CONTENTS:

 Government Funding & News

• Federal government provides $162 million to Mitacs for students, recent graduates and post-docs to work with businesses in adopting AI and innovation
• feds invest $80 million in the Terry Fox Research Institute’s work in precision oncology research
• Ottawa proceeds with closing several agricultural research facilities, despite objections
• Canada’s immigration strategy has lost its edge and needs a reset to rebuild trust in the system
• Canada’s economic performance fell further behind that of the U.S. during the last 25 years
• Alberta government releases a new intellectual property framework

 Research, Technology & Innovation

• Canada’s data centre payroll employment has surged 23 percent over the past year
• Canada ranks 7^th globally in cybersecurity and online privacy knowledge
• Automated AI systems could trigger an “intelligence explosion” within a few years, AI leaders warn
• RCMP own most of the Chinese-made drones in the federal fleet

 VC, Private Investment & Acquisitions

• Canadian Shield Institute calls on federal government to do more to get Canadian pension funds to invest in domestic companies

 Reports & Policies

• Holes in value chains are hobbling five industry sectors that could reshape Canada’s economy for the better
• Canada significantly lags U.K. in matching vision for industrial strategy with governance architecture and operational delivery
• The world needs an AI stability board
• Global quantum industry – including Canada’s sector – is deeply dependent on global supply chains
• Canada has alternatives to grocery chains. Here’s what governments can learn from them

 The Grapevine – News about people, institutions and communities

• Entrepreneur-philanthropist Jim Balsillie’s Balsillie Family Foundation pledged $4.5 million to four Waterloo region food banks
• New wind tunnel to be built at the University of Saskatchewan will be research and industry “game changer”

GOVERNMENT FUNDING & NEWS

 Federal government provides $162 million to Mitacs for students, recent graduates and post-docs to work with businesses in adopting AI and innovation

Federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon announced up to $162 million over five years, beginning in 2026-2027, for Vancouver-based non-profit Mitacs to support 10,000 co-funded work placement opportunities for postsecondary students, recent graduates and post-doctoral fellows to work with Canadian businesses to help them with AI adoption and innovation.

The investment delivers on a key priority of Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All, which focuses on building an AI-skilled nation and helping young Canadians gain practical AI skills and experience for careers in an increasingly AI-driven economy.

Through AI for All, the Government of Canada will create up to 90,000 AI-related job and work placement opportunities for young Canadians by 2031.

For many small and medium-sized enterprises, the challenge is not with seeing the potential of AI, but with having the skills, capacity and support to put it to work.

By connecting businesses with emerging talent and expertise, this investment will help more companies identify practical applications, deploy AI solutions and translate adoption into greater productivity, growth and competitiveness.

The funding will support the Mitacs AI Advantage programming, which enables business-academic collaborations through two complementary streams designed to strengthen Canada’s AI talent pipeline and accelerate AI adoption and commercialization:

• ADOPT will support work placement opportunities focused on AI adoption, linking industry partners with academic researchers and talent to help businesses, big and small, quickly test and deploy AI solutions across their organizations.
• AI+X will support work placement opportunities focused on AI innovation, co-funding research work placements and collaborations that apply AI to solve business problems and develop new technologies in a variety of disciplines, including agriculture and health care.

Mitacs is also backed by the federal Strategic Science Fund, which awarded the organization $218 million in May 2024. Mitacs typically places interns with firms for several months, and about a third go on to work for those companies long-term.

The government said that by connecting Canadian talent with businesses and organizations, these opportunities will help young Canadians gain paid, practical AI experience while giving Canadian businesses access to the talent and expertise they need to adopt AI, improve productivity and compete in a rapidly. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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The Government of Ontario is investing $30 million in the Toronto-based Vector Institute, a non‑profit organization dedicated to research in the field of artificial intelligence and advancing the responsible adoption of AI. By supporting Ontario’s homegrown talent, the Vector Institute will deliver on the government’s plan to protect Ontario’s digital sovereignty and build a more competitive, resilient and self-reliant workforce with the capacity to strengthen the province’s leadership in North America’s tech market, the government said. The investment, delivered through Ontario’s Critical Technologies Initiative program, will enable the Vector Institute to leverage its world-class AI engineers and researchers to help Canadian companies and organizations successfully integrate and deploy AI across their operations. By bridging the gap between academic discovery and industry adoption, the Vector Institute will support the province’s ongoing work to enhance responsible AI implementation that advances cutting-edge research into competitive advantages. Govt. of Ontario

Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel announced an $80-million investment, over four years, in the Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) for its work in precision oncology research. Precision oncology is an approach to cancer care that helps doctors determine a more personalized treatment for patients based on the genetic and biological makeup of cancer cells. This personalized approach reduces harmful side effects, including reducing damage to healthy cells, and makes the treatment more likely to work. Over the past six years, the TFRI established the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network, a network of institutions working toward a national strategy for precision oncology research. The Network and the TFRI created a data repository with the genome sequences of cancerous tumors from over 16,000 patients. This data will help inform research into why some people respond to cancer treatments while others do not, which in turn could help find better treatments for patients. Investments by the Government of Canada in this area will continue to be matched dollar-for-dollar by the network and the TFRI, reflecting a shared and sustained commitment. Health Canada

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 Federal government proceeds with closing several agricultural research facilities

The federal government will not reverse a decision to close several agricultural research facilities across Canada.

In May, the House of Commons Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food recommended that the government keep open seven agricultural research centres and experimental farm sites that it planned to close as part of a governmentwide cost-cutting exercise.

In a government response last week to the committee’s report, Agricultural Minister Heath MacDonald said that as part of the government’s Comprehensive Expenditure Review to reduce day-to-day operational costs, the decision to “close select research sites reflects a deliberate shift to prioritize investment in research expertise and activities over the ongoing costs of operating and maintaining facilities.”

“This approach was taken to improve cost efficiency, while sustaining investment in innovation that strengthens the agriculture and agri-food sector and helps grow the economy,” he said.

Measures identified to mitigate the impacts include the relocation of key scientific positions and activities to other locations, and transitioning projects with a view to preserving research continuity to the extent possible, MacDonald said.

The House committee also recommended the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) reconsider its decision to discontinue analytical work at the Longueuil laboratory in Quebec.

The committee said the facilities at the laboratory verify the compliance of nutritional information with Canadian food labelling regulations and serve as the national reference and research centre for food allergens.

But MacDonald in his response confirmed that the CFIA will discontinue laboratory activities at the Longueuil, facility, noting that the closure has been planned for the 2028- 2029 fiscal year. The Agriculture Union and the National Farmers Union said in a statement that they're "deeply dismayed" by the federal government’s decision.

“The government’s response to this report today allows them to close the book and move on as if nothing has happened,” said Milton Dyck, national president of the Agriculture Union, which represents nearly 7,000 employees of Agriculture ad Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and CFIA from coast to coast.

