GOVERNMENT FUNDING & NEWS

 Federal government announces second set of “nation-building projects”

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the second tranche of “nation-building projects” – representing more than $56 billion in new investment – referred to the federal Major Projects Office (MPO). The projects include:

• TheNorthwest Critical Conservation Corridor in northwest British Columbia and the Yukon.

This corridor sits atop vast deposits of critical minerals and has the potential to unlock world-class resources while creating a conservation area the size of Greece.

Referring this corridor to the MPO ensures it can realize its extraordinary potential for critical minerals development and clean power transmission, while upholding Indigenous rights and supporting Indigenous project leadership.

• North Coast Transmission Line (NCTL) in northwest B.C.

This project will tie the Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor together, delivering low-cost, clean electricity and bolstering telecommunications to local communities along the West Coast. To support the early stages of the NCTL project, the Canada Infrastructure Bank announced a loan of $139.5 million to B.C. Hydro.

By twinning major transmission lines, the NCTL will enable transformative new industrial projects – including the Ksi Lisims LNG facility and critical minerals developments in the Golden Triangle – while reducing emissions by up to three million tonnes annually.

The proposed Yukon-B.C. Grid Connect aspect of the project will connect the Yukon's isolated electrical grid to the Canadian grid through B.C., increasing the Yukon's energy security and providing clean power to communities in Canada's Northwest corridor.

• Ksi Lisims LNG –Pearse Island, B.C. (illustration at right).

This project will transform Canada's energy future. Led by the Nisga'a Nation, Ksi Lisims LNG will become Canada's second-largest liquified natural gas facility and one of the world's lowest-emission LNG operations once fully electrified, with emissions 94 percent below the global average.

The project referral also includes the 800-kilometre Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project to supply feed gas for liquefaction, and a 95-kilometre electrical transmission line to supply electricity to the facility.

Earlier this month, as part of the federal government’s Critical Minerals Strategy, Tim Hodgson, minister of Energy and Natural Resources, alongside our G7 partners, announced 26 new investments, partnerships and other measures to unlock $6.4 billion in critical minerals projects to accelerate development and position Canada as a secure supplier of choice in the global supply chain.

To build on this momentum, three new critical minerals projects are now being referred to the MPO:

• Canada Nickel's Crawford Project – Timmins, Ontario.

This project will serve as an anchor for Canada's global leadership in clean industrial materials. Located in the world's second-largest nickel reserve, the Crawford Project will produce high-quality, low-carbon nickel essential for batteries and green steel.

Agreements supporting the Crawford Mine project are signed with the Mattagami, Matachewan and Flying Post First Nations for early business and employment opportunities, which includes commitments for negotiations on contracting opportunities. 

The Taykwa Tagamou Nation has also partnered with Canada Nickel Company to invest $20 million in this project. This investment is in the form of convertible notes, which, if exercised, will give Taykwa Tagamou Nation a meaningful equity stake in the project.

With projected emissions 90 percent below the global average and the potential for a net-negative carbon footprint, the Crawford Mine project represents a model for the future of responsible mining.

• Nouveau Monde Graphite's Matawinie Mine– Saint‑Michel‑des‑Saints, Quebec.

This open-pit graphite mine will provide important inputs for defence applications and battery supply chains. It will integrate with the planned Bécancour Battery Material Plant.

• Northcliff Resources' Sisson Mine – Sisson Brook, New Brunswick.

The Sisson Mine will produce tungsten – a critical mineral essential for high-strength steel production, defence, and industrial applications.

Global tungsten markets are highly concentrated and this project has the potential to make Canada a secure supplier for domestic and allied industries. It will position Canada as a reliable supplier of critical minerals to domestic and international partners.

To ensure Canada’s northern communities have the clean power and infrastructure to enable economic development, the government also is referring the following project to the MPO:

• Iqaluit Nukkiksautiit Hydro Project– Iqaluit, Nunavut.

This project is a breakthrough for Arctic sovereignty and sustainability. It will become Nunavut's first 100-percent Inuit-owned hydro energy project, a milestone in Indigenous leadership and clean energy innovation.

By replacing Iqaluit's reliance on 15 million litres of imported diesel each year, this project will deliver affordable, reliable and emissions-free power to the Arctic. It will build community resilience, fuel a cleaner northern economy and create new construction and operation jobs.

The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) said there are First Nations opposed to LNG whose territory the Ksi Lisims and North Coast Transmission Line will run through, “and they stand to face the brunt of the impacts.”

Ksi Lisims is facing two separate legal challenges in Federal Court, with one launched by the Lax Kw’alaams Band and the other by the Metlakatla First Nation.

“The federal government has empowered itself to override proper environmental assessment and consultation processes in the name of economic growth. That is entirely inconsistent with its obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, UBCIC president, said in a statement.

UBCIC called on the federal government to immediately halt the use of its One Canada Economy Act to fast-track projects without the free, prior and informed consent of all impacted First Nations, and to engage in transparent, rights-based processes consistent with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Climate activists, in court affidavits, said the B.C. government needs to conduct a new environmental assessment of the 750-kilometre Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project, which would supply natural gas to the Ksi Lisims project.

Climate activists argue that a new environmental assessment is required to take into account the cumulative impacts of the entire pipeline project, The Globe and Mail reported.

The Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition and Kispiox Valley resident Kathleen Larson are the petitioners – represented by Ecojustice – seeking a judicial review to quash a ruling in June by Alex MacLennan, head of the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, that the pipeline project has been substantially started.

Missing from the federal government’s second tranche of national projects is a new bitumen oil pipeline to the B.C. coast that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been pushing for, but that B.C. Premier David Eby and several First Nations oppose.

In September, the Carney government announced the first tranche of major projects – representing $60 billion in investments in nuclear power, LNG, critical minerals and new trade corridors. Prime Minister’s Office

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The Government of Canada formally accepted the new $1.47-billion Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Naalak Nappaaluk. Built in Canada, the CCGS Naalak Nappaaluk, an offshore oceanographic science vessel, will become the largest dedicated science vessel in the Canadian Coast Guard fleet. This new 88-metre-long ship provides capability and capacity to support ocean science missions on Canada’s coasts. The CCGS Naalak Nappaaluk features a marine mammal observation station, ocean sampling room, multiple laboratories, advanced sonar arrays and other cutting-edge technology to study and monitor ocean ecosystems. The vessel is also equipped to support search and rescue missions and environmental response efforts, when needed. The vessel is named in honour of Naalak Nappaaluk (1928–2010), a respected Inuk Elder, teacher, and knowledge keeper from Kangiqsujuaq, Nunavik. This vessel was built by Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards under the federal National Shipbuilding Strategy. Canadian Coast Guard

The Government of Canada said its new Climate Competitiveness Strategy is based on “driving investments and achieving results.” Ottawa said the strategy will strengthen Canada’s economy by:

• strengthening industrial carbon pricing.
• providing clarity on regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• boosting clean economy investment through tax credits.
• supporting critical minerals projects.
• mobilizing capital for the transition to net-zero.
• developing new metrics to track Canada’s  success.

Canada’s economy is now 34 percent less carbon-intensive than it was in 2005 thanks to energy efficiency improvements, decarbonization of the electricity grid, and structural shifts in the economy, the government said.

Canada also has decoupled economic growth from emissions. From 2005 to 2023, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 8.5 percent, while gross domestic product grew by 38 percent. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

Health Canada acknowledged that more than $20 million worth of pharmaceutical products were lost from the national stockpile this year because of a temperature-control issue, spurring a call from the federal Conservative health critic for a House of Commons investigation. Health Canada confirmed the incident after figures were identified in the public accounts, an annual financial report on government revenues and spending, and reported by The Canadian Press. In response, Health Canada said in a statement that there were two specific losses documented. The first involved damage to lab equipment that resulted in its loss, totalling around $1.2 million.

