levels. This weaker policy permits an estimated 200 million additional tonnes of carbon pollution by 2030 – equivalent to the annual emissions of 47 million gasoline-powered cars. The plaintiffs are asking the court to order Ontario to adopt science-based targets aligned with Canada’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement. Canada’s National Observer

Sales of electric vehicles in the European Union accelerated in the first quarter of this year, with conventional hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery EVs collectively accounting for nearly 60 percent of all vehicle sales in the EU, up 22 percent year-over-year (YoY). Battery EVs grew 24 percent YoY in March to 245,000 units, their second-best month ever (only behind December 2022). Plug-in hybrids grew by 19 percent in March, their highest growth rate since January 2024. They are now close to 120,000 units, their second-highest score ever as well (only behind December 2022). Their year-to-date numbers are now up six percent to 270,000 units. March saw the plug-in vehicle share of the overall European auto market grow to 26 percent (17 percent full electrics/BEVs), one percent above the year-to-date numbers. Diesel-fueled vehicle sales were down 27 percent YoY to seven percent share now. Gasoline-fueled vehicles saw their sales fall by 20 percent YoY and their share dropped to 28 percent. The EU target is for there to be only zero-emission vehicles by 2035. CleanTechnica

In an advance for fusion energy, ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) has completed all components for the world’s largest, most powerful pulsed superconducting electromagnet system. ITER is an international collaboration of more than 30 countries to demonstrate the viability of fusion – the power of the Sun and stars – as an abundant, safe, carbon-free energy source for the planet. Thousands of scientists and engineers contributed components from hundreds of factories on three continents to build a single machine. The final component for ITER’s system was the sixth module of the Central Solenoid, built and tested in the United States. When it is assembled at the ITER site in Southern France, the Central Solenoid will be the system’s most powerful magnet – strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier. The Central Solenoid will work in tandem with six ring-shaped Poloidal Field magnets, built and delivered by Russia, Europe and China. The fully assembled pulsed magnet system will weigh nearly 3,000 tons. It will function as the electromagnetic heart of ITER’s donut-shaped reactor, called a Tokamak, which uses the pulsed magnet system and hydrogen fuel – deuterium and tritium gas – to create an ionized plasma. External heating systems raise the plasma temperature to 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun. At this temperature, the atomic nuclei of plasma particles combine and fuse, releasing massive heat energy. At full operation, ITER is expected to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power from only 50 megawatts of input heating power, a tenfold gain. At this level of efficiency, the fusion reaction largely self-heats, becoming a “burning plasma.” ITER’s first plasma test, initially planned for 2025, is now scheduled for 2034. EurekAlert!

See also: Fusion energy attracting more investment, achieving technical milestones on path to commercialization

The Trump administration dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country. The move puts the future of the report, which is required by Congress and is known as the National Climate Assessment, into serious jeopardy, experts said. Since 2000, the federal government has published a comprehensive look every few years at how rising temperatures will affect human health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy production and other aspects of the U.S. economy. The last climate assessment came out in 2023 and is used by state and local governments as well as private companies to help prepare for the effects of heat waves, floods, droughts and other climate-related calamities. Researchers around the country who had begun work on the sixth national climate assessment, planned for early 2028, received an email informing them that the scope of the report “is currently being re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed. “This is as close as it gets to a termination of the assessment,” said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who specializes in climate adaptation and was a co-author on the last climate assessment. “If you get rid of all the people involved, nothing’s moving forward.” The New York Times

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Trump administration set to close Office of Science and Technology Cooperation which negotiates international agreements

Cuts at the U.S. Department of State could eliminate the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation (OSTC) that negotiates science and technology agreements, including with Europe, throwing into confusion the future of global research cooperation with Washington and access for U.S. scientists to international facilities. 

Three people who work for the State Department  told Science|Business that the OSTC, which oversees nearly 60 agreements and more than 2,000 sub-agreements, is set to be eliminated. 

The cuts are the latest in a fusillade that U.S. President Donald Trump has fired against the country’s scientific and academic establishments in his first 100 days in office – on the theory that these institutions are wasteful, un-American and “woke.”

At a Congressional hearing on April 30, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state, said Trump has so far ordered a halt to about 800 biomedical research grants worth more than $1 billion, and aims to cut $21 billion, or 55 percent, from the National Institute of Health’s budget in the next fiscal year beginning in October.

Trump, Murray said, “has taken a wrecking ball to our biomedical research enterprise.”

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced cutbacks at the U.S. Department of State to end what he called a “sprawling bureaucracy” that is “more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.” 

Although Rubio wants to cut back the department, there’s been no public confirmation yet that the OSTC will be axed.

However, the three people, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had been verbally told last week the OSTC was set for shutdown by July as part of the cuts. “We were told that the office was being eliminated,” said one official, with the decision mandated from “high up”. 

It’s unclear what will happen to the agreements if there is no one on the U.S. side to maintain and update them. They cover areas like data practices and intellectual property rules during collaboration, and also give U.S. scientists access to foreign research infrastructures. 

“This office maintains thousands of arrangements with countries around the world that grant U.S. scientists access to international facilities, like CERN, monitor volcanoes and earthquakes, and provide essential data used in weather forecast models,” said Cole Donovan, a former State Department official, specializing in global research relations.

Any lapse in the agreements could mean “severe disruptions” for U.S. scientists using global research infrastructure, he said. 

It’s unclear precisely why the office would be a target for closure. However, shutting it down might be consistent with the current U.S. government’s aversion to international cooperation and multilateralism, speculated one department official. 

The closure of the OSTC would be the latest blow for science in the U.S. following near daily announcements that have stunned the research community.