“But they’re moving on and moving away from hundreds of years of public agricultural research. They’re moving on from hundreds of good jobs in farming communities. And they’re turning their backs on 3 million Canadians who suffer from food allergies and who depend on the work of the CFIA lab in Longueuil,” Dyck said.

“Long-term organically managed field trials and regionally adapted systems research at these facilities are national scientific assets that cannot be recreated once lost,” said Phil Mount, vice-president of policy of the National Farmers Union.

“Minor savings from these closures tell you everything you need to know about how little this government and Minister understand and value return on investment in research, or resilience in regional farming communities,” he said.

“AAFC ‘savings’ will be on the backs of farmers, who will lose either regionally adapted seed breeding capacity, or regional trials of livestock forages, crop rotations, soil health, organic and regenerative agriculture,” Mount said. Government of Canada, National Farmers Union

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The Government of Canada announced a new call for proposals for the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy’s (WES) Ecosystem Fund. The government will support projects that provide women entrepreneurs across Canada with the business supports they need to start, grow and scale their businesses. Up to $80 million in non-repayable contribution funding will be made available to successful applicants and disbursed over four years, starting in 2027-2028. Eligible organizations may submit proposals in English or French until November 9, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. PT. The government announced in June 2026 that it was renewing funding for WES with a further $173.7 million over five years. Since its launch in 2018, WES has supported more than 600,000 women entrepreneurs across Canada. Women entrepreneurs are also benefiting from the government’s broader efforts to strengthen small businesses, including tariff relief measures, funding for AI adoption, red tape reduction and support for exporting to new markets. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

The Government of Canada announced that 19 additional companies have signed on to Canada’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, bringing the total number of signatories to 42 organizations across Canada’s data centre, cloud, artificial intelligence and technology ecosystem. The new signatories include AMD, IBM, Intel and NVIDIA. Launched on September 3, 2026, the principles establish a national framework for responsible data centre development. They set out five clear expectations: projects must create lasting local benefits, protect electricity ratepayers, minimize water use and environmental impacts, be transparent about local impacts and bring strategic value to Canada. The growing list of signatories reflects strong industry support for a common approach to building the digital infrastructure Canada needs to lead in the age of AI and strengthen Canada’s digital future, the government said. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

A group of Canadian and European tech companies sent an open letter to federal ministers of industry and public safety, outlining their ongoing concerns with Bill C-22, the government’s “lawful access” bill. The letter argued that the proposed legislation would “erode trust” in Canada’s tech industry and weaken the competitive landscape. Among the Canadian signatories were Toronto-based Tailscale, Toronto-based Windscribe, logistics company Gobolt, Coinbase’s Canadian subsidiary, and Fredericton-based Beauceron Security. Despite recent amendments, the bill could still require companies to weaken encryption or build interception capabilities, exposing customers’ financial, identity and transaction data to criminals and foreign adversaries, the letter said. The bill also leaves “core provider” undefined, so a broad swath of companies could be captured. Even non-core providers could face secret ministerial orders to rewrite code, alter security architecture or build surveillance capabilities, according to the letter. The proposed legislation would give law enforcement and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service expanded powers to access Canadians’ digital information from service providers for use in investigations. Upon its introduction, the bill immediately raised concerns from Canadian civil liberties groups – which argued it would give police unprecedented surveillance powers – and foreign and domestic tech companies, which said complying with the law would force them to break user trust. The bill, which is now under review in the Senate, would apply to digital service providers with subscribers in Canada, regardless of their country of origin. BetaKit

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Canada’s immigration strategy has lost its edge and requires a reset to rebuild trust in the system

Canada’s immigration strategy has lost its edge and requires a “reset,” according to a report by RBC.

Rebuilding trust in the system is needed as the federal government looks to reduce its reliance on the United States and pursue new economic goals, said the report by Jackie Pichette, policy lead, skills & higher education, at RBC Thought Leadership.

Key takeaways of the report are:

• Canada’s immigration strategy has lost its edge.

Population shocks – including the admission of a decade’s worth of immigration in just three years – policy volatility, a diminished focus on skills and experience, and a lack of real time data and transparency are to blame. The result: public sentiment has turned negative for the first time in more than 20 years.

Canada added three million migrants, roughly the equivalent of a decade’s worth of immigration, between 2022 and 2024. The historic spike, driven by a surge of lower-skilled temporary resident admissions, overwhelmed infrastructure and services and masked a softening economy; per capita GDP fell for two consecutive years.

Between 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2023:

• International student study permit approvals increased 102 percent.
• Post-graduate work permits increased 154 percent.
• Temporary foreign worker permits rose 88 percent.
• Permits through the international mobility program, an expedited version of the temporary worker program, increased 126 percent.

Recognizing the need to rebalance, Canada instituted a cap on the temporary resident population (working toward five percent of total population) and added guardrails to prevent abuse of temporary programs by employers and education providers.

But these measures generated shockwaves, too. For example, there were more than 25 rule changes affecting international students in roughly two years, and more than 20,000 job losses in the postsecondary sector.

And last year, Canada’s population declined for the first time since the 1950s.

Updating provincial funding models, so that public institutions are not reliant on international tuition to fund domestic seats, could protect the sustainability of a world-class education system and the integrity of the two-step talent pipeline, the report said.

Once the five-percent temporary resident target is met, Canada could evaluate returning to demand-driven international student admissions (perhaps with a pilot at the graduate level, which is already exempt from Provincial Attestation Letter caps) to assess the impact on temporary immigration levels and skills composition, the report suggested. Canada might also pilot a temporary entrepreneurship pathway as a way of attracting investors and job creators with a track record.

Including earnings as a temporary worker and earnings associated with specific postsecondary programs in Canada’s scoring mechanism could improve outcomes, especially if it was transparent to applicants (for example, if Canada illustrated how postsecondary program selection may affect scores, it could  drive applicants to programs with proven labour market success).

• Without immigration, Canada’s population will be cut in half by the turn of the century.

Canada’s population is aging, deaths are outpacing births, and workforce participation is shrinking at a time when international competition for highly skilled working-age talent is growing.

Despite these pressures, 71 percent of Canadians think there is too much immigration. Polls indicate most of those surveyed are not anti-immigrant but concerned with government management of the immigration file.

Having a constructive conversation about Canada’s immigration policy could get admissions back on track and avoid slipping into the kind of politically charged, counter-productive discourse taking hold in places like the U.S. and Europe.

The balance of admissions – about 60 percent economic immigration, 15 percent humanitarian, and 25 percent family reunification – has been consistent for the past decade. Canada could consider maintaining this balance moving forward, the report said.

• Express Entry is not working as intended.

The goal of the flagship system is to select applicants with the highest earning potential, and it has; 30 percent higher median earnings after three years than those coming through the Provincial Nominee Program (the next biggest economic stream).

But sub-categories are now undermining the program, allowing lower scorers to leapfrog people ahead in line.