The second involved the loss of pharmaceutical products, such as vaccines, held in the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile. A “temperature deviation” resulted in the loss of product, totalling more than $20 million, the department said. Health Canada said the losses will not affect the capacity of the stockpile to respond to public health events. It also said the Public Health Agency of Canada could not disclose details on assets held by the stockpile, including types and volumes, because of national security implications. The Globe and Mail

The Government of Alberta is investing $29 million to help energy companies lower their methane emissions and develop new technologies needed to keep reducing emissions in the future. Supported by the industry-funded Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction fund, two new programs will help Alberta keep reducing emissions while doubling oil and gas production by 2035, the government said. Delivered through Emissions Reduction Alberta, the new $22-million Methane Reduction Deployment Program will help Alberta oil and gas companies invest in more methane reduction technologies by providing up to $1 million for each project, covering up to 50 percent of the eligible project costs. The new $7-million Methane Reduction Demonstration Program, working with the NGIF Accelerator, will help startups and small businesses test new methane reduction technologies at energy sites across Alberta to get projects closer to commercialization. The province has cut methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas sector by 52 percent since 2014 while saving industry about $600 million. Govt. of Alberta

The new Canada-Alberta Productivity Grant, a $39-million, three-year partnership between the Government of Alberta and the Government of Canada, aims to create new opportunities to increase productivity across Alberta. Financial constraints are one of the biggest challenges employers face when it comes to training their employees and developing their skills. This funding, which shares training costs between the employer and government, will further strengthen Alberta’s workforce, keeping it competitive. Training supported by the Canada-Alberta Productivity Grant must focus on one of three categories: business process and operations management, technical, or digital and technological. For existing employees, employers contribute 50 percent of the total eligible training costs. Government contributes the other 50 percent of the cost to a maximum of $5,000 per employed trainee per year. When hiring and training an unemployed Albertan, up to 75 percent of eligible training costs could be covered, up to a maximum of $10,000 per trainee per year. Applications are now open. Govt. of Alberta

The Government of Saskatchewan announced nine industry-led projects selected under the second intake of the Saskatchewan Technology Fund. The projects feature a range of technologies and innovations across key sectors of the economy to mitigate, capture or sequester emissions, including carbon capture, fuel switching, energy efficiency and methane reduction measures. Funding recipients and projects include:

• Cenovus Energy – Spruce Lake Solvent-Aided Process oil and gas initiative applying solvent-aided processes to reduce steam use in thermal operations which enhances bitumen recovery while lowering emissions intensity and water consumption.
• Federated Co-Operatives Limited – Carbon Capture at the Ethanol Complex in Belle Plaine to capture and store biogenic CO₂e, cutting emissions from Saskatchewan's largest ethanol production facility.
• Interpro Pipe and Steel – Carbon Injection Optimization at Regina's steel mill to improve efficiency in steelmaking while lowering fossil fuel carbon input and emissions per tonne of steel.
• Nutrien and Mosaic- Nutrien is modernizing ultrafine potash recovery systems to improve efficiency and reduce energy use, while Mosaic is upgrading potash drying operations with high-efficiency burners that significantly cut natural gas consumption and CO2_e

The Saskatchewan Technology Fund is a made-in-Saskatchewan program that reduces industrial emissions and drives innovation and sustainable economic growth. To date, the fund has supported 22 industry-driven projects, leveraging $629.4 million in private sector investment, eliminating over 6 million tonnes of CO₂e emissions, and saving 13 million gigajoules of energy. Govt. of Saskatchewan

Construction has started on the single largest battery storage facility ever procured in Canadian history, supporting the Government of Ontario’s plan to deliver reliable, affordable and clean energy. Once complete, the new $750-million Skyview 2 Battery Energy Storage System will provide enough capacity to power nearly 400,000 homes, strengthening the province’s electricity grid and protecting Ontario workers and jobs by supporting a more competitive, resilient and self-reliant provincial economy. With electricity demand in Ontario forecasted to increase significantly by 2050, Skyview 2 will play a vital role in supporting the province’s clean electricity grid. Once operational in 2027, the facility will store electricity from Ontario’s clean electricity grid during periods of low demand and return that stored power to the system when demand is higher. The Skyview 2 project is a lithium-ion battery energy storage facility procured through the Independent Electricity System Operator’s Long-Term 1 Request for Proposals. Developed in partnership between Potentia Renewables Inc. and the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, the facility builds on other projects such as the Oneida Energy Storage facility, to bring Ontario’s total energy storage capacity to nearly 3,000 megawatts. Govt. of Ontario

The Government of Ontario is investing $30 million to launch a new round of the Hydrogen Innovation Fund, supporting projects that unlock hydrogen’s potential to drive economic growth, create good-paying jobs and strengthen Ontario’s position as a world leader in the clean energy economy. This increased investment doubles the funding from the previous round and expands the eligibility criteria to support Energy for Generations, Ontario’s long-term energy roadmap. The expanded fund includes two streams: One for projects that integrate low-carbon hydrogen into Ontario’s electricity grid, and another for broader sector applications of hydrogen across transportation, manufacturing and heavy industry through creating hydrogen hubs, connecting hydrogen producers with end-users and switching existing hydrogen users to made-in-Ontario hydrogen. According to a 2023 study commissioned by Natural Resources Canada, a robust hydrogen economy could create up to 70,000 jobs across Canada by 2050, including in Ontario, in areas such as production, infrastructure, storage and clean technology development, while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Govt. of Ontario

The Government of Ontario has asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate the findings of an audit of a company that received grants from the province's Skills Development Fund. A routine audit of an "external service provider" raised concerns two years ago, the premier's office said. That audit identified "irregularities," which in turn prompted a comprehensive forensic audit of the company. Keel Digital Solutions, a software company that provides a platform for mental health care, confirmed in a statement that it was the subject of the province's forensic audit and that it received money from the fund. Ahad Bandealy, spokesperson for Keel Digital Solutions, said the company "cooperated fully and transparently" with the province's forensic audit. "We have serious concerns about the process, which showed persistent misunderstandings of corporate vs. not-for-profit structures and misinterpretation of tax rules (such as input tax credits and relevant federal programs)," Bandealy said. Keel Digital Solutions said its platform has provided more than 200,000 mental health sessions for post-secondary students across Ontario since it was first set up. Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini administers the $2.5 billion Skills Development Fund, which has been mired in controversy for weeks. In October, Ontario's auditor general said in a report that the selection process for grants from the fund was "not fair, transparent or accountable." The fund, which aims to spur economic growth, provides funding to organizations for projects that address challenges to hiring, training, or retaining workers.

See also: “Ontario government’s selection process for skills development funding ‘was not fair, transparent or accountable:’ Auditor General” (The Insights Report, November 5, 2025)

The Government of Canada, going into a softwood summit with the Government of British Columbia, highlighted up to $1.2 billion for the county’s forest sector to help remain competitive in the face of U.S. softwood lumber duties and tariffs. The investments include:

• Up to $700 million over two years on a cash basis, available now, in loan guarantees administered by the Business Development Bank of Canada, to help ensure companies have the financing and credit support they need to maintain and restructure their operations during this period of transformation.
• $500 million over three years on a cash basis, starting in 2026–27, to renew and expand existing Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCan) forest sector programs focused on market and product diversification (including new export initiatives).
• Prioritizing the adoption of Canadian materials – including mass timber and softwood lumber – in construction and changing federal procurement processes to require companies contracting with the federal government to source Canadian lumber.

Earlier this year, the federal government supported the construction of Castlegar-B.C.-based Kalesnikoff’s new 100,000-square-foot modular mass timber facility with a $3-million investment through NRCan’s Investments in Forest Industry Transformation program.

Canada’s lumber industry warned of a crisis in advance of the softwood summit in Vancouver.