But there’s a difference between the Trump rhetoric and reality: while the damage of his first 100 days has been extensive, resistance to him has also risen in scores of lawsuits, court orders and legislative manoeuvres. That makes it impossible to judge the ultimate impact of his headline-making cuts. 

In Congress, for instance, the draft R&D budget that Republicans pushed through for the fiscal year ending 30 September was $193.4 billion – just 3.7 percent less than in 2024, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Within that budget, the steepest cut was 6.5 percent, or $7.1 billion, for defence-related R&D, an odd outcome given Trump’s fondness for sabre-rattling. Non-defence R&D was cut just $350 million, or 0.4 percent – and most of the cutting was to applied research and development, with basic research largely untouched.

Of course, that’s just the start: Trump will soon publish proposals for deeper budget cuts for next year, and that’s “going to be a bad day” for science, warned Sudip S. Parikh, CEO of the AAAS, in a recent video message to AAAS members.

For the first 100 days, the most dramatic headlines have been about Trump’s attempts to sideline Congress by ordering immediate changes in grants, jobs and programs on his say-so. The tactic isn’t unknown, having been attempted by former presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. 

But then as now, the legal outcome is uncertain. While thousands have been fired or retired at federal agencies, many are contesting it in court – with some preliminary successes in the form of temporary restraining orders while full hearings proceed. 

Likewise, Harvard University decided last month to fight back rather than negotiate with Trump over $2 billion in politically targeted cuts to the university’s federal research funding. And federal courts have temporarily halted a Trump order to hack funding for “indirect” medical-research costs, such as university lab space and supplies.

But the most obvious damage in these first 100 days may be to the reputation and stability of the U.S. scientific enterprise which is, as AAAS’s Parikh put it, “both powerful and fragile.”

Science magazine reported that the director of the National Science Foundation is quitting in the face of a massive 55-percent cut Trump may propose in his next budget.

Nature magazine reported that 75 percent of U.S. researchers who responded to its online poll said they are considering leaving the country.

Many nations – including Canada, Germany, France and Norway– have announced programs to attract disenchanted U.S. researchers, reversing the generations-long tide of scientific talent to the US. Science|Business

VC, PRIVATE INVESTMENT & ACQUISITIONS

The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF) will receive an additional $60 million over the next four years to continue driving economic diversification and innovation in the city. Calgary City Council approved the new funding in $15-million annual tranches, drawn from the city’s Fiscal Stability Reserve. Brad Parry, CEO of the OCIF, said the investment will help local companies scale, support talent development and attract long-term economic opportunities. Since its launch in 2018 with an initial $100 million, OCIF has spurred nearly $900 million in investment, created more than 3,000 jobs, and activated over 594,000 square feet of downtown office space. With only $6.8 million left in the fund, OCIF expects to exhaust the remaining capital by the end of 2025. To ensure accountability, the new funding framework requires OCIF to submit annual progress reviews before each successive $15-million tranche is approved. Calgary.tech

Calgary-based VEERUM raised $12 million in a Series B funding round led by energy tech investors Veriten and Emerson Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of industrial technology firm Emerson, with additional participation from existing investors BDC Capital and Evok Innovations. VEERUM said this new injection of capital will enable the company to enhance its platform’s capabilities, optimize delivery for clients of all sizes, and scale its offering to meet the growing demand for operationalizing digital reality, including digital twins for heavy industry. VEERUM

Waterloo, Ont.-based AXIBO Inc., a robotics company spinoff from McMaster University, raised $12 million largely from private external investors to develop advanced humanoid robotics, with the goal of unveiling the first prototype early next year. Anoop Gadhrri, Sohaib Al-Emara and Reiner Schmidt founded the company in 2019 as undergraduates in the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster. Their shared passion for robotics inspired them to embark on an entrepreneurial venture together and, with the help of McMaster’s business incubator, the Forge, they launched AXIBO. Their first commercial success was an AI-powered robotic camera system that has since been used on productions with Netflix and Apple. The technology automates the video production process by capturing a 360-degree view of the action through automated shooting angles and precise object tracking. AXIBO’s vision is for the humanoid robots to be used in settings where work could be hazardous for people, or to assist in industries that are experiencing labour shortages. McMaster University

Vancouver-based Reusables.com, which offers a platform for tech-enabled reuse, raised $3.6 million in a seed funding round, with major investors including StandUp Ventures, Amplify Capital, Sandpiper Ventures and Emend Vision Fund. Reusables.com said the funding will accelerate the company’s expansion of its hardware-enabled software-as-a-solution model for the circular economy. Reusables has built the only turnkey enterprise reuse system that enables institutional food service operators like universities and hospitals to track reusable food containers and save costs on disposable packaging waste. Reusables.com

Toronto- and Montreal based fintech software startup Brio raised $3 million in a round of all-equity seed capital led by Montreal-based Walter Global Asset Management and Toronto’s Canso Innovations. Also participating in the round was Brightspark, from which Brio spun out in January. Brio’s offering is software-as-a-service that aims to save investors time by centralizing partner management and automating deal marketing, onboarding, compliance reporting and more. Brio intends to apply the seed capital toward growing its team across products and sales, as well as improving its technology stack. Fintech.ca

Five new companies with “hyperscale growth” potential were selected for Québec Tech’s program to propel Quebec startups to the international market. The Stage V program, launched last year, seeks to provide tailored support for companies’ go-to-market plans outside of Quebec. Stage V aims to help startups become “true scaleups” and hit $10 million in annual recurring revenue within 36 to 50 months. The latest cohort includes water system monitoring startup BioAlert, smart prosthetic manufacturer Ethnocare, internet service provider Gaia, antimicrobial solution developer Innodal, and robotic laser projector maker Mechasys. The five companies represent diverse innovation categories, ranging from construction hardware to sustainable biotechnology. BetaKit