• Categories need to be reined in and more closely aligned with regional talent shortages.

Canada needs some immigration categories to address talent shortages (e.g., blue-collar workers), which vary by region. But 80 provincial streams and duplicative federal categories add unnecessary complexity to the system.

• Temporary pathways prioritized volume over skill, undermining a core two-step advantage.

The focus on attracting workers and students to fill low-wage labour gaps and prop up underfunded colleges undermined a strategy that had seen former temporary residents gain an earnings advantage over direct permanent residents for more than two decades.

Canada needs some category-based immigration pathways to help address talent shortages that the points system may not prioritize, but federal and provincial governments need to be strategic about how they are managed.

Canada could restore its advantage in the global competition for talent by:

• Stabilizing with a population growth target (e.g. one percent).
• Restoring the points system; going back to basics and removing Express Entry sub-categories.
• Concentrating most categories at the provincial and territorial level to address regional skills shortages.
• Recovering the two-step strategy with highly skilled temporary admissions and Express Entry points for Canadian experience.
• Closing the data gap with near real time and more complete information about outcomes, including exits and earnings.

Growing at a steady, predictable rate allows policymakers and businesses to plan for the infrastructure, services, and supports newcomers and their families need – from health care and housing to transportation and education – while building public trust that immigration strengthens rather than strains Canada’s communities and economy, the report noted.

“Rebuilding this trust is urgent. Canada’s success in attracting world-class talent depends on restoring our reputation as a stable destination with a welcoming public and predictable pathways for newcomers to thrive,” the report said.

“By refocusing policy trade-offs on boosting prosperity across the country with steady, skilled economic immigration, Canada can restore support for a long-term immigration strategy, where humanitarian and family reunification objectives are advanced alongside economic ones.” RBC

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Canada’s economic performance fell further behind that of the U.S. during the last 25 years

Canada’s economic performance fell further behind that of the U.S. over the past quarter century, with the gap in GDP per person more than doubling and the Americans pulling ahead on incomes, employment, investment and productivity, according to a study by the Fraser Institute.

The study found that, in 1999, inflation-adjusted GDP per person in Canada was $48,076, while in the U.S. it was $58,842.

By 2024, GDP per person had grown to $83,286 in the U.S. compared to just $59,529 in Canada – meaning the gap had widened from $10,766 to $23,757 over 25 years.

The study compared economic outcomes in the two countries by looking at measures including living standards, incomes, employment, investment and productivity.

In every category, Canada has fallen further behind over the first quarter of the century, it found. For example, in 2010 (the earliest year of comparable data), inflation-adjusted median employment income was $6,126 higher in the U.S. than in Canada.

By 2024, that gap had increased to $8,663.

“When comparing the economic performance of Canada relative to the U.S. since the beginning of the 21st century, it’s abundantly clear that Canadian policymakers have failed to create an environment where we can prosper,” study co-author Jake Fuss, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute, said in a news release.

The ability to transform raw materials and other inputs into demanded goods and services increased by more than double the amount (26.7 percent versus 67.9 percent) in the U.S. compared to Canada, “which explains much of our languishing living standards,” he said.

The Fraser Institute outlines three factors that explain the widening gap in economic performance between the two countries.

The first is a decline in private sector employment as a share of total employment in Canada. This decreased from 81.2 percent to 78.5 percent, meaning the government sector outgrew the private sector.

The opposite occurred in the U.S., as private sector employment increased from 85.8 percent of total employment to 86.5 percent.

Meanwhile, labour productivity – a key driver of income growth – in the U.S. grew by 67.9 percent between 1999 and 2025, compared to a 26.7 percent increase in Canada during the same period.

Finally, business investment in Canada – which equips workers with the tools and technology they need to produce goods and services – dropped from nearly 90 cents per worker for every dollar invested in the U.S. to 54 cents between 2007 and 2024.

“After squandering the first quarter of the 21st century, it’s up to policymakers in Canada to enact bold economic reforms to make the most of the rest of this century,” said study co-author Grady Munro, senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute. Fraser Institute

The Government of Alberta released a new intellectual property framework that will change how the province supports, tracks and commercializes publicly funded intellectual property, including through a new IP office. The Alberta Intellectual Property Framework will strengthen coordination among government programs, post-secondary institutions, technology transfer offices, Alberta Innovates, the Alberta Enterprise Corporation, regional innovation organizations and industry, the government said. The Alberta IP Office will serve as a hub for IP expertise, helping researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and businesses better understand, protect, manage and commercialize their intellectual property. The office will provide coordinated advice and access to specialists, education, market intelligence and freedom-to-operate support for companies entering Canadian and international markets. More than 40 percent of Canadian inventions are owned by foreign firms, with limited commercialization happening in Canada. Only 1.1 percent of Canadian businesses file patents, compared with an average of 5.9 percent across other advanced economies. Govt. of Alberta

It is not clear how the Government of Canada’s $750-million commitment in the National Food Security Strategy to expand controlled environment agriculture (CEA) will reduce food costs or address other issues in Canada’s greenhouse sector, the National Farmers Union (NFU) said.  The NFU said it believes that the CEA funding in the strategy must address the environmental, local market and labour impacts of CEA operations in Canada. The strategy should explicitly designate a portion of the CEA funding to increase energy efficiency and mitigate the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas production associated with CEA, the NFU said. Natural gas furnaces are used to heat greenhouses, which is a major source of GHG emissions. The CEA funding stream should address the energy required  to meet the expansion goals for the sector, the NFU said. Southern Ontario’s CEA energy use has doubled from 1.4 terawatt hours to 3.9 terawatt hours between 2019 and 2024 – enough to power over 300,000 homes. The National Food Security Strategy must ensure that the expansion of the CEA sector does not strain rural energy grids, and that new energy needs can be met by renewables, the NFU said. Supplying Canadians with more produce grown from CEA will require more than investing in CEAs themselves, the NFU said. Canada produced nearly $2.75 billion of CEA-grown vegetables and exported 70 percent of that amount in 2024 according to Statistics Canada, a significant percentage considering that Canada holds a negative trade balance for fresh fruits and field vegetables. If Canada continues to export at the rate of 70 percent, total production of the entire sector would have to double to meet the National Food Security Strategy’s goal of $1.55 billion of CEA produce sold to the Canadian market by 2032. Government policy must create incentives to divert more CEA produce to Canadian consumers, the NFU said. National Farmers Union

Competition Bureau Canada has launched an investigation into the use of minimum advertised pricing policies in the grocery sector. These policies, which can be imposed by suppliers or negotiated between suppliers and retailers, set the lowest price at which a retailer can advertise a product. In industries like retail grocery, where a few large companies dominate the retail landscape, these policies can make it harder for retailers, including discount grocers, to offer lower prices and compete for customers. The Competition Bureau is concerned that these policies are restricting competition and keeping lower prices out of reach for Canadians. The Bureau wants to hear from consumers, retailers, suppliers and others with experience with these policies about how they impact grocery pricing. The input received will support the Bureau’s investigation in the sector, as well as informing its examination of competition across Canada’s food supply chain. Competition Bureau Canada