The BC Lumber Trade Council, the Forest Products Association of Canada, the Canadian Lumber Trade Alliance and the Independent Wood Processors Association of British Columbia are among the groups sounding the alarm about sawmills operating at below break-even levels.

American import taxes on softwood from Canada now total 45.16 percent for most Canadian producers. NRCan

RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

 The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) are supporting 42 new applied research awards led by Canadian colleges, CEGEPs and polytechnics. This support is made possible by an investment of nearly $17 million through the Tri-agency College and Community Innovation (CCI) program. CCI program funding is a cornerstone for applied research in Canada, enabling colleges to collaborate with partners across the private, public and not for profit sectors, as well as other colleges and universities, working together to generate economic, social, health and environmental benefits for Canada. The 42 awards announced are being funded through two key CCI grant types:

• $13.35 million over two to three years for 38 recipients through the College and Community Social Innovation Fund, which supports community innovation by connecting the knowledge, facilities and capabilities of Canada’s colleges with the needs of local organizations.
• $3.56 million over five years for four recipients through the Mobilize grants, providing long‑term, flexible support for applied research at colleges to expand student learning opportunities and drive lasting community impact. NSERC

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Canada needs sustained funding for research datasets, including a “coherent” health data strategy

Canada’s research ecosystem needs high-quality, interoperable and ethically governed data, including a coherent health data strategy, say the three federal research granting agencies and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

“To fully realize the transformative potential of AI in research and innovation, it is critical that we adopt standardized and robust data management and responsible AI practices across the Canadian research ecosystem,” the agencies and CFI said in feedback to the federal government’s AI Strategy Task Force.

The three research funding agencies are the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

At present, much of Canada’s research data infrastructure, especially the health datasets essential to AI development, is supported through time-limited grants from agencies such as CIHR, NSERC and the CFI.

“As these allocations expire, critical datasets risk losing data, access, and analytic continuity, which could weaken the long-term impact of current investments,” the agencies and CFI said.

“Establishing a stable, long-term funding mechanism for health research data stewardship is therefore as important as any new AI initiative. Without sustained funding, models cannot be trained, validated or maintained, and Canada cannot ensure that health data remains secure, interoperable and available for responsible innovation.”

A unified approach to data stewardship, driven by federated, interoperable data that respects security, privacy, as well as provincial and federal jurisdictions, will not only enhance the efficiency and impact of AI applications but also position Canada as a leader in responsible and inclusive innovation, the agencies and CFI said.

“This challenge is particularly important in the health sphere, where focus should be on establishing connective governance based on consent and data sharing principles that enable collaboration across industry, academia and health systems.” Govt. of Canada – Interagency news

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The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and Michael Smith Health Research BC announced $2.7 million for 14 research teams over the next three years through the Research on Research (called “metaresearch”) joint initiative. Recipients of this funding will explore a variety of important topics, including urban Indigenous governance in health research, how to advance scientific integrity across disciplines, and how reviewer expertise and engagement impact the peer review of grant applications. This initiative strengthens Canada’s national capacity in metaresearch by showcasing Canadian expertise and perspectives on the global stage and contributing to international efforts to optimize research funding and practice, the funding partners said. SSHRC

The Standing Committee on Science and Research has amended a controversial order that seeks 25 years' worth of data on researchers who applied for health and science grants. The parliamentary committee had originally sought details on student and faculty applications to the three federal research funding agencies between 2000 and 2025, but now says it will accept anonymized, high-level data that better preserves privacy. The standing committee’s motion seeks information collected by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which each provides millions in annual funding. Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed put forward the amended motion,  saying it would have cost more than $4 million to fulfil the previous, more granular order. An open letter signed by more than 5,000 researchers had objected to that earlier request, calling it a targeted attack on equity, diversity and inclusivity in health and science research. The order seeks information that includes applicant demographics and responses to equity, diversity and inclusion questionnaires, as well as information on evaluation committee members and their comments, opinions, scores and how much they awarded applicants. The committee agreed to remove the request for "disaggregate" data and replaced it with a request for “aggregated and anonymized” data, which is a broader, high-level overview. Canadian Press

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University of Alberta researchers track down “bugs” in a popular software platform used by scientists

A go-to software platform that scientists use to do their work could become less glitchy, thanks to University of Alberta research.

A comprehensive study of the vulnerabilities in Jupyter Notebook, a popular open-source web application researchers use to explore and analyze their study data, pinpoints the most common bugs in the software – a first step to improving it.

“By understanding Jupyter Notebook weaknesses, smarter, more reliable tools for users and developers can be created,” said Thibaud Lutellier, assistant professor of computing science and mathematics at Augustana Campus, and lead author on the study.

Widely used in data science and machine learning, Jupyter Notebook creates a single, interactive document that combines live code, results and explanatory notes for research studies, making it an effective all-in-one tool. It also offers more flexibility than traditional programming setups, because data can be loaded non-sequentially.

But that unique feature also makes Jupyter Notebook vulnerable to bugs, Lutellier noted. “It’s a lot easier to accidentally break something in the code or to set up the system incorrectly, because you’re changing things all the time.”

And because a wide range of users – many of them non-experts in computer science – can access the software, that increases the likelihood of defects and misconfigurations. Those vulnerabilities can cause problems such as data loss or inaccurate interpretation of results, and can even lead to ransomware attacks, Lutellier said.

To find out what factors contribute to bugs, the researchers collected and analyzed almost 9,000 Jupyter Notebooks from GitHub and Kaggle, two major online “filing cabinets” for software developers. 

Lutellier, Augustana undergraduate research participant Harsh Darji, and researchers from Concordia University and ETH Zurich explored whether certain traits, such as how complex a notebook was or the number of people who worked on it, were connected to having more bugs. They also created a detailed bug taxonomy to classify the different kinds they found, and reviewed security updates and reports to figure out the potential risks when using these notebooks. 

Their assessment showed that having multiple people working together on the same notebook was more likely to produce bugs – a surprising finding, Darji said.

“We’d thought that the problem would be code complexity, but what we found is that if a team of people work on the same piece of code with Jupyter Notebook, the code is more likely to be wrong. The more collaborators there are, the more likely it is that bugs will be introduced.”

The research also uncovered two main types of bugs: those introduced when users improperly set up, or configure, their notebooks, and incorrect use of built-in features.

In reviewing the Jupyter Notebook ecosystem, its vulnerabilities show there’s currently a trade-off between usability and security, Lutellier said.

“It’s flexible and faster than other software, but the code written in it is likely going to be a lot more buggy, and it’s going to be more difficult to work collaboratively. That raises concerns about the reproducibility, maintainability and security of projects done on Jupyter Notebook.”

The study’s insights highlight the need for software developers and AI engineers to build better configuration management and collaborative work tools around Jupyter Notebook, said Lutellier, whose research is now focused on developing a new AI tool to automatically detect those bugs. 