Private equity deals were still robust in the first quarter of 2025, despite the U.S. tariffs, according to a report by Bennett Jones. The aggregate value of announced Canadian private equity M&A deals in Q1 2025 was almost $20 billion higher than the previous quarter – bolstered by numerous multi-billion dollar transactions, the report said. The utilities sector led the way with nearly $25.8 billion in total deal value. Software and technology services had the highest number of deals at 18. Overall deal count in the first three months of 2025 was effectively flat with Q4 2024 and generally kept pace with all previous quarters from 2024. “For private equity, there is a tremendous amount of demand for high quality companies and assets. There continues to be lots of dry powder and the sense of urgency to deploy it is increasing,” the report says. Private equity investments in Canada hit nearly $18.2 billion across 141 deals in the first quarter of 2025, according to preliminary data from the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association. Venture capital funding was on the lower end of the norm in the first three months of the year, with $1.26 billion invested over 116 deals. That’s down slightly from the two slowest investment quarters last year. Bennett Jones

REPORTS & POLICIES

Canada needs to align economy with the country’s 10-largest non-U.S. trade partners that have net-zero commitments

Among Canada’s 10 largest non-U.S. trade partners, all of them have net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems, and roughly half apply carbon border adjustments on imports and have domestic electric vehicles requirements reshaping their car markets, according to a report by Clean Energy Canada.

Carbon border adjustments levy a charge based on the carbon intensity of a good’s production and therefore incentivize low-carbon products from importing nations like Canada.

“These measures send a clear, unmistakable signal regarding where their economies are headed,”  the report says, adding that the Trump administration’s tariffs have shattered trust “irreparably.” “Canada must now look beyond its borders, within its borders, and within itself. First and foremost, that means aligning our economy with the wider, friendlier world.”

A number of think tanks and business groups have identified opportunities in Canada’s clean economy, including electricity generation and transmission (82 percent of Canada’s electricity grid is clean), critical minerals, electric vehicles and batteries, low-carbon heavy industry, and value-added agricultural and forest products, the report says.

Sustainable projects attracted 29 percent of all foreign direct investment into Canada in 2023, up from 25 percent in 2022, 10 percent in 2021, and five percent in 2020, the report notes.

“Clean energy now employs more people worldwide than fossil fuels, and Canada can and should carve out its fair share of the prize.”

The global market for the top-six mass-manufactured clean energy technologies (solar PV, wind turbines, electric cars, batteries, electrolysers, and heat pumps) is set to increase from US$700 billion in 2023 to more than US$2 trillion by 2035 – close to the value of the world’s crude oil market in recent years, the report notes.

The report says that federal and provincial governments should take a number of important steps, such as accelerating regulatory processes for clean growth projects, recognizing green collar worker credentials across provinces, and supporting demand for clean goods that benefit Canadian suppliers.

“The simple answer is to streamline Canada, connect Canada, buy Canada, and promote Canada,” the report says.

Streamlining Canada involves accelerating regulatory and permitting processes for clean growth projects, recognizing green collar worker credentials across provinces, and better aligning building, construction and transportation codes across provinces.

Canada should implement a “one project, one review” approach as B.C. has done and move clean growth projects up the queue while prioritizing Indigenous consent, governance and options for ownership in projects, the report says.

According to the report, the GDP of Canada’s clean energy sector is projected to reach $107 billion by 2030, with $58 billion in investment and 600,000 jobs.

Wind, solar, and energy storage capacity have grown 46 percent in five years, with another 15,000 megawatts of clean capacity either currently underway or planned across the country, representing more than $30 billion in investment.

As of 2022, 20 percent of Canada’s electricity-generating infrastructure included First Nations, Métis, or Inuit partners – almost entirely in renewables.

Connecting Canada means investing in and accelerating the build-out of critical trade, energy and transportation infrastructure, like road networks to remote mining sites and ports to growing markets.

Business parks and shovel-ready industrial lands, permitted and proximate to production networks and abundant clean electricity, are easy beacons for all manner of businesses, the report says.

“Now more than ever, it is time to enhance connections between provincial electricity systems.” Prioritizing grid interties in strategic regions will enhance energy security, flexibility and ratepayer affordability.

To help bring partners to the table, the federal government could cover up to 50 percent of the associated capital costs of grid intertie projects and establish a streamlined permitting process, the report says.

Canada has already seen companies choose the country in part for its low-cost, low-emissions power. “Indeed, Canada should be marketing a ‘Clean Canada’ export brand to both Canadians and the world.”

For policymakers, “Buy Canada” should include growing the market for Canadian products, supporting Canadian ownership and helping emerging Canadian companies scale up.

Governments can do this through consumer incentives for locally made clean technologies, government procurement that favours low-emissions Canadian products, and interprovincial trade promotion.

“Promoting Canada boils down to expanding and diversifying export opportunities while also incentivizing global companies to build here.”

Canada recently signed major trade deals with the EU and a number of Indo-Pacific nations and now has a trade agreement network covering 60 percent of the global economy, the report notes.  “And yet this network is underutilized.”

As for the U.S., despite Trump’s efforts to roll back many key climate measures and investments, a number of individual U.S. states are still rowing in a very different direction, the report points out.

For example, 17 states representing 40 percent of the U.S. car market have their own EV requirements, following in California’s legal footsteps.

Add to that the Canadian market and facing competition from abroad, and U.S. automakers are still compelled to build better, more affordable EVs.

By empowering its own clean economy, Canada is aligning its trajectory with the U.S. states that share the country’s values – along with most of the world, the report says.