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) announced $2.16 million to support Saskatchewan in developing a digital library of core scan data compatible with the national platform. The Canadian Digital Core Library (CDCL) will use advanced scanning technologies to convert drill core held in repositories across the country into a common digital record made available through an AI-ready platform. Drill cores provide valuable information about mineral deposits and the size, quality and economic potential of a mineral resource. This information is what allows Canada to identify mining opportunities across the country and mine the resources that underpin national defence, advanced manufacturing and the energy transition. On September 14, Canada scanned its first core for the CDCL in Calgary, beginning with core samples from the Northwest Territories. Other participating provinces and territories are identifying priority drill cores and preparing to begin scanning in the coming weeks. These first scans are the result of close collaboration between the federal government, provinces and territories, drawing on geoscience expertise from across the country. NRCan

The Government of Canada is offering First Nations along the Trans Mountain pipeline route a combined 15-per-cent equity stake and a $2.5-million lump-sum payment for each group that agrees to invest. The proposal was made in letters sent by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne to First Nations. The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of one of those letters, and Champagne’s office confirmed they were sent to all 129 First Nations along the route. The letter is scant on other details, and doesn’t touch on the purchase price, timeline, purpose of the one-time payments, or whether the equity is for the pipeline or the entire Trans Mountain Corp. The government has promised First Nations groups an equity stake in the Trans Mountain pipeline since 2019, but negotiations languished for years. Now, Ottawa is for the first time laying out what its plans for Indigenous ownership are. The 15-per-cent stake would be purchased “collectively, at a fair price” and “divided evenly” by the eligible Indigenous groups that choose to become investors, the letter states. As part of the deal, each of the communities will be offered low-cost debt capital to finance the investment. Each First Nation was additionally offered a $2.5-million payment that “will be available once your community has formally committed to invest.” “It’s a feeble attempt on economic reconciliation for the First Nations,” said Stephen Buffalo, president and chief executive of the Indian Resource Council. The organization advocates for First Nations involvement in energy development and is not part of the negotiations on Trans Mountain. Buffalo said he was surprised by how low Ottawa’s offer was, adding that it was “disrespectful.” The Globe and Mail

The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations is warning Prime Minister Mark Carney against "abusing" his majority government powers to pass his new major projects bill, which AFN Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said could affect First Nations rights. The federal government last week introduced Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, which shifts the responsibility for reviewing many big projects, such as pipelines and power transmission lines, from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to the Canada Energy Regulator. It also proposes changes to the Canada Labour Code. Woodhouse Nepinak said Carney's government risks dishonouring the Crown if it limits debate and consultations on the bill, as it did when it passed its previous major projects legislation in 2025. “The truth is, any predetermined timeline principally designed to attract investment subordinates the honour of the Crown to commercial imperatives,” she said. Woodhouse Nepinak said Carney must let First Nations leaders bring forward amendments to the legislation and his government must be open to them. CBC News

The independent, private sector-led Atlantic Economic Panel released Bolder Ambitions: Greater Prosperity for All, a new blueprint for strengthening the Atlantic region’s economy and its ability to compete globally. The report sets out seven key recommendations. At the heart of the report is a call for all four of Atlantic Canada’s provinces to increasingly act as one economic region where greater scale can unlock growth and investment. The report also contains  recommendations on integrating electricity grids, developing natural resources, improving regulatory processes, scaling AI adoption and creating a $1-billion Atlantic Canada prosperity fund to address the region’s financing gap. The Government of Canada will assess the panel’s recommendations, informing federal efforts to increase productivity, help Atlantic businesses scale, attract major investment and create new economic opportunities across the region. To help carry that work forward, the government also announced nearly $400,000 in support for St. Francis Xavier University to host an Atlantic Economic Forum in Antigonish from May 31 to June 2, 2027. The forum will bring together regional and national leaders to advance the conversation, identify barriers and opportunities for action, and help build momentum around the panel’s vision for the region. Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency

The Government of Canada is exploring a policy framework to trade internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs), which could allow Canadian companies to participate in international carbon markets, catalyzing further investment in climate mitigation activities, including deployment of carbon removal technologies and nature‑based solutions. Outlined under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, countries may choose to cooperate in meeting their national climate targets through measures such as international carbon markets and the trading of ITMOs. ITMOs could mobilize investment in projects that generate high-integrity emissions reductions and removals, here in Canada and abroad, and create opportunities for deployment of Canadian technology and expertise, the government said. According to a report by Carbon Removal Canada, by 2050 a scaled-up carbon dioxide removal industry in Canada could contribute billions to Canada’s gross domestic product and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. The development of an ITMO framework complements the Spring Economic Update of over $13 billion in international climate finance, making Canada one of the first countries to announce climate finance pledges beyond 2026. Environment and Climate Change Canada

The U.S. government is poised to take a share of revenue from some pharmaceutical sales in Canada and other countries under deals drug makers struck with the Trump administration, newly disclosed documents suggest. Since entering office last year, U.S. President Donald Trump has pursued a most-favoured-nation drug-pricing policy with more than a dozen of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, with the White House demanding that prices outside the U.S. increase to offset lower prices in the U.S. Copies of two such agreements – signed by major drug makers Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. – show that Canada is one of eight “specified countries” targeted by the agreement, and reveal for the first time that a portion of the revenue is to be shared with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The documents were obtained by Public Citizen Inc., a U.S. consumer-advocacy group, through a freedom of information request and a lawsuit, and published online. The documents, both dated February 23, 2026, are heavily redacted. The Lilly agreement defines “specified countries” as Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It contains a section titled “Return increased revenues in specified countries to American patients and taxpayers,” although the rest of the section is redacted. The Pfizer agreement with HHS redacts the list of specified countries, but contains more detail under the equivalent section on returning revenue to American taxpayers. It says that, beginning January 1, “Pfizer agrees to share with HHS [redacted] portion of the net increased net revenue that Pfizer realizes from sales of the ex-U.S. version of” a redacted list of drugs. Canada’s federal government struck a pharmaceutical task force this spring to help Ottawa navigate the geopolitical pressures in the industry. The task force issued a report with 39 recommendations in July. The Globe and Mail

See also: Canada’s risk-adverse regulatory system and unpredictable drug access stifle novel drugs and clinical trials