The study was funded through a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant. University of Alberta

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Toronto-based BenchSci, a provider of AI software for biopharma research and development, and Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, announced a multi-year partnership to advance the use of AI for biological inference. The collaboration will unite BenchSci’s deep expertise in biological data with Mila’s world-class research in AI to push the boundaries of predictive and generative modeling in drug discovery, BenchSci said. Together, the teams aim to develop models capable of automating the creation of novel scientific hypotheses and experimental assay prediction – a major step toward the vision of autonomous drug discovery. The teams’ research will directly contribute to the evolution of BenchSci’s ASCEND platform by advancing new inference models that build on the company’s Biological Evidence Knowledge Graph, an advanced map of disease biology. In October, BenchSci announced a three-year agreement with Sanofi to deploy and use BenchSci’s ASCEND platform across Sanofi’s global preclinical research organization. BenchSci

All three Canadian companies participating in a U.S. government effort to determine if quantum computers can operate at a practical scale by 2033 have advanced to the second stage of the program. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that Nord Quantique of Sherbrooke, Que., Photonic Inc. of Coquitlam, B.C. and Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. are among 11 companies DARPA has chosen to take part in Stage B of its Quantum Benchmark Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to identify which approach to quantum computing – if any – has a realistic chance of succeeding in the near future. During Stage B of the DARPA program, participants are eligible to receive up to US$15 million in funding to put toward a detailed planning phase. In Stage B, participating companies will undergo a detailed year-long review of their research and development plans, identifying risks that could arise along the way and strategies for mitigating them. DARPA

Sherbrooke, Que.-based sensors company SBQuantum announced a US$1-million contract with the European Space Agency (ESA). The contract will see SBQuantum deliver a new prototype of its quantum magnetometer sensor, optimized for Earth Observation (EO) missions in space. The upgraded version of the device will remain the same size and weight while delivering a number of enhanced capabilities including improved sensitivity, higher bandwidth and greater accuracy, as required by ESA. This follows a previous contract which saw SBQuantum provide a magnetometer design to ESA, customized to meet its requirements for Earth Observation. It also builds on momentum SBQuantum has gained through the MagQuest Challenge where the company is one of three finalists. Organized by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defence, the winning technology from that challenge will be used to monitor Earth’s magnetic field and its movements for decades to come. SBQuantum

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) said it has allocated all its power capacity – it under its temporary cap of 1,200 megawatts for large-load projects – to two data centre projects to be developed near Edmonton. TransAlta’s Keephills project has been allotted 230 megawatts, and 970 megawatts has been allocated to a project from Pembina Pipeline that could become a massive Meta AI data centre, according to The Logic. The final allocation leaves a long list of 37 remaining data centre proposals currently in AESO’s queue to now either bring their own power generation plans off-grid or wait for Alberta’s provincial grid to catch up to demand. The latter route, one expert said, will likely take several years. The dozens of projects that were not allocated any of the 1,200 megawatts in what was Phase 1 of AESO’s Data Centre Large Load Integration Program, will now be considered under Phase 2 – a plan that is still under development. The Government of British Columbia has proposed a law that would give priority to providing industrial electricity for resource development, ahead of data centres. The proposed legislation would free Crown-owned utility BC Hydro from the obligation to supply electricity equally to all industrial customers. CBC

Phil De Luna has teamed up with scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to launch CURA, a startup using an electrochemical process to produce low-carbon cement. De Luna is the former chief science and commercial officer at Montreal-based direct air capture company Deep Sky. Spun out of UBC research, CURA’s process splits limestone into lime and a pure stream of CO₂ before it enters the kiln, preventing emissions at the source. The resulting zero-carbon lime can then be used to produce low-carbon cement, while the pure CO₂ can be captured, stored or reused. CURA is currently developing a 100-tonne-per-year pilot plant and evaluating sites in British Columbia and Alberta, with plans to scale to a 10,000-tonne demonstration facility within three years. Concrete is responsible for eight percent of global CO₂ emissions. Techcouver

Montreal-based Deep Sky plans to build what would be Canada’s largest direct air capture (DAC) facility, expected to cost $500 million, in southwestern Manitoba. The company said the facility, which would be Deep Sky’s first commercial facility, would remove 500,000 tonnes of carbon out of the air annually once it’s at full scale. Manitoba offers abundant hydroelectric power and favourable geological conditions to permanently store the captured CO₂, the company said. In August, Deep Sky opened its pilot DAC facility in Innisfail, Alta. Called Deep Sky Alpha, the facility will capture 3,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the air by the end of the year, the company said. Deep Sky

The Donald Trump administration cancelled federal awards for nearly half of the 21 federally supported projects that seek to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – a major setback for a direct air capture industry that rode a wave of bipartisan support during the Joe Biden era. Ten direct air capture hub projects collectively lost nearly US $47.4 million, according to an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News. The projects – seven of which were intended for Democratic-led states — were included on a spreadsheet of cancelled awards that the Department of Energy provided to lawmakers. The listed projects include Occidental Petroleum’s South Texas DAC Hub and Project Cypress, a joint venture in Louisiana between DAC startups Heirloom and Climeworks. However, the Department of Energy said no decision about those projects has been made. The agency is terminating more than $7.5 billion in funding for clean energy projects. E&E News

Two scientists who popularized carbon capture warn that the technology has bred overconfidence that the strategy can substitute for hard-to-make cuts to fossil fuels and delay reducing emissions. Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil this week, most countries that filed emissions plans with net-zero goals are relying on carbon removals to reach their target, according to analysis by the Climate Action Tracker, a partnership of climate researchers. Back in 2001, Kenneth Möllersten and Michael Obersteiner came up with the novel idea of capturing carbon that transformed the math of carbon emissions – and the world’s path to net zero. “We emphasized that the potential of future negative emissions should never be used as an excuse to delay emission reductions,” said Obersteiner, who is now director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Financial Post

VC, PRIVATE INVESTMENT & ACQUISITIONS

Toronto-based cybersecurity software company 1Password said it surpassed US$400 million in annual recurring revenue this year, up from $250 million in 2023. The company said it has managed to do this while remaining free cash flow-positive. The 1,400-person Canadian tech firm now serves over 180,000 businesses – including nearly a third of the Fortune 100 – secures more than 1.3 billion human and machine credentials, and supports more than one million developers. 1Password recently added new president Michael Hughes, who previously held leadership positions at ChargePoint and Barracuda Networks, and chief business officer John Torrey, who previously held C-suite roles at Qualtrics and SAP. BetaKit

Vancouver-based venture capital and private debt firm Vistera Growth raised US$321 million in its fifth private credit fund, a 66-percent increase from its previous Fund IV. Fund V has already completed eight investments during its fundraising period, including Clariti Cloud (government technology), Tendo (health care software), Authentic8 (cybersecurity) and Kore.ai (enterprise AI. Across its five funds, Vistara has now completed 42 investments, with 23 exits to date and a net annualized rate of return of just over 15 percent, all while incurring zero losses. Vistara

Toronto-headquartered AI holding company Beacon Software raised $250 million in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and D1 Capital. The round also included investments from BDT & MSD Partners, Chris Rogers (CEO of Instacart), and Sator Grove. Beacon provides its portfolio companies with a shared platform of technology, design, fintech and go-to-market capabilities. Beacon said it will use the funding to continue to expand its network of software and services companies while scaling its centralized technology teams. BusinessWire

St. John’s, Nfld.-based CoLab raised US$72 million in a Series C funding round. The round was led by Intrepid Growth Partners, a growth-stage fund backing the next generation of AI market leaders. Existing investors, including Insight Partners, plus Y Combinator, Pelorus VC, Killick Capital, and Spider Capital returned for their third consecutive round. CoLab said the funding will be used to develop new AI agents, build integrations with other engineering and AI applications, expand partnerships and scale go-to-market teams. CoLab’s AI-powered Engineering OS (operating system) transforms how design teams in the world’s most advanced hardware companies work together, review technical data and make critical decisions. BusinessWire

Montreal-based cybersecurity software company Flare raised an additional US$30 million in a Series B funding round. This funding includes a US$15-million equity investment led by Inovia Capital and a $15 million in debt financing from the Bank of Montréal. Flare specializes in Threat Exposure Management (TEM), providing advanced cybersecurity solutions that help organizations identify and manage potential security threats. The company has grown its presence in over 50 countries and plans to use the new capital to further its expansion in Europe and North America. Flare’s software, which automates digital threat monitoring by scanning the dark web and other sources for cybercrime, positions it as a leader in the TEM space. Startup Ecosystem Canada

Wilmington, Delaware-based Digitail (which has a Toronto hub), a provider of AI-powered practice management software for veterinary clinics, raised US$23 million in a Series B funding round led by Five Elms Capital with participation from existing investors Atomico, Partech, Byfounders, Gradient, and others. The financing will accelerate product innovation, including Digitail’s AI capabilities, to help veterinary teams automate routine tasks, see more patients and improve patient experiences, the company said. Digitail

Angel investment activity in Canada in 2024 continued to rebound from post-pandemic lows, according to a report from the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO). However, NACO said the government must do more to incentivize early-stage investing. The report found that overall angel investment was $146.2 million in 2024, up 27 percent from the year before. Among associations that reported numbers in 2023 and 2024, total investments rose nearly 14 percent across 500 cheques written. Across all organizations, the average investment per company was $245,237, while the median hovered around $111,000 – up from $84,000 in 2023. NACO welcomed Budget 2025 and the federal government’s “intention to develop a strategy to support Canadian firms facing early growth-stage funding gaps” through $750 million in support of Canada’s early-stage entrepreneurs and the networks that fund them. Startup Ecosystem Canada

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Fewer but larger financings boost Canadian venture capital investment in third quarter of 2025

Canadian venture capital market activity showed some “positive signs” and continued challenges during the third quarter after a particularly bleak first half of 2025, according to a report by the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA).