“Seizing the clean economic opportunity is not about starting over, but about leveraging pre-existing industries and advantages in a way that sets us up for a different future – and a destiny we write for ourselves.” Clean Energy Canada

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Polytechnic institutes are training people for the most in-demand, growing skilled occupations

The most in-demand skilled occupations in five provinces where polytechnical institutes are located are in five clusters where demand is growing, according to a report by Polytechnics Canada done in collaboration with The Conference Board of Canada.

The five clusters are: healthcare, skilled trades, information and technology, tourism and hospitality, and care occupations including childcare, social services and early education.

All five clusters demonstrate robust hiring demand in 2023, despite cooling in the overall job market. Employment in these fields is projected to experience steady growth in the next five years, the report says.

The Conference Board of Canada (CBoC) assessed skill requirements for the top 100 in-demand occupations in the five provinces where Polytechnics Canada’s member institutions are located.

The CBoC assessed more than 2 million job postings in 2023, compared wages by credential and provided five-year job forecasts.

Employment and job postings data reveal significant labour shortages in the five high-demand occupation clusters, particularly for skilled workers with post-secondary education.

Job postings requiring apprenticeships, diplomas or certificates offered substantial wage premiums and increases in 2023.

Polytechnics Canada said its member institutions in the five provinces offer programming that prepares graduates to work in 86 percent of in-demand skilled occupations within these five clusters.

For example, in the IT sector, 85 percent of polytechnics offer at least one degree program and all offer at least one diploma program to prepare graduates for careers.

The report included several policy recommendations, including:

• Ensure federal infrastructure funding supports public institutions with technology and equipment purchases required to train Canadians for a rapidly evolving labour market.
• Fast-track foreign credential recognition.
• Support accelerated healthcare education programming in areas and skills in particularly high demand.
• Offer wage subsidies for journeyperson trainers.
• Allow tradespeople and apprentices to deduct travel expenses for training and work.
• Fund apprenticeship intermediaries as is done in Germany, Australia, the U.K. and other G7 countries.
• Engage employers in upskilling targeted to mid-career workers.
• Establish applied AI research centres at Canada’s polytechnics.
• Recruit and retain international students to top-ranked tourism and hospitality programs and for care occupations.
• Offer training vouchers to help employees access ongoing skills development opportunities.
• Double federal funding for polytechnic applied research to better support social innovation activity. Polytechnics Canada

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TD Bank is among global banks growing its AI workforce the fastest

TD Bank is among the global banks that are growing their AI workforces the fastest, according to a report by Evident Insights.

TD Bank, along with CommBank, BNY and Lloyds Banking Group, are averaging 21.5-percent growth in their AI workforce at scale (more than 1,000 AI workers, the report says. “This signals rapid acceleration of ongoing efforts.”

The leading banks on AI talent have disclosed a greater volume and a more diverse set of AI use cases than banks with less mature “talent stacks,” the report says.

These banks are also more likely to disclose estimates of return on investment. “Investment in AI talent translates directly into AI outcomes.”

Across the 50 banks tracked by Evident, the AI talent stack has grown 12.6 percent over the last six months, representing the fastest growth rate observed over the past two years. Today, one in 50 bank employees now work in AI and data-related roles.

The top 10 banks by AI talent volume remain unchanged from last year, with JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup leading the way.

Leading banks exhibit a high ratio of AI implementation to data engineering talent. In particular, JPMorganChase, Capital One, and Goldman Sachs pave the way, “signaling a growing focus on implementing AI use cases and scaling adoption across the enterprise.”

Thirty-seven of the 50 banks (74 percent) tracked by Evident provide AI-specific training to employees. Increasingly, these efforts are aligned to rollouts of new Gen AI productivity tools, which often require phased trials by “super-users” or “sandboxed” environments to experiment in a risk-free setting.

Bank AI talent powerhouses are coupling bottom-up training programs with top-down continuing education initiatives. “As we approach a critical milestone in industry tech spending, we also see a renewed focus on appointing board members with deep technical expertise.”

Last year, the Royal Bank of Canada ranked No. 3 overall in Evident’s AI index rankings, based on talent capability and development, innovation, leadership, and transparency. TD was ranked No. 9 overall, Scotiabank No. 20, CIBC No. 22, and Bank of Montreal No. 24. Evident Insights

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Cybercriminals becoming stealthier at stealing data and credentials; attacks expected on AI technologies

Cybercriminals continued to pivot to stealthier tactics in 2024 with lower-profile credential theft spiking, while ransomware attacks on enterprises declined, according to a report by IBM.

The 2025 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index highlighted that IBM X-Force observed an 84-percent increase in emails delivering infostealers in 2024 compared with the prior year, a method threat actors relied heavily on to scale identity attacks.

The 2025 report tracks new and existing trends and attack patterns – pulling from incident response engagements, dark web and other threat intelligence sources.

Some key findings in the 2025 report include:

• Critical infrastructure organizations accounted for 70 percent of all attacks that IBM X-Force responded to last year, with more than one-quarter of these attacks caused by vulnerability exploitation.
• More cybercriminals opted to steal data (18 percent) than encrypt it (11 percent) as advanced detection technologies and increased law enforcement efforts pressure cybercriminals to adopt faster exit paths.
• Nearly one in three incidents observed in 2024 resulted in credential theft, as attackers invest in multiple pathways to quickly access, exfiltrate and monetize login information.

“Cybercriminals are most often breaking in without breaking anything – capitalizing on identity gaps overflowing from complex hybrid cloud environments that offer attackers multiple access points” said Mark Hughes, global managing partner of cybersecurity services at IBM. “Businesses need to shift away from an ad-hoc prevention mindset and focus on proactive measures such as modernizing authentication management, plugging multi-factor authentication holes and conducting real-time threat hunting to uncover hidden threats before they expose sensitive data,” Hughes said.