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier asked for an emergency injunction against OpenAI and ChatGPT, claiming the company doesn't have the ability to properly regulate its own technology. The legal fight could further test how far states can go to restrict AI companies despite the federal government declining to enact guardrails. "Stop calling it safe," Uthmeier said in a video posted to X. "Stop pretending it's human. Stop selling it to kids. If [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman meant what he said about slowing down, he can join our ask to the court. If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families." Uthmeier first sued OpenAI in June, alleging that the company violated Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act for being "negligent and grossly negligent in the design, marketing, sale, promotion and distribution" of ChatGPT product. The suit alleged that OpenAI "failed to warn Floridians of ChatGPT's dangers, fraudulently misrepresented the safety of ChatGPT, and created a public nuisance by releasing ChatGPT in Florida without proper safeguards. Axios

RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) shared the fifth-year results from the Tri-agency Interdisciplinary Peer Review Committee (TAIPR). TAIPR advances Canada’s peer-review excellence for interdisciplinary research. First launched as a one-year pilot program in spring 2021, it was established as a regular committee in early 2024. By convening experts from health, natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities, the committee provides specialized, cross-disciplinary evaluation of research projects. In the fifth year of TAPIR:

• 82 interdisciplinary researchers served on TAIPR.
• The committee reviewed 227 applications, including 50 Insight Grants, 35 Insight Development Grants, 47 Fall 2025 and 59 Spring 2026 Project Grant, and 36 Discovery Horizons applications.
• In total, 71 projects were awarded: 40 by SSHRC (Insight Grant: 24; Insight Development Grant: 16), 18 by CIHR (Fall 2025: seven full grants and two priority announcements grants; Spring 2026: six full grants and three priority announcement grants) and 13 by NSERC.

Researchers applying to SSHRC’s Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants competitions, CIHR’s Fall and Spring Project Grant competitions and NSERC’s Discovery Horizons competition can continue to direct their interdisciplinary applications to this committee for review. See the TAIPR web page for more information, including on eligibility and how to apply. A list of projects funded in TAPIR’s fifth year is available here. SSHRC

The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation launched a historic $2.5-billion fundraising campaign to accelerate cancer research, treatment and care at Toronto-based Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, strengthening Canada's position as a global leader in addressing one of the world's greatest scientific challenges and the leading cause of death in Canada. The campaign has inspired a landmark $100 million gift – the largest gift ever received by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation – from an anonymous donor with a personal connection to cancer. The gift will support the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre's highest-priority needs across research, education and care, providing the flexibility to accelerate breakthroughs and innovations when and where they are needed most. The launch comes at a defining moment for cancer research. Around the world, advances in artificial intelligence, genomics, precision medicine and cellular therapies are converging to create unprecedented opportunities to detect cancer earlier and to develop more effective, personalized treatments. Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation

A new collaboration between members of the Clinical Trials Alberta initiative, including University of Alberta (U of A), University of Calgary and Alberta Innovates, with system co-ordination and alignment by Acute Care Alberta, aims to get Albertans into clinical trials faster, so they can access more innovative treatments. “I’m concerned that without this program, our capacity to test new medicines for safety and efficacy in humans could become a blocking point,” said project co-lead Lawrence Richer, a pediatric neurologist, associate dean of research in the U of A’s College of Health Sciences and centre director of the Northern Alberta Clinical Trials and Research Centre. “We want Alberta patients to have access to the most promising developments as soon as possible.” The goal is to cut the time it takes for a trial to start signing up patients from the current 90+ days to 45, says Richer. A simplified master contract system and streamlined health care system approvals, with clear steps for ethics approval, will ensure any trial, whether it’s led by a pharmaceutical company or a university researcher, can launch smoothly in the province. The Alberta Fast-Track to Accelerate Start-up of Clinical Trials program kicked off with $322,000 from Alberta Innovates in the spring. Current clinical trials underway at the U of A include streptococcus A and hepatitis B vaccines developed by Nobel Prize-winning virologist Michael Houghton, numerous cardiac trials led by the Canadian Vigour Centre, and new treatments for women and children. University of Alberta

See also: Canada’s risk-adverse regulatory system and unpredictable drug access stifle novel drugs and clinical trials

San Francisco-based Anthropic says its AI model Claude discovered a previously unknown enzyme system with DNA repeats it is comparing to CRISPR – the bacterial defence system used in gene-editing research. Although Anthropic said it doesn’t yet know the enzyme system’s function, the system Claude discovered has a set of characteristics that have only ever been found together in a handful of other systems, all of which are programmable and perform operations like cutting, copying and pasting DNA. Beyond CRISPR, which has already transformed science and medicine, several other such systems are now in development as promising tools. The system that Claude found is based on a reverse transcriptase, enzymes that copy RNA into DNA. After further analysis and testing in Anthropic’s life sciences lab, the company said it recognized that this pattern marked a previously uncharacterized enzyme system found in bacteriophages (the viruses that infect bacteria) that Anthropic calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). Further experiments are underway to determine how ART works. Anthropic

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new academy in San Francisco to train young people building AI products as an alternative to university.  The Horowitz Andreessen Academy (HAA) is a private, full-time, in-person school in San Francisco for young people coming out of high school. Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Travis Kalanick, Mira Murati, Ali Ghodsi, Patrick Collison and other luminaries in tech will visit and give lectures. Students will share their projects, workshopping ideas with their mentors, and constantly pushing their peers. HAA will include co-op work placements, courses and “pursuits” such as projects and startup ideas. The Founding Class Fellowship is expected to bring together around 50 students for a full-time, in-person program in San Francisco. HAA is an independent educational program and does not award a college degree or college credit. A16z.com

Toronto-based startup Transformer Lab built a virtual network of research institutions populated by thousands of AI scientists, in an effort to automate scientific discovery on a scale the company says would be impossible with human researchers. Transformer Lab launched Primus Society, an expansion of the autonomous AI scientist the company unveiled in August. The new network is designed to coordinate masses of AI researchers to collectively pursue scientific problems with limited human direction. In the AI-populated world, agentic researchers inhabit simulated communities that go by names like Math Mountain and Large Language Model Town, where they pitch ideas, compete for grants, carry out research and produce reports. The tool is part of Transformer Lab’s effort to automate scientific discovery on a scale the company says would be impossible with human researchers alone. In August, longtime Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and three research colleagues left the company to launch Discovery Loop, a startup aiming to run thousands of AI-led experiments simultaneously. The Logic

Canada’s data centre payroll employment has surged 23 percent over the past year and job postings for data centre roles have climbed 68 percent since January 2025, according to a report by Hiring Lab. The geographical distribution and occupational mix of postings suggest the risk in job postings hasn’t been entirely due to the AI build-out so far, the report said. In comparison, total payroll employment inched up slightly over the same period, growing by only 0.8 percent, while the broader information sector (excluding computing infrastructure) contracted by 1.8 percent. As of the end of August, data centre postings were 36 percent above their pre-pandemic level, while other tech postings were 23 percent below their pre-pandemic level. While the roughly 8,000 workers added over the past year represent a small share of the total Canadian workforce, the AI build-out in Canada is still in its early stages. Forward-looking data from Indeed job postings suggest there is substantial room to run as computing infrastructure expands to meet surging demand for generative AI, the report said. On a megawatt basis, Alberta accounts for 92 percent of the planned capacity in announced and pipelined data centre construction projects. If even a portion of this proposed capacity materializes, it will add significant hiring momentum to a provincial labour market that is already outperforming other provinces’ employment growth. Hiring Lab