The CVCA tracked $1.8 billion in total VC funding deployed across 123 technology startup deals in Canada in Q3 2025. This represents a continued uptick on a quarterly basis compared to Q1 and Q2, though these amounts have been allocated across progressively fewer companies. CVCA’s David Kornacki said this data is evidence of “a healthy, stable” Canadian VC market. While the Q3 figures mark a 40-percent decline in total investment and a 23-percent drop in deal count relative to the same period last year, Q3 2024 was buoyed by Burnaby-based legaltech firm Clio’s more than $1.2-billion “substantially secondary” Series F round.

In 2025 to date, mega-deals of $50 million or more have accounted for 60 percent of all dollars invested.

Early-stage investment continues to lag behind the rest of the market. During the first nine months of this year, $650 million has been deployed across 219 pre-seed and seed deals, consistent with 2020 levels and down approximately 15 percent compared to 2024. 

An estimated 800 tech startups launched in Canada in the first six months of 2025, according to a report from early-stage venture capital firm Panache Ventures.

That’s down from 1,100 in the same period of 2024, though up from 700 in 2023 – the first year Panache began tracking startup creation. 

On the private equity side, major privatizations and steady mid-market activity helped the market sustain its record pace during Q3, with $25.4 billion invested across 151 deals.

Though Canada overall saw total VC investment increase and deal count decrease during Q3 compared to Q2, Quebec saw declines on both fronts in the third quarter.

A report from Réseau Capital found that $108 million was deployed across 23 deals in Q3, representing drops of 63 percent and 23 percent, respectively, compared to the second quarter.

According to the CVCA, this trend towards fewer, larger, and more deliberate VC investments is also reflected in PitchBook data for the U.S. market.

The report found that average VC deal size during Q3 climbed to $14.7 million, a 20-percent increase compared to the second quarter. BetaKit

REPORTS & POLICIES

Government of Canada’s public consultation on AI strategy was industry-biased and “deeply misguided:” critics

Canada’s “sprint” to shape a renewed AI strategy needed to include meaningful and inclusive consultation and not be so industry-focused, critics say.

October 31 saw the end of Canada’s “30-day national sprint to shape a renewed AI strategy,” the Montreal AI Ethics Institute says.

The sprint was announced in September alongside a federal AI Strategy Task Force, which the Montreal AI Ethics Institute criticized for being too industry-focused in its weekly Brief #175. But the institute says it can now draw on other views that have been made openly accessible to underscore its perspective.

Drawing on various responses to the government’s consultation (with over 120 signatories from civil society, human rights and civil liberty organizations), an open letter coordinated by Citizen Lab researchers and director Ron Deibert condemns the biased consultation process involved in the sprint, serving to safeguard the interests of industry while limiting meaningful public engagement through its short window for responses.

Signatories of the letter refused to validate the government’s “deeply misguided and wrongheaded” approach to public consultation, calling it a “façade for manufacturing consent for a harmful preordained agenda.”

The signatories called on the government to:

• Extend the consultation deadline to February 2, 2026.
• Reconstitute the Task Force into a more equitably representative one that is equipped to confront the ongoing threats of AI to people and communities.
• Rewrite the survey into a more legitimate and unbiased consultation instrument.

The current consultation process suggests serious disregard for the Canadian public’s known and wide-ranging concerns about the demonstrated risks and harms of technologies currently classified as AI, the signatories said.

Evan Solomon, minister of AI and digital innovation, has said he intends to depart from “over-indexing” on harm prevention when it comes to AI.

“This suggests a troubling lack of understanding of the wide-ranging and well-documented harms these technologies pose, which any meaningful national strategy would need to take into account,” the letter’s signatories said.

The signatories announced their intention to host an independent and separate “People’s Consultation on AI.”

Anindya Sen, fellow-in-residence and inaugural scholar in AI and digital policy at the C. D. Howe Institute, and professor of economics and acting director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at the University of Waterloo, noted that there is no talk by the government of safety standards in a new federal AI Act.

This is consistent with Soloman’s earlier emphasis on scaling up the AI industry, driving adoption along with ensuring trust and sovereignty over the technology, Sen said in an intelligence memo.

“Sensible legislation is critical to ensuring the type of innovation that Canadian entrepreneurs will engage in, as well as affecting public trust,” Sen said.

As an example of AI without sufficient guardrails, he pointed to Open AI’s video generation app Sora, which has gone viral in the U.S. because of its ability to make extremely realistic videos, leading to the creation and sharing of faked situations of deceased celebrities and historical figures in strange and offensive scenarios.

Further critique ensued, the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) noted: 70 organizations (including MAIEI) called for a deeper and more meaningful engagement with minoritized communities.

London, U.K-based Kairoi Ltd., an AI ethics and research governance consultancy company, called on Canada to utilize its influence in the West to act more authentically in light of its Indigenous heritage.

Notwithstanding diverse organizations scrambling to provide meaningful input within the tight timeframe, the government’s Budget 2025 government budget made it very clear that AI would be further adopted across government departments to improve “operational efficiencies,” MAIEI pointed out.

“Yet, without proper consultation with the departments in question, the implementation of AI will result in being performative and forced,” MAIEI said.

Canada cannot ignore the three pillars of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy (commercialization, standards, and talent and research), established in 2017, that formed the core of the consultation, MAIEI said. “Yet, it seems the recent emphasis has landed on commercialization.”

Consultation shouldn’t become mere “theatre,” MAIEI added.

Decisions already in place, and the unnecessarily short turnaround, reinforce a notion of public consultation regarding AI in Canada being a question of performativity, MAIEI said. “It’s not about getting the nation’s input on some of the most important tech policies of the decade, but appearing to do so.”

The common thread between all these critiques is clear: the federal government’s consultation attempt became a series of platitudes: performative and devoid of meaningful impact, MAIEI said.

ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) Toronto put together suggested responses for their beneficiaries to remind the government of the importance of consent, compensation and control when it comes to AI in the arts.

This form of consultation is what the government’s sprint lacked: on-the-ground input from members of the public facing genuine threats to the core of their work, MAIEI said.

“It is this kind of analysis that will better serve the general public, with its absence spelling the start of a vacuous and misaligned attempt at implementation that leads to those affected most being ignored,” MAIEI said. Montreal AI Ethics Institute

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Better AI adoption requires a “matchmaking service” and greatly expanded AI training

Canada needs a “concierge” service to matchmake AI experts with industry partners to improve AI adoption, along with an academic consultancy for businesses in exchange for student scholarships, say researchers and professors at the University of British Columbia.

The country also needs greatly expanded AI training, including expanding the Mitacs/Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance model of academic-industrial partnerships to make it work better for AI, the seven academics said in a report based on remarks made at the C. D. Howe Institute and CIFAR conference, “Artificial Intelligence – Seizing Opportunities,” held earlier this year.