In reviewing the common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) most mentioned on dark web forums, IBM X-Force found that four out of the top 10 have been linked to sophisticated threat actor groups, including nation-state adversaries, escalating the risk of disruption, espionage and financial extortion.

Exploit codes for these CVEs were openly traded on numerous forums – fueling a growing market for attacks against power grids, health networks and industrial systems.

This sharing of information between financially motivated and nation-state adversaries highlights the increasing need for dark web monitoring to help inform patch management strategies and detect potential threats before they are exploited, IBM said.

In 2024, IBM X-Force observed an uptick in phishing emails delivering infostealers and early data for 2025 reveals an even greater increase of 180 percent compared with 2023.

This upward trend fueling follow-on account takeovers may be attributed to attackers leveraging AI to create phishing emails at scale. “Credential phishing and infostealers have made identity attacks cheap, scalable and highly profitable for threat actors.”
While ransomware made up the largest share of malware cases in 2024 at 28 percent, IBM X-Force observed a reduction in ransomware incidents overall compared with the prior year, with identity attacks surging to fill the void.

While large-scale attacks on AI technologies didn’t materialize in 2024, security researchers are racing to identify and fix vulnerabilities before cybercriminals exploit them.

Issues like the remote code execution vulnerability that IBM X-Force discovered in a framework for building AI agents will become more frequent.

With AI adoption set to grow in 2025, so will the incentives for adversaries to develop specialized attack toolkits targeting AI, making it imperative that businesses secure the AI pipeline from the start, including the data, the model, the usage and the infrastructure surrounding the models. IBM

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Artificial intelligence is “normal technology” rather a “separate species” of potentially superintelligent entity

AI should be seen as “normal technology” rather than be treated “akin to a separate species, a highly autonomous, potentially superintelligent entity,” according to an essay by researchers at Princeton University.

“We view AI as a tool that we can and should remain in control of, and we argue that this goal does not require drastic policy interventions or technical breakthroughs,” they said.

“We do not think that viewing AI as a humanlike intelligence is currently accurate or useful for understanding its societal impacts, nor is it likely to be in our vision of the future.”

The essay is co-authored by Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, and Sayash Kapoor, a senior fellow at Mozilla and a fellow and computer science PhD candidate at Prince University.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University published the essay, which the co-authors present as “an alternative to the vision of AI as a potential superintelligence.”

Narayanan and Kapoor advocate for reducing uncertainty as a first-rate policy goal and resilience as the overarching approach to potentially catastrophic risks of AI.

They argue that drastic interventions premised on the difficulty of controlling superintelligent AI “will, in fact, make things much worse if AI turns out to be normal technology” – the downsides of which will be likely to mirror those of previous technologies that are deployed in capitalistic societies, such as inequality.

The diffusion of AI technologies and transformative economic and social impacts will be slow (on the timescale of decades), the researchers argue.

They compiled a list of about 50 AI applications of “predictive optimization” – where machine learning is used to make decisions about individuals by predicting their future behaviours or outcomes.

Most of these applications, such as criminal risk prediction, insurance risk prediction, or child maltreatment prediction, are used to make decisions that have important consequences for people.

While these applications have proliferated, in most cases, decades-old statistical techniques are used – simple, interpretable models (mostly regression) and relatively small sets of handcrafted features.

More complex machine learning methods, such as random forests, are rarely used, and modern methods, such as transformers, are nowhere to be found.

“In other words, in this broad set of domains, AI diffusion lags decades behind innovation,” Narayanan and Kapoor say. A major reason is safety – when models are more complex and less intelligible, it is hard to anticipate all possible deployment conditions in the testing and validation process.

A good example is Epic’s sepsis prediction tool which, despite having seemingly high accuracy when internally validated, performed far worse in hospitals, missing two-thirds of sepsis cases and overwhelming physicians with false alerts.

“Even outside of safety-critical areas, AI adoption is slower than popular accounts would suggest,” Narayanan and Kapoor say.

For example, a study made headlines due to the finding that, in August 2024, 40 percent of U.S. adults used generative AI. But, because most people used it infrequently, this only translated to 0.5 percent-3.5 percent of work hours (and a 0.125-0.875 percentage point increase in labor productivity).

Narayanan and Kapoor note that some of the world’s most valuable types of knowledge are scientific and social-scientific, and have allowed the progress of civilization through technology and large-scale social organizations (such as governments).

For AI to push the boundaries of such knowledge will likely require interactions with, or even experiments on, people or organizations, ranging from drug testing to economic policy, they say.

“Here, there are hard limits to the speed of knowledge acquisition because of the social costs of experimentation. Societies probably will not (and should not) allow the rapid scaling of experiments for AI development.”

Narayanan and Kapoor also argue that control of even advanced AI (but not “superintelligent” AI, which they view as “incoherent as usually conceptualized”) control will primarily be in the hands of people and organizations; indeed, a greater and greater proportion of what people do in their jobs is AI control.

For example, while GPT-4 reportedly achieved scores in the top 10 percent of bar exam test takers, “this tells us remarkably little about AI’s ability to practice law,” they note.

The bar exam overemphasizes subject-matter knowledge and under-emphasizes real-world skills that are far harder to measure in a standardized, computer-administered format. “In other words, it emphasizes precisely what language models are good at – retrieving and applying memorized information.”

This pattern appears repeatedly, Narayanan and Kapoor say. The easier a task is to measure via benchmarks, the less likely it is to represent the kind of complex, contextual work that defines professional practice.

“By focusing heavily on capability benchmarks to inform our understanding of AI progress, the AI community consistently overestimates the real-world impact of the technology.”

Innovation and diffusion happen in a feedback loop, the researchers point out. In safety-critical applications, this feedback loop is always slow, but even beyond safety there are many reasons why it is likely to be slow.