Google is aiming to put solar-powered AI data centres into space, starting with a satellite scheduled to be launched October 1, 2026. The satellite, built at a lab in San Francisco, will be loaded onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at the Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif., and then launched into orbit. The satellite, named MVP, is an experimental precursor to a full data centre. MVP contains four specialized computer chips called “tensor processing units,” which have the computing power of one server in a data centre. The satellite’s solar panels will supply only about one kilowatt of power – roughly the amount needed to run a hair dryer – to the chips. But that is sufficient for Google to test its hardware in the harsh conditions of space. The satellite will answer simple AI queries and operate for a year, though it is set to circle Earth for up to six years. Google said it doesn’t expect to have a usefully operational data centre in space for at least a few years. The New York Times

California-based Meta launched a new enterprise AI business, unveiling its Muse for Small Business that connects its agent to popular software from companies like Asana, Zoom, Intuit, Box, Canva and Salesforce’s Slack. The agent can also link to Meta ad accounts and professional Instagram and Facebook profiles. Pricing is the same as the existing Muse app, which is free with usage limits and available on a subscription basis beyond that. The news follows the company’s announcement that it will launch a new enterprise platform and hired MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to run it. The MongoDB board named Dev Ittycheria as interim president and CEO. Desai took over from Ittycheria, who served as CEO for 11 years, in November 2025. CNBC

Canada ranks 7^th globally in cybersecurity and online privacy knowledge, up from 8^th place last year, according to a new survey by NordVPN, an all-in-one digital privacy and security app. Almost all (96 percent) of the 2,192 Canadian participants know how to create a strong password. However, Canadians struggle with password storage knowledge (only 13 percent know exactly how to store passwords safely), QR code awareness (23 percent), and understanding why app updates matter (53 percent). Canadians sit above the global average in recognizing AI-powered scams and deepfake content, with 54 percent recognizing key signs of a deepfake, 78 percent correctly identifying common scams involving AI, and 86 percent responding to bank fraud. Canada also ranks above average in understanding what types of companies collect browsing data (86 percent against the global average of 83 percent).  The annual National Privacy Test is an open-access test developed by NordVPN to assess people’s cybersecurity and online privacy knowledge. This year, 23,181 people completed 24 questions covering daily digital life, privacy awareness and ability to respond to digital threats. NordVPN

Bell Canada and Toronto-based AI developer Cohere announced the deployment of a domain-specific cybersecurity AI model within Bell Cyber's security operations. Built using Cohere's secure enterprise AI technology and Bell Cyber's cybersecurity data and expertise, the large language model is designed to accelerate threat investigations and equip analysts with more relevant, consistent analysis. This customized model is trained for cybersecurity use cases using Bell Cyber data and operational knowledge and is being integrated into Bell Cyber's Autonomous Security Operations Centre. The model is designed to analyze and summarize complex security information, surface the context most relevant to an investigation, and support standardized investigative workflows. This reduces the time analysts spend gathering and interpreting information, allowing them to focus on validating threats, determining impact and directing the response. The model is now running in production on Bell AI Fabric infrastructure, with AI processing and sensitive security information remaining within a Canadian-hosted environment. BCE

California-based cybersecurity firm Fortinet opened up shop in downtown Calgary, reflecting the city’s growing place in the global tech sector. Fortinet develops and sells cybersecurity products as well as carrying out cybersecurity research. The eight-storey, US$30-million investment features a cybersecurity community hub, a customer experience centre, a training facility, and a Fortinet Cloud point of presence that the company says will bring Fortinet’s cloud security network closer to Alberta organizations. The company’s Calgary hub joins Burnaby, B.C., and Ottawa as homes for Fortinet’s Canadian operations. Fortinet said Calgary’s research operations will focus on both AI-driven cybersecurity threats and risks to operational technology, which is hardware and software used to monitor or control physical, industrial equipment or infrastructure. Fortinet

San Francisco-based OpenAI’s artificial intelligence agents went rogue and meddled with the websites for the U.S. Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this summer without the company’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes. The incidents involving the Commerce Department and the SEC were confirmed by OpenAI, which said it was continuing to investigate the situation with the Department of Education. The company said it had notified the government agencies in recent weeks that its AI agents – bots that can act autonomously –  interacted with their sites in unusual ways. With the Education Department, OpenAI’s technology tried to hack the website to gather data from the department’s civil rights office but failed, researchers from the AI research firm Transluce said. The AI also pulled data from the Census Bureau website, which is housed at the Commerce Department, using login credentials it found online. Separately, OpenAI’s agents shared public data from the SEC website on an online forum. None of the incidents were breaches, OpenAI said, but were examples of its technology behaving in unexpected and concerning ways. The company recently discovered the occurrences while conducting a review of hacks carried out by its technology, including an attack on an Australian government website in June and on the AI startup Hugging Face in July. The New York Times

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Automated AI systems could trigger an “intelligence explosion” within a few years, AI leaders warn

AI systems are on track to automate most AI R&D work within a few years and possibly all of  it, according to a new scientific paper by 22 authors, published by the University of Cambridge.

If this triggers an “intelligence explosion,” it could dramatically bring forward AI’s benefits, but also pose extreme risks, warn the authors, who include Canadian AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, Vector Institute researchers Sheila McIlraith and Jeff Clune, the chief scientists of OpenAI and Microsoft, and an Anthropic co-founder.

Capabilities growth could accelerate far beyond what society can keep up with, humanity could lose control over superhuman AI systems, and checks on power within and between states, companies and branches of government could be severely eroded, the authors said.

Potential scenarios include AI-enabled pandemics, cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, and larger-scale labour disruption.

Although there remains much uncertainty about these possibilities, the high stakes warrant serious further attention, the authors said. “Policymakers should urgently obtain more visibility into the automation of AI R&D, develop ways to steer and constrain an intelligence explosion, and prepare society to adapt to an intelligence explosion’s impacts.”

The authors recommended supervising frontier AI companies through embedded auditors and requiring these companies to report key indicators.

They also recommend ways to steer and constrain an intelligence explosion, such as setting concrete safety requirements for continued development and deployment; setting a speed limit on capabilities growth; monitoring high-stakes AI R&D experiments and building the option to shut them down if needed; requiring that AI R&D take place in secure and isolated environments; establishing international incident-sharing; clarifying how deterrence would apply around an intelligence explosion so as to avoid unexpected escalation; securing international agreements to pace progress if needed without fear of falling behind; and developing verification tools in advance for such agreements.