Canada ranks first in the G7 for per capita production of academic papers. But AI adoption lags: in 2023, Canada ranked 20^th in AI adoption among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

The federal government’s 2017 Pan-Canadian AI Strategy strengthened academic research capacity through national AI institutes in Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton.

Other programs – such as Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentives, global innovation clusters, and matching grants – have supported industry adoption, the report said. “But collectively they have not overcome Canada’s persistent adoption deficit.”

“[AI’s]promise and its curse are that it can be applied to just about anything,” the report said.

“The promise is that AI’s potential for economic transformation is immense. The curse is that applied research always requires deep knowledge of the application area, and AI experts do not have the luxury of picking a single application area and sticking to it.”

Also, progress  in AI is extremely rapid. People who are focused only on applying AI struggle to stay on top of such changes in the field’s methodologies and hence fall behind quickly.

Moreover, AI is an amazingly general-purpose technology that does not respect application boundaries. Even some of its most stunning breakthroughs arose not by drilling into applications but from research that initially focused on entirely different domains.

For example, DeepMind’s work on using reinforcement learning to play Atari games led in a few years to AlphaFold, its system for predicting protein folding that yielded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“Overall, steering AI adoption requires strength in the core discipline,” the report noted.

Governments’ existing models for promoting AI adoption include focusing on strengthening the academic side of the equation, reasoning that a healthy academic ecosystem offers trickle-down benefits to industry.

However, while a strong academic sector is helpful to industry, the “trickle-down” pace is far too slow. Canada’s academic strength – but industrial underperformance in AI – shows that academic investments alone do not guarantee productivity gains.

Second, the government might directly subsidize industry, seeking to eliminate barriers to the adoption of new technologies.

This is what Canada has done for many years through the SR&ED tax incentive program, technology global innovation clusters, special-purpose deals for large companies considering opening a new campus in a given location, and so on.

At the margin, economic incentives can boost investment and otherwise nudge a company towards action. But there are two significant drawbacks to the approach, the report pointed out.

First, despite decades of employing economic incentives, Canada is nevertheless experiencing abysmal productivity growth; “this approach is clearly not a silver bullet.”

Second, the approach fails to capitalize on Canada’s biggest advantage in AI, which is the strength of its academic sector.

A new approach to leverage academic strengths

What remains is for the government to seek to boost industry adoption by leveraging academic strength, the report said. For decades, this has been a major focus of Canadian industrial policy. The approach is perhaps exemplified by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Alliance program and by nonprofit “centre of excellence” programs such as Mitacs.

At a high level, both programs incentivize professors to work with industrial partners as a way of funding their research.

The model is typically that professors initiate these collaborations, motivated by the norm that a successful career requires a larger complement of graduate students than can be funded on an NSERC Discovery Grant, student scholarships and teaching assistantships alone, and by the reality that few alternative sources of funding exist.

Industry partners are asked to make some combination of a cash and an in-kind contribution to the project, which is supplemented by matching funds from the government and generous intellectual property terms.

While the Mitacs/Alliance model clearly succeeds in catalyzing some knowledge transfer from academia to industry, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, the report said.

On the industry side, it does not work well for those who need only straightforward advice rather than the year-long research projects the model is set up to provide.

Students are not always the ideal points of contact for industry. In addition to their comparatively lower levels of technical expertise, they can lack a broad view of their field and have less experience communicating technical ideas with non-experts.

On the faculty side, the model can also be a poor fit. Faculty who oversee projects often lack deep domain knowledge of the downstream industry, particularly for non-rocket-science disciplines like AI.

Faculty need to support their research programs, and Mitacs/Alliance provide the most readily available funds. This often means there is more interest in such collaborations from academics than there is industry demand.

“This lost opportunity is profound,” the report noted. While unmet demand for research funding is often framed as a problem for professors, the reality is that programs are at least partly motivated by a desire to foster technology transfer, and nearly all money flows to trainees.

“This means that when funding is scarce, fewer students are trained, which makes little sense.” The marginal annual cost of funding all of the additional graduate students a professor would be willing to supervise (a few tens of thousands of dollars each) is small relative to the annual cost already being paid to employ the professor and house their research program, which goes beyond salary to include the indirect costs of administrative and technical staff support plus the facilities that the professor needs to do their job (hundreds of thousands of dollars per professor).

“And Canada has a huge need for skilled trainees!” the report said.

Making matters worse, Canadian funding schemes are often regionally based (for example, the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy makes it difficult to adequately fund AI research outside Toronto, Montreal, or Edmonton). This means that the un-serviced gap between student demand and student funding is unevenly distributed across the country.

Creating better mechanisms to connect academic researchers and industry

Matchmaking between academics and industrial partners is very hard, according to the report. Due to the lopsided incentive structure, the task falls mostly on academics.

The problem is that few of them are particularly good at it – the academic pipeline does not select for people with the ability to cold-call small-company CEOs and persuade them to part with money to co-fund research projects, the report said.

This task is complicated even further when AI experts do not focus on single domains, and virtually any industry in town could be a potential partner.

The problem is best addressed by creating a staffed “concierge service” that industry could contact when seeking AI expertise, the report said. “A centralized matchmaking service would open the door to many partnerships that would otherwise never be established.”

Second, not every industry inquiry is a request to establish a research project. Simple consultations with AI experts about public-domain AI knowledge would be hugely valuable to industry and, if appropriately incentivized, attractive to academics.

For example, faculty could be offered a one-semester scholarship for every eight hours set aside for meetings with industry, meaning that one weekly “industry office hour” would indefinitely fund two graduate students.

Third, in situations where longer-term research projects do make sense, the lack of domain knowledge by AI experts is nevertheless a barrier, the report said. “Better outcomes can be achieved by building bigger teams that include academic domain experts from outside AI in ‘research trios.’”

The mechanism would fund research trios rather than bilateral research pairings. Each trio would contain an AI expert, an academic domain expert, and an industry partner.

This approach capitalizes on the fact that there is a huge pool of academic talent outside core AI with deep disciplinary knowledge and a passion for applying AI.

Such researchers are typically not in a position to deeply understand cutting-edge AI methodologies. But they are ideally suited to serve as a bridge between researchers focused on AI methodologies and Canadian industrial players seeking to achieve real-world productivity gains.

One advantage of this model is that projects can be initiated by the larger population of domain experts, who are also more likely to have appropriate connections to industry.

Beyond this, involving domain experts increases the likelihood that a project will succeed and gives industry partners more reason to trust the process while a solution is being developed.

The model meets a growing need for funding researchers outside computer science for projects that involve AI, rather than concentrating AI funding within a group of specialists.

At the same time, it avoids the pitfall of encouraging bandwagon-jumping “applied AI” projects that lack adequate grounding in modern AI practices.

Finally, it not only transfers AI knowledge to industry, but also does the same to both the domain expert and their students.

Expanded and more diversified training in AI is needed

The report also pointed out that society is now experiencing only the tip of the iceberg in demand for AI expertise. As the sector grows in economic importance, meeting the resulting demand will require considerable innovation in AI education.

This will span a wide spectrum. The report said every student should be offered the opportunity to develop AI literacy; those seeking to specialize in AI should be able to pursue dedicated courses of study.

Students in other disciplines should be able to develop sub-specializations in AI. Graduates in the workforce should be offered opportunities for both continuing education to allow them to apply AI in their existing career paths and retraining to help them to chart a new course.

There is also a growing need for “AI Adoption Facilitators:”  bridge-builders who can help established workers in medium-to-large organizations understand how data-driven tools could offer value in solving the problems they face.

UBC is already starting to build out the vision described in the report, by establishing three  initiatives that foster connections between AI experts and domain experts.

First, UBC’s analogue to an AI institute is the university’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence Decision-making and Action, founded in 2018. To date, this centre has attracted 143 UBC faculty as members, spanning 27 departments from across the university.