With past general purpose technologies such as electricity, computers and the internet, the respective feedback loops unfolded over several decades, “and we should expect the same to happen with AI as well.”

Narayanan and Kapoor said they are concerned about risks that arise from people using AI for their own ends, whether terrorism, or cyberwarfare, or undermining democracy, or simply – and most commonly – extractive capitalistic practices that magnify inequalities.

“Defending against this category of risk requires increasing resilience by preventing the concentration of power and resources (which often means making powerful AI more widely available),” they say.

Unavoidable differences in values and beliefs mean that policymakers must adopt value pluralism, preferring policies that are acceptable to stakeholders with a wide range of values, and attempt to avoid restrictions on freedom that can reasonably be rejected by stakeholders, they added.

They recommend five specific approaches to policy:

• Whistleblower protection.
• Transparency reporting requirement for AI deployers.
• Government use inventories, with transparency of government to improve trust.
• Incident reporting, including enabling case studies and statistical analyses to improve safety knowledge.
• Safe harbour (protecting online platforms and service providers) for “red teaming,” or simulating adversarial attacks on AI systems to identify vulnerabilities and potential risks before they can be exploited. This incentivizes research on vulnerabilities “in the wild” [in the real world, in other words].

The risk of bioweapons is real, the Narayanan and Kapoor acknowledge. As large language models are general purpose technology, they’ll likely find some use by bioterrorists, just as they find uses in most domains.

“But this does not make bioterror an AI risk – any more than it is an internet risk, considering that information about bioweapons is widely available online,” they maintain.

“Whatever defenses we take against existing bioterrorism risks (like restricting access to dangerous materials and equipment) will also be effective against AI-enabled bioterrorism.”

Realizing the benefits of AI will require experimentation and reconfiguration, Narayanan and Kapoor say.

Regulation that is insensitive to these needs risks stymying beneficial AI adoption. Regulation tends to create or reify categories, and might thus prematurely freeze business models, forms of organization, product categories and so forth, they say. 

Apart from the government’s role as a regulator, Narayanan and Kapoor note that one powerful strategy for promoting AI diffusion is investing in the complements of automation, which are things that become more valuable or necessary as automation increases.

One example is promoting AI literacy as well as workforce training in both the public and the private sectors. Another example is digitization and open data, especially open government data, which can allow AI users to benefit from previously inaccessible datasets.

Governments also have an important role to play in redistributing the benefits of AI to make them more equitable and in compensating those who stand to lose as a result of automation, Narayanan and Kapoor say. Strengthening social safety nets will help to decrease the currently high levels of public anxiety about AI in many countries.

“The arts and journalism are vital spheres of life that have been harmed by AI. Governments should consider funding them through taxes on AI companies,” they say.

Finally, governments should strike a fine balance in terms of the public sector adoption of AI, they argue. Moving too quickly will lead to a loss of trust and legitimacy, as was the case of the New York City chatbot that was evidently inadequately tested and made headlines for telling businesses to break the law.

But moving too slowly might mean that basic government functions are outsourced to the private sector where they are implemented with less accountability.

“AI as normal technology is a worldview that stands in contrast to the worldview of AI as impending superintelligence,” Narayanan and Kapoor conclude. Columbia University

See also: Exploring the impacts of AI on people’s lives: profile of an early-career researcher

AI Is False God (by Nanveet Alang, published in The Walrus).

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U.S. must invest more, not less, in basic and applied research to build the knowledge needed for innovation

The United States must invest more, not less, in basic and applied research to build the foundational knowledge needed for innovation, if the U.S. wants to stay ahead of China, according to a commentary by the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

The Trump administration has slashed direct funding to research universities while cutting the budget for key government agencies that provide university research grants, says the brief by Trelysa Long, policy analyst at the ITIF.

“This is problematic because the higher education sector continues to be the leader in R&D investments for basic research,” she says.

Recent data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics shows that the higher education sector has historically been the top contributor to R&D spending for basic research.

From 2003 to 2023, the higher education sector consistently contributed between 45 percent and 60 percent of the total R&D expenditure on basic research.

 Although the business sector is quickly catching up, higher education remains the leader in R&D investments for basic research.

The Trump administration – particularly its Office of Management and Budget director – appears to hold a strong bias against both government and higher education, the latter due in part to past excesses in DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, Long says. “As a result, [the administration] will probably continue cutting direct funding for higher education.”

Nonetheless, the administration and Congress should encourage businesses to increase their funding for university research, she says.

In 2023, the business sector only contributed $3.3 billion, or just five percent, of the higher education sector’s total R&D spending on basic research.

Policymakers should provide stronger incentives for the business sector to fund university research, Long recommends.

Congress should modify the existing tax credit provided to businesses that contribute to energy research through a consortium to apply to all research activities and expand the credit from 20 percent to 40 percent.

“Doing so will not only boost U.S. innovation-driven competitiveness but also strengthen the nation’s university research base.” Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

THE GRAPEVINE – News about people, institutions and communities

Dr. William Ghali was reappointed as vice-president (research) at the University of Calgary for a five-year term, effective May 1, 2025. Ghali, a physician at the Cumming School of Medicine, is a world-class researcher who has been dedicated to enhancing and expanding UCalgary’s research landscape since taking on the role of vice-president in 2020. During his first term, the university has grown annual external research funding to $588.5 million in 2023-2024. Ghali helped secure UCalgary’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund grant for One Child Every Child – the largest research grant in the university’s history. He oversaw the creation of new institutional initiatives, including the Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship, the UCalgary Research Excellence Chairs program, and the UCalgary Visiting Scholars Program. Under Ghali’s leadership, UCalgary was also named a top start-up creator in Canada three years in a row. UCalgary