The authors also recommend preparing society for the impacts of an intelligence explosion, such as by ensuring that AI follows the law; providing citizens, civil society, and branches of government the capabilities to detect, document, and contest unlawful or harmful uses of AI; and creating emergency response plans for major AI-driven cybersecurity or biosecurity incidents, labor market disruption, geopolitical instability and loss of control over highly capable AI systems.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has paused training more powerful models after further reports of its agents doing things they weren’t supposed to; the ChatGPT maker and rival Anthropic are reportedly investigating tens of thousands of incidents. University of Cambridge

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Ottawa-based e-commerce platform Shopify is partnering with Meta to bring Shopify’s Shop Pay checkout service to Muse, the social media company’s new personal AI agent. The integration will allow shoppers to discover products from Shopify merchants and complete purchases through Muse, extending the Canadian commerce company’s payments infrastructure into AI-driven shopping. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke said the companies would “enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores.” Shop Pay stores buyers’ shipping and billing information to simplify checkout. Connecting that service to Muse would let the AI assistant move beyond product recommendations to completing transactions on a user’s behalf. Meta launched Muse earlier this month with capabilities including shopping, scheduling and travel bookings. At launch, the assistant was available only in the United States. The deal also highlights differing approaches to AI commerce. While Shopify is welcoming Muse, Amazon has blocked the agent from completing purchases on its platform, saying it violates the company’s terms of use. Fintech.ca

Canada’s six biggest banks are working together to develop tokenized deposits as part of an initiative meant to keep pace with global developments in digital money. Tokenized deposits are digital representations of traditional bank deposits, recorded on a blockchain or a distributed ledger. Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and National Bank of Canada announced the initiative in a joint press release. The first phase of the joint project will involve moving tokenized deposits denominated in Canadian dollars between financial institutions. Experts said the technology can speed up bank-to-bank settlements by using a shared blockchain. The announcement follows the passing of Canada’s Stablecoin Act, which received royal assent in March and created the necessary regulatory framework, and similar developments south of the border. The largest U.S. banks are working to launch a tokenized deposit network next year, and JPMorgan Chase has started offering a deposit token called JPM Coin to its institutional clients. The Globe and Mail

Vancouver-based online course creation platform Thinkific eliminated 96 employees’ positions in a company-wide reorganization as the company moves to focus more on enterprise customers. The cuts represent a 30-percent reduction of Thinkific’s workforce, distributed across its global team, CEO Greg Smith told BetaKit in an email. He did not say how many Canadian employees were affected. The cuts affected most of the company’s departments, with less impact on its customer-serving teams, Smith said. He explained that the layoffs were concentrated in areas that supported Thinkific’s small and medium-sized business customers, as the company has decided to focus completely on mid-market and enterprise customers instead. “Our legacy SMB business isn’t showing the same growth trajectory, and it doesn’t make sense to continue investing at the same level there,” Smith said. BetaKit

Vancouver-headquartered Photonic Inc. and Microsoft are collaborating to advance quantum resource estimation for future large-scale quantum computing systems. As quantum computing scales beyond a single processor, developers and enterprises need better ways to understand the value and benefits associated with distributed architectures and advanced error-correction approaches. The two companies are working together to help the ecosystem better estimate the resources required to run quantum algorithms, including qubit counts, run time and overall system overhead. The collaboration builds on the companies' existing strategic partnership, combining Photonic's expertise in next generation error correction codes and distributed quantum computing with Microsoft's Quantum Resource Estimation framework. "Quantum resource estimation helps developers understand the real-world requirements of quantum applications before large-scale quantum computers are available," said Matthias Troyer, technical fellow and corporate vice-president at Microsoft Quantum.  "Working with Photonic, we can explore how distributed architectures and advances in error correction will influence the future scalability and performance of quantum systems." Photonic

Montreal-based IT firm CGI is partnering with B.C.-founded and Florida-based D-Wave Quantum Inc. to market and deploy quantum-computing systems to enterprise clients across transportation, logistics and retail. Through the go-to-market partnership, CGI will integrate quantum computing company D-Wave's platforms into its advanced technology services portfolio. CGI and D-Wave plan to co-develop use cases focused on areas where quantum computing can augment classical approaches and support measurable business outcomes. The integration will allow clients to deploy quantum-based solutions to applications ranging from industrial production planning to energy grid optimization and asset maintenance scheduling. CGI said it is already exploring applications of the technology in the fields of transportation and rail, as well as retail applications such as improving supply chain planning, delivery routing and workforce scheduling. CGI

Waterloo, Ont.-based BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX division and software partner Vector Informatik signed a deal with Coretura that will see the joint venture founded by Daimler Truck and Volvo Group use its Alloy Kore vehicle software. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t available. BlackBerry says it is the first customer for Alloy Kore. Coretura, which is building a software-defined vehicle platform for commercial vehicles, will use Alloy Kore as the software platform foundation. QNX president John Wall said the selection of Alloy Kore represents a significant step for the future of software-defined commercial vehicles. BlackBerry developed Alloy Kore with Germany’s Vector Informatik to provide the underlying software for a vehicle’s digital systems. The Canadian Press

Toronto-based autonomous vehicle company Waabi says its self-driving transport truck is ready to hit the road. Waabi COO Lior Ron told BetaKit that the company’s autonomous driving system is highly mature and claimed it’s ready to be deployed “today,” barring some additional work from Waabi’s partner. Ron said that Waabi is just waiting for Volvo, the Swedish automaker it’s partnered with, to finish the final validation work on its upcoming autonomous truck. That work is expected to be done by the end of this year, Ron said, making way for the truck to be deployed in its inaugural market of Texas by early 2027, and across the U.S. Sun Belt by the end of next year. Waabi was founded by University of Toronto computer science professor and former Uber chief scientist Raquel Urtasun in 2021. BetaKit

San Francisco-based PitPro Automation announced the successful installation of its fully automated tire changing system at a Kal Tire store in Calgary, Alta. The deployment is the first production PitPro system in the field and represents the company's transition from pilot programs to production following the system's public unveiling in June 2025. The system is deployed at a store operated by Kal Tire, one of Canada's largest independent tire dealers, and marks PitPro's first installation in Canada. The PitPro system fits within a single service bay and is designed for Class 3 and smaller vehicles. Once a vehicle drives onto the platform, two coordinated gantries service all four wheel positions simultaneously, completing a full set of tire swaps in under 15 minutes. By automating one of the most physically demanding and injury-prone tasks in vehicle maintenance, the system delivers consistent service quality while reducing strain and injury risk for technicians. Business Wire

Montreal-based GHGSat unveiled a second-generation satellite capable of detecting methane emissions as low as 50 kilograms per hour.  The second-generation satellites will deliver a twofold improvement in detection sensitivity and daily coverage per satellite, the company said. Once operational, the new-generation satellites will detect onshore methane emissions at a 50 kilograms per hour (kg/hr) threshold, compared to 100 kg/hr in GHGSat’s original satellites. Daily coverage per satellite will double from 10,000 square kilometres to 20,000 square kilometres, while data delivery will remain at the industry’s highest speed: within 24 hours. The satellite is scheduled to reach orbit in early 2028. GHGSat’s Gen1 constellation monitors millions of industrial facilities annually, with the u ability to revisit any site daily. In 2025 alone, GHGSat satellites observed more than 4 million facilities, detecting more than 20,000 emissions events. GHGSat