This group is subdivided into 34 core members (“roughly, people who would hold an AI chair if they worked elsewhere”) and 109 non-core members (in most cases, academics from disciplines outside computer science and statistics who apply AI to domains in which they have primary expertise).

Second, UBC has established a Faculty of Science Hiring Cluster called AI Methods for Scientific Impact, an initiative that has hired six new faculty since 2022, spanning computer science, statistics, and mathematics. The cluster is explicitly focused on fostering partnerships between core AI researchers and experts in other scientific disciplines.

Third, UBC’s Data Science Institute (DSI) funds postdoctoral fellows to serve as a bridge between data science experts, other academic domain experts, and industrial partners.

Over the past decade, the DSI funding program has brought back external research funds almost four times as much as DSI has spent on the program, demonstrating the value of incubating research trios, the report said.

“To go further will require sustained support from government, industry, non-profits, and foundations. Canada’s current strength in AI is only the beginning, and that our country is ready to enter a new chapter enabled by new models of academic–industry partnership.”

The report’s authors are:

• Michiel van de Panne, Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
• Cinda Heeren, Professor of Teaching at UBC.
• Kevin Leyton-Brown, Distinguished University Scholar, Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii, and Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
• Joanna McGrenere, Co-head and Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
• Raymond Ng, Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
• Margo Seltzer, Co-head and Professor of Computer Science at UBC.
• Leonid Sigal, Professor of Computer Science at UBC. D. Howe Institute

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Data centres will have major impacts on nearby communities by threatening local water supplies, researchers say

Hosting data centres will have major consequences for nearby communities by threatening water supplies and producing environmental inequities, according to an article in Canadian Dimension.

The Government of Alberta’s AI Data Centre Strategy, for example, claims the province has “the natural resources to power and sustain AI data centres” and aims to “position Alberta as a global leader in AI-driven data centre operations.”

“As climate change increasingly disrupts water cycles, the water footprint of data centres will become even more pressing for both local residents and policymakers,” says the Canadian Dimension article, by Justine Babin and M. V. Ramana.

Babin is a master’s student in environmental policy at SciencesPo research university in Paris and was a visiting research student this summer at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC.

Water is critical to data centres in two main ways, the co-authors said. First, cooling systems depend on it to keep computer hardware within the recommended range of 18 to 27 degrees Celsius. There are a few different methods of maintaining this temperature, but most involve water.

Second, large amounts of water are used in generating the electricity that powers data centres. This consumption can take place close to or far from the site, depending on where the electricity is produced.

Thermal power plants like coal and nuclear facilities use vastly more water than renewable sources such as solar and wind.

The amount of water required also varies depending on what the data centre is used for. The demands of training generative AI models, for instance, may look very different from the requirements of the U.S. National Security Agency’s massive Utah data centre.

Despite frequent media coverage with headlines like “AI is draining water from areas that need it most,” actual figures on water use remain uncertain, Babin and Ramana said.

Most data centres are owned by Big Tech companies such as Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which tend to be secretive about their operations, they said. A 2021 review found fewer than a third of operators even measured water use.

Some Big Tech companies have pledged to offset their direct water footprint by 2030 through efficiency measures, replenishment and restoration projects.

But unlike carbon dioxide emissions, which have the same effect regardless of location, water scarcity is local. “Investments in replenishment elsewhere do not help communities losing access to water from rivers and aquifers,” Babin and Ramana noted.

The way companies have dealt with affected communities has also raised concerns. Research shows they often hide corporate identities behind local subsidiaries, invoke trade secrecy to block oversight, and delegate construction to lesser-known contractors to deflect criticism.

Because of secrecy and varied practices, it is very difficult to estimate future water demand from data centres in Alberta or elsewhere, Babin and Ramana said. “What can be said with confidence is that demand will be substantial, and local impacts significant.”

One study estimated that seven data centres in Utah’s Great Salt Lake region consumed 600 million gallons of water in 2023.

To put that into perspective, this is roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of over 100,000 beef cattle – an industry that is Utah’s top agricultural sector, generating nearly $500 million in 2019.

In Council Bluffs, Iowa, Google used 980 million gallons of drinking water in 2023, accounting for nearly a quarter of the city’s total water use that year.

In The Dalles, Oregon, another Google facility consumed 302 million gallons out of 1.5 billion gallons used by the city, or about 20 percent of its drinking water supply. “These cases make clear that data centres can have significant local impacts.”

Water consumption by data centres has already triggered conflicts with other essential uses, particularly agriculture.

In Aragon, Spain, Amazon’s new data centres are expected to use enough water to irrigate 233 hectares of corn, one of the region’s main crops.

Similar disputes have emerged in The Dalles, where farms and orchards have endured severe droughts and declining aquifers, and in the Netherlands, where farmers argue that data centres worsen nitrogen pollution during construction.

Civil society resistance has occasionally slowed or blocked projects, Babin and Ramana said. In 2024, an environmental court in Chile partially reversed a permit for a Google data centre.

In 2022, the Netherlands imposed a moratorium on new large-scale data centres, and Ireland has an informal pause in place until 2028.

Canada is only beginning to confront these issues., the co-authors said. Nearly a hundred data centres are already clustered around the northern shores of Lake Ontario, raising alarms about impacts on the Great Lakes.

In Quebec, residents have voiced concerns about farmland and water resources. And in Alberta, the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation has accused a proposed project of threatening their livelihoods by drawing water from the Smoky River.

Debates about AI and data centres often focus on energy requirements, but water deserves equal attention, Babin and Ramana said. “As Alberta and other provinces consider whether to welcome new facilities, both water and energy demands should be weighed carefully.”

They said the first step should be transparency: companies must disclose accurate and complete figures on water and energy use for all their facilities worldwide. Several U.S. states are already considering transparency laws, and the European Union now requires member states to collect and publish such data.

Said Babin and Ramana: “Canada should follow this example before approving further projects.” Canadian Dimension

 THE GRAPEVINE – News about people, institutions and communities

 Mitacs announced 11 Canadian innovators receiving the 2025 Mitacs Innovation Awards. Recipients of the Mitacs Award – Outstanding Innovation are:

• Nicoletta Faraone, associate professor of chemistry at Acadia University and head of the university’s new Canadian Tick Research and Innovation Centre, for spearheading the development of a first-of-its-kind, Canadian-made all-natural and long-lasting fabric spray tick repellent.
• Tae-Ho Kim, postdoctoral fellow in the Biomechatronic Systems Laboratory at Simon Fraser University, for his groundbreaking work to design a first-of-its-kind self-powered continuous blood pressure monitor – a neckband with earphones – that provides measurements every few seconds.
• Sara Imani, a postdoctoral researcher at McMaster University, for developing a first-of-its-kind coating that promises to reduce infection risk on high-touch surfaces in high traffic areas, including hospitals, schools, businesses, airports, grocery stores and more.
• Nitesh Sanghai,a PhD candidate in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba, for his breakthrough ALS drug discovery – a promising drug that brings hope for a better quality and longer life to the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Canadians living with the debilitating disease. Patented and trademarked as Borsantrazole™, the drug has a demonstrated ability to delay disease onset, prevent ALS induced weight loss and most importantly, extend life in humanized preclinical ALS mouse models.
• Nello David Sansone, a post-doctoral researcher working in University of Toronto’s Multifunctional Composites Manufacturing Laboratory, for inventing two breakthrough materials that are poised to revolutionize the automotive industry. Sansone has designed lightweight alternatives to the industry-standard glass-filled polypropylene (plastic) materials currently used by car manufacturers, giving manufacturers lighter, high-impact components they need to design cars that use less energy to drive longer distances, whether fueled by gas or electric batteries.
• Anne Laurie, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Education (Child Studies) at Concordia University, a Mitacs Innovation Award – Inclusive Innovator of the Yearfor her novel work to develop a first-of-its-kind equitable Developmental Language Disorder assessment tool that is filling a gap in the speech-language and ed tech markets. The tool, now offered on an online platform, is the first of its kind to provide a culturally sensitive way to distinguish between language difference (characterized by an accent or a second language) and Developmental Language Disorder (genuine difficulty in understanding or using language), ensuring children who need early intervention get it and those who don’t avoid being mislabelled.
• Faramarz Samavati, a Computer Science Professor at the University of Calgary, a Mitacs Innovation Award – Outstanding Research Leadership, for his role in developing a first-of-its-kind, made-in-Canada 3D digital earth system, launched as an alternative to traditional geographic information systems like Google Maps that represent the Earth as flat.
• Lucas Hof, a Mechanical Engineering professor and director of the Montreal-based Laboratory for Smart and Circular Manufacturing at École de technologie supérieure, a Mitacs Innovation Award – Outstanding Research Leadership, for his novel work to boost Canada’s manufacturing sector. With the support of more than 40 Mitacs interns over six years, his innovations range from recyclable 3D printed shoes and intelligent industrial safety systems, to flexible solar panels and manufacturing parts from textile waste.
• Fattah Haeri, a biomedical engineer and recent MBA graduate at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, a Mitacs Innovation Award – Canadian Start-Up Innovator of the Year, for his breakthrough company Femera Med Tech, which he co-founded to usher in a “new era in female health.” With an estimated one in two Canadian women over age 65 experiencing urinary incontinence, Femera is commercializing a revolutionary new treatment – a vaginal probe that restores tissue elasticity and strengthens pelvic floor muscles – offering women an affordable, accessible and minimally invasive alternative to surgery.
• Narjes Allahrabbi, a postdoctoral researcher working in the Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering Department at Toronto Metropolitan University, a Mitacs Innovation Award – Canadian Start-Up Innovator of the Year, for a novel sperm enhancement device that fills a gap in the market as an affordable, accessible alternative to in vitro fertilization IVFfor male infertility patients. The device – an automated sperm preparation technology – gently separates unhealthy sperm from healthy sperm. Her innovation led to the launch of Toronto-based start-up Fertilead, which is now in the process of developing both clinical and at-home versions of the technology, with a pre-clinical validation study expected to start early next year.
• Hydro-Québec, energy sector leader, earned the Mitacs Innovation Award – Canadian Enterprise Innovator of the Year,for its pioneering work to build a sustainable, resilient, and innovation-driven future for Canada based on clean energy. Through its innovation hub – the Institut de recherche d’Hydro-Québec – and with the help of hundreds of Mitacs interns, Hydro-Québec is working to develop next-generation technologies to improve grid reliability, integrate renewable energy sources and accelerate the move away from fossil fuels. Mitacs

Dr. Françoise Baylis, PhD, distinguished research professor emeritus at Dalhousie University, is the new president of the Royal Society of Canada, effective November 15 for a term running to 2028. Baylis is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading bioethicists, known for engaging with some of the most difficult ethical questions in science and medicine. Through her service on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human-genome editing and her book Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing, she has helped shape international discussions on the responsible use of biotechnology and the ethical boundaries of innovation. Dalhousie University

Health Canada announced the re-appointment of Dr. Robert Bell to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Governing Council. Bell has been a member of the CIHR Governing Council since September 2022. He practised orthopedic oncology surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital and is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Toronto.  Bell was also president and CEO of Toronto's University of Health Network from 2005-14, Ontario's deputy minister of health from 2014-2018 and serves on a number of boards. Health Canada

International consulting firm Teneo announced Simon Kennedy and Martha Hall Finlay as senior advisors. Kennedy has been one of Canada’s top civil servants over the past 20 years, having held various deputy minister postings and serving as former prime minister Stephen Harper’s chief negotiator in trade discussions with the White House in 2011. More recently, Kennedy has served of the board of directors for several organizations, including the Ottawa Community Foundation, the Waterloo-based Quantum Valley Ideas Lab, and Finchley Pharmaceuticals. Hall Findlay represented the Toronto riding of Willowdale from 2008 to 2011 and pursued the Liberal Party’s leadership on two separate occasions, losing out to Stéphane Dion and Justin Trudeau, respectively. In recent years, Hall Findlay joined the energy company Suncor, eventually holding the role of chief climate officer, though she last served as director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. iPolitics

Finance Canada appointed Dwight Ball as chair of the board of directors at the Canada Development Investment Corporation, for a four-year term effective November 5, 2025. Ball was premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from 2015 to 2020 where he led the provincial government through a major reshaping of its economic and social programs. A former president of the Canadian Pharmacists Association, Ball has more than 30 years of business ownership experience in health care, real estate development, venture capital and seniors housing developments. Finance Canada

Angela Campbell will be the next provost and executive vice-president (academic) at McGill University, starting February 1, 2026. Campbell is currently a full professor in McGill’s Faculty of Law. She completed her law degree at Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox fellow and Langdon H. Gammon fellow. Prior to joining McGill, Campbell clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada for Justice Frank Iacobucci and taught at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. Campbell said she will begin her tenure with a focus on three areas: McGill’s budget model, its academic program development, and communication and community engagement across the campuses. McGill University

Janice Charette, a former clerk of the privy council and Canada’s high commissioner to the U.K., has joined the Business Council of Canada as a senior strategic advisor. Charette played a leadership role on the transition team for Prime Minister Mark Carney following his victory in the Liberal leadership race and the 2025 federal election. Earlier in her public service career, Charette led several senior government departments as deputy minister, including Health Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Human Resources and Skills Development, and Intergovernmental Affairs. iPolitics

Yoshua Bengio, full professor of computer science at Université de Montreal, co-president and  and scientific director of LawZero, and the founder and scientific advisor of Mila – Quebec AI Institute, has become the most cited computer scientist worldwide, and the most-cited living scientist across all fields by total citations on Google Scholar. He joins Michel Foucault, French philosopher, historian of ideas and political activist, who has been cited more than one million times by his peers. These are the only two scientists to have exceeded one million citations on Google Scholar. Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto is expected to join this select group in the coming months. Université de Montreal

Kevin Acquah has joined the Prime Minister’s Office as a digital advisor to Mark Carney. Acquah was deputy director of digital media at Finance Canada from June 2025 to November 2025. Kevin Acquah LinkedIn post

Damien Steel, a veteran of OMERS Ventures and former CEO of the Montreal-based carbon capture startup Deep Sky, announced he will join Toronto-based Whitecap Venture Partners as a venture partner in the new year to assist in the raising of its sixth venture fund. Steel’s appointment will be finalized in the first quarter of 2026. Whitecap Venture Partners is preparing for its sixth fund with a target size of $150 million to $200 million. The firm has previously invested in early-stage software and med-tech startups including Deep Sky, Felix Health, and Lyteflo. Steel will continue to advise Deep Sky, a portfolio company of Whitecap, while taking on his new role. Startup Ecosystem Canada

JD Saint-Martin said he will step down as president of Montreal-based Lightspeed Commerce at the end of its fiscal year. After six years with the e-commerce and point-of-sales tech firm, Saint-Martin will leave on March 31, 2026, “to focus on mentoring and investing in early-stage founders within the Canadian technology ecosystem,” the company said. In a LinkedIn post, Saint-Martin said he made the decision to leave and that there is “more to come soon.” Lightspeed also announced the addition of Gabriel Benavides as chief revenue officer. BetaKit

Allan Gregg, who founded polling firm Decima Research and co-founded the Strategic Council, joined the C. D. Howe Institute as a senior fellow. Gregg has played a central role in dozens of campaigns over the last thirty years. His work includes developing research-based strategies and then translating them into all aspects of campaign management – from policy and speeches to media relations, and from communications and advertising to targeted grassroots campaigns. From 1993 to 2013,  Gregg hosted the TVO talk show “Allan Gregg in Conversation with . . .,” and for over a decade was a regular participant on CBC’s “At Issue” panel. C. D. Howe Institute

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