McGill University, the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) and Université de Sherbrooke, partners in the RNA Network for Therapy Development & Production (Réseau DePTAQ), announced the appointment of Panagiotis (Takis) Prinos as director of Réseau DePTAQ. Réseau DePTAQ provides academic researchers and industrial partners with a single interface and specialized services for the development and production of RNA therapies through three platforms: the IRCM’s Sidney-Altman RNA Therapeutic Hub; the Therapeutic messenger RNA platform at McGill University’s Centre for RNA Sciences; and Sherbrooke University’s RNomic Platform. As director, Prinos will oversee and elevate the Réseau DePTAQ’s service platforms while fostering interdisciplinary collaborations across Quebec and Canada. He will also lead business development and industry liaison efforts. Prinos is an accomplished biomedical scientist and strategic manager with over 15 years of experience leading innovative cancer genomics and personalized medicine projects. McGill University

The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) recognized Joe Canavan, principal at Canavan Capital, as Canada’s 2025 Angel of the Year. Colin Mason, emeritus professor and honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow, received the 2025 NACO Lifetime Achievement Award. Eight individuals received the 2025 Nation Builder Award, recognizing leaders whose work is actively shaping a stronger, more united Canada:

• Arlene Dickinson – Entrepreneur and General Partner, District Ventures Capital.
• Daniel Debow – Founder, Build Canada.
• Vicki Saunders – Founder, Coralus.
• Kevin Carmichael – Economics Columnist & Editor-at-Large, The Logic.
• Tabatha Bull – President & CEO, Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.
• Senator Paulette Senior – Recognized for her former role as CEO, Canadian Women’s Foundation
• Goldy Hyder – President & CEO, Business Council of Canada.
• Senator Colin Deacon – Senate of Canada. NACO

Ottawa-headquartered Shopify nominated former Rogers CEO Joe Natale for election to Shopify’s board at its June 17 annual general meeting. If approved, Natale will succeed outgoing lead independent director Robert Ashe. Currently an adviser at Altas Partners, Natale brings decades of Canadian telecom experience to the position. His 2021 departure from Rogers followed a high-profile family feud and board battle for control of the firm. Decoder

The chief investment officer of Montreal-headquartered Fiera Capital Corp.’s public markets unit, Jean Michel, is leaving the asset management firm along with a small number of colleagues. The group’s portfolio managers will now fall under CEO Jean-Guy Desjardins and Canada head Maxime Menard. The company, which manages $162 billion in assets, announced on April 25 it will wind down its Canadian Equity Small Capitalization and Canadian Equity Microcap Opportunity divisions, which represented about $1.2 billion in assets, at the end of 2024. BNN Bloomberg

Toronto-based Antler Canada, a division of the global venture capital firm Antler, appointed Tammer Kamel, co-founder and former CEO of Quandl, as its new general partner. Kamel joins to co-lead Antler Canada’s second fund along with Bernie Li and Shambhavi Mishra. Antler Canada aims to wrap up its first fund by the end of 2025 and plans to launch a larger second fund in 2026. This expansion may also see the firm expand its reach beyond Toronto. Antler Canada has already invested in 36 startups and intends to fund an additional 15 before launching Fund II. Startup Ecosystem Canada

Candu Energy, part of consulting engineering firm AtkinsRéalis, expanded its senior leadership team to address project delivery challenges. AtkinsRéalis said its global nuclear sector backlog and workload increased to record levels in 2024. Candu Energy hired 750 new employees last year and is currently aiming to build at least 50 new Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors, in addition to 19 reactor life extension projects. Alexander (Sandy) Taylor returns to AtkinsRéalis as president and CEO of Candu Energy. He was previously responsible for the business from 2014 to 2022, serving as power group and nuclear president, and since then has remained active as a special advisor. In his new capacity, he is responsible for all Candu Energy activities and ensuring safe, high-quality work is delivered on time and on budget. Dietmar Reiner joins as senior vice-president for Canada. He spent the bulk of his career at Ontario Power Generation and most recently sat on its small modular reactor (SMR) review board. In his new role, he will oversee Candu Energy’s Canadian nuclear projects, including the Darlington and Pickering life extensions in Ontario, Darlington’s grid-scale SMR and the Monark reactor development program. Gary Rose shifts gears from AtkinsRéalis’ nuclear executive vice-president to a newly created role as Candu’s international executive vice-president. He will oversee all international CANDU reactor projects, including those in Romania, China, South Korea and Argentina. Canadian Consulting Engineer

The Quebec Superior Court ruled partially in favour of Concordia University and McGill University, striking down the French language requirements and tuition hike that the Quebec government attempted to impose on out-of-province Canadian university students in Quebec. Judge Éric Dufour refuted the province’s claims that out-of-province students were not integrating into Quebec society, stating “the evidence shows that the ministry has absolutely no data on this subject, or only fragile information to back it up.” He also said that the requirement that 80 percent of out-of-province undergraduate students at English-language universities reach an intermediate level of proficiency in French by graduation was "unreasonable given the near-certain impossibility of achievement." Dufour gave the Government of Québec nine months to revise its fee structure for out-of-province Canadian students and has ruled that the language requirements are immediately invalidated. International student fee increases have been left unchanged. CBC

Université Laval, the City of Quebec, and Québec International partnered to attract scientists from the U.S. Together, the partners intend to position Quebec City as a welcoming place for American researchers. Sophie D’Amours, ULaval’s rector, said the political situation in the U.S. has created a unique opportunity to attract both American researchers who no longer feel welcome in their own country and other academics from around the world who had been considering moving to the U.S. D'Amours pointed to a survey in the journal Nature, which revealed that three-quarters of scientists working in the U.S. would consider leaving their country to escape the Trump administration's policies and budget cuts. Le Devoir reported that Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand is inviting city residents to donate their tax refunds to the university to help support academic recruitment. ULaval

HEC Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal, the Université de Sherbrooke, and SAP Canada launched a three-year project to help Canadian companies harness AI to make data learning and interpretation more intuitive and optimize real-time decision-making. The $2-million project, funded by the Alliance program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, will also help reduce the costs associated with common data visualization errors. A core initiative of this collaboration will be advancing the Business Builders learning platform – a game-based tool developed by HEC Montréal’s ERPsim Lab and SAP Canada that helps university and college students develop their data visualization skills. Results from the project will be published in scientific journals and integrated into academic and professional training courses. HEC Montréal

The Government of Nova Scotia signed new bilateral funding agreements with its 10 universities, freezing tuition for domestic undergraduate students and introducing performance-based funding tied to government priorities. University Affairs reported that institutions were not consulted before the shift from a multi-year memorandum to individual annual agreements. At the same time, universities are facing financial strain from federal caps on international study permits, which have led to sharp enrolment and revenue declines. According to an internal memo obtained by CBC, Acadia University anticipates revenue losses under its agreement, which includes program review requirements and potential funding holdbacks. University presidents and association leaders said the new agreements, along with increased oversight under Bill 12, mark a significant change in how postsecondary education is governed in the province. CBC

Postsecondary instructors, staff and students gathered outside the Vancouver Art Gallery during the last week of April to protest the Government of Canada’s cap on international student enrolment. The rally, organized by Vancouver Community College (VCC) instructors, drew participants from institutions across the Vancouver area. Protesters expressed their opposition to job losses and program cuts linked to the cap. Taryn Thompson, vice-president of the VCC Faculty Association, said institutions were encouraged years ago to recruit international students as a revenue source, adding that the cap has since undermined this practice and caused the “biggest funding crisis to hit our sector.” Protesters called on the provincial and federal governments to provide emergency funding to institutions in British Columbia in order to give them time to develop sustainable plans. City News, CTV News

Concordia University, the University of Calgary, and York University each recently provided guidance to their campus communities on cyberthreats. Mike Popoff, Concordia’s chief information officer, reminded the university community to be aware of cyberstalking and described how they can protect themselves, including by increasing their digital security and privacy. Mark Sly, IT cybersecurity director at UCalgary, warned the university community about the threat of deepfakes. Sly advised vigilance on video calls and noted that people should be careful about what they post online. YorkU is requiring faculty, staff and instructors to complete cybersecurity awareness training to reduce the risk of data breaches. According to an annual IBM report, in Canada last year, the average cost of a data breach rose to $6.32 million. Concordia, UCalgary, YorkU

The Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN) raised concerns about the Government of Québec’s decision to postpone the release of guidelines for integration of AI at cégeps and universities, the Journal de Montréal reported. The Quebec government’s consultation body on AI in higher education had initially planned to present its findings in April. But the government has pushed the deadline to the end of the summer, with an accompanying reference framework expected at the start of the fall semester. Benoît Lacoursière, president of the FNEEQ-CSN, said institutions have been waiting for these guidelines before they take action and that presenting the framework in April would give institutions adequate time to prepare for the fall. Journal de Montréal

Concordia University and the University of New Brunswick (UNB) each launched new research centres on campus. Concordia’s new Collaboratoire pour les études des jeux de hasard et d’argent numériques connectés (CHANCE) research centre, housed on the university’s Sir George Williams campus, is a lab and knowledge-sharing space designed for those studying and sharing information about gambling behaviour. The “collaboratory” includes a space that simulates a natural gambling and social environment as well as a collaborative area for researchers, the public and other stakeholders. CHANCE was created through research grants, involving support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Government of Québec and Concordia. UNB celebrated the official opening of its Institute of Population Health (IPH), focused on enhancing public health through outreach, collaboration with academics and researchers, and knowledge mobilization. IPH priorities include advocating for better health outcomes and supporting multidisciplinary research. Concordia, UNB  

McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine is closing its Social Accountability and Community Engagement office, established in 2015 to address equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) issues, the Montréal Gazette reported. Three individuals who ran the office – all of whom are racialized minorities – are being replaced by a single person who does not come from such a minority background and who will be overseeing diversity initiatives as vice-dean of education and community engagement. In a statement, McGill said that “changes have been made to reorganize the oversight of its EDI work to a higher level of accountability under the direct purview of the Office of the Dean of Medicine.” Montréal Gazette

A University of Alberta (U of A) engineering researcher is using sunlight and semiconductor catalysts to produce hydrogen by splitting apart water molecules into their constituent elements. "The process to form the semiconductor, called thermal condensation polymerization, uses cheap and Earth-abundant materials and could eventually lead to a more efficient, economical path to clean energy than existing solar technologies," said project lead Karthik Shankar, an expert in photocatalysis in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In a collaboration between the U of A and the Technical University of Munich, the research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Shankar uses carbon nitride derived from urea – a widely available chemical used in fertilizers – to absorb sunlight which excites electrons to a higher energy level. A titanium dioxide catalyst – another abundant and cheap material – binds to the carbon nitride electrons, which react with protons to create hydrogen. Shankar's technology solves two problems inherent in solar cells. First, the cells only operate intermittently depending on the presence of sunlight and are far less efficient when the sunlight is indirect. Shankar's carbon nitride surface, designed with vertically oriented nanowires to capture diffuse light from any angle, can function even on cloudy days. Energy produced by a solar cell also has to be stored and advances in battery technology have been relatively sluggish. Hydrogen fuel acts as an efficient storage medium, Shankar said. If all goes well, large-scale commercialization could become a reality in three to five years, he said. U of A

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