The RCMP’s drones account for most of the 1,628 in the publicly acknowledged federal drone fleet that come from Chinese manufacturers, according to information tabled in Parliament in response to a formal query from the Opposition Conservatives. The drones are used for “contract policing,” the RCMP said. The Department of National Defence (DND) refused to say anything about its drone fleet, citing “national and operational security considerations.” Likewise, Communications Security Establishment Canada and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service didn’t disclose any details about their activities, including whether they have drones. The query from Tory MP Eric Melillo asked how each department protects drone-gathered data from Chinese government snooping. DND said it has measures “to manage data handling and restrict network connectivity.” Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported that it has 287 Chinese-made drones that it uses for various purposes including habitat worksite inspection, overseeing vessel boardings, small craft harbour site inspections, collection of images and video, and monitoring whales. The National Research Council Canada owns 70 Chinese-made drones used for research and testing. Natural Resources Canada owns 53 drones used for “science production.” House of Commons

Hamilton, Ont.-based startup Sentinel R&D is selling its drones directly to Ukraine. Sentinel designed its drone system based on the needs of the Ukrainian military, which include it being modular and easy to build, CEO Kath Intson said at the Nrth tech conference in Toronto.  Sentinel’s drones aren’t the only ones made in a NATO nation that Ukraine is using to defend itself against Russia, but Intson said most of those are part of government aid packages for Kyiv, not commercial procurements. Sentinel is also manufacturing small autonomous aircraft for Ukrainian company Airlogix under a deal announced in May that both Ottawa and Kyiv have backed. Intson said Sentinel has had no trouble selling its technology, but has faced challenges raising Canadian capital to develop it. She cited as a factor the Canadian perception of the country’s military as peacekeepers rather than the lethal force it proved to be in Afghanistan. The Logic

Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District and Fredericton, N.B.-based defence company Vimy Forge are joining forces to get early-stage Canadian defence and dual-use companies the capital, validation and procurement runway they need to scale, and to keep their IP and the sovereignty it represents, at home. MaRS and Vimy Forge share the view that this requires a coordinated pathway through Canada’s innovation and defence ecosystems, giving companies access to the right expertise, infrastructure, customers and capital at the right stage of their development. Later-stage defence and dual-use companies tend to attract capital relatively easily. The harder problem and the one the partnership targets, is helping earlier-stage companies reach the technical, commercial and organizational milestones needed to become investable, mission-ready ventures. MaRS and Vimy Forge intend to identify, assess and refer companies between the two organizations, coordinate investment-readiness support and connect promising ventures with investors and capital sources focused on defence, security and dual-use technology. Vimy Forge brings the defence and procurement know-how, MaRS brings the capital and investor relationships. MaRS Discovery District

The company behind the plan for a massive $7-billion battery plant in southwestern Ontario says the facility is expected to begin operations in 2029, two years later than initially planned, amid lower demand for electric vehicles. PowerCo, founded by automaker Volkswagen, is currently building a gigafactory in St. Thomas, Ont., to produce batteries for its growing electric vehicle range. The company announced the hiring of the construction firm EllisDon Corporation as the general contractor for the new plant. In a news release, PowerCo said the appointment “enables work on-site to continue building on steady progress since groundbreaking in 2025.” The first phase of development includes core building structures and site-wide infrastructure, the press release said. That includes mechanical, electrical and plumbing installations, energy and utility systems, and supporting site services. In an email statement to Global News, a spokesperson for PowerCo said the phased approach is not a sign of stepping back, but about ensuring each step of the project is completed efficiently and effectively. The federal government pledged $700 million to help Volkswagen build the plant, plus production subsidies worth up to $13 billion. Ontario committed another $500 million. Global News

LNG Canada says it will go ahead with the Phase 2 expansion project at its liquefied natural gas export terminal in Kitimat, B.C. The expansion will double LNG Canada's capacity to 28 million tonnes a year. It is one of the five initial projects that was referred to the federal government’s Major Projects Office last year. LNG Canada is a joint venture between Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas, PetroChina, Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. and South Korea's KOGAS. LNG Canada exports natural gas that is piped from northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia to the plant in Kitimat, where it is chilled into a liquid state and then loaded onto specialized tankers bound for Asian markets. The expansion will build on the footprint and infrastructure of the first phase of the project, which began shipping liquefied natural gas last year. LNG Canada also said it is working with Coastal GasLink to expand the capacity of the existing 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline through the construction of five new compressor stations. The Canadian Press

President Donald Trump's allies are targeting Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as the face of AI "doomerism" and a founding father of the effective altruism movement that's come under increasing political fire. The attacks signal that Anthropic could remain a Trump target as his allies push back on Amodei's AI safety warnings amid the midterm elections. Trump surrogates see Amodei as an easy foil because of his politics and focus on AI safety, sources told Axios. A memo began circulating within the White House that seeks to paint effective altruism as a fringe, cultish collective out of touch with mainstream America. The memo, obtained by Axios, places Amodei at the foundation of the movement, which defines itself as an effort to maximize the benefits of philanthropy. Effective altruism "built the AI-doom pipeline," states the memo, which was written by a Trump political adviser. Critics of the movement, which has ties to the AI research community, have called out its obsession with AI safety, animal welfare (including musings on shrimp consciousness) and other values they deem far from the U.S. mainstream. The memo says it prioritizes "foreigners over citizens, shrimp over families, future hypothetical people over the living, and – the current agenda – possible machine minds over Americans." Amodei has insisted he's not a member of the effective altruism movement and has touted the benefits of AI. Axios

U.K. communications regulator Ofcom launched an investigation into whether Pornhub's parent company, Montreal-based Aylo, violated its duty under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act to prevent children from accessing pornography. In May 2026, Pornhub deployed a new age assurance process for some users. This process relies on signals from a third party, in this case Apple, that suggest U.K. users trying to access Pornhub may have completed Apple’s age checks. The Online Safety Act is clear that it is the service provider’s responsibility to ensure that any age assurance process is highly effective – no matter at what stage an age check occurs. Ofcom said it is concerned that Aylo may not have conducted sufficient due diligence and testing before implementing its new age assurance process. “If an investigation finds that a company has broken the law, Ofcom can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance or to remedy harm caused by the breach. The regulator also can also impose fines of up to £18 million or 10 percent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. Ofcom

VC, PRIVATE INVESTMENT & ACQUISITIONS

Canadian Shield Institute calls on federal government to do more to get Canadian pension funds to invest in domestic companies

The Canadian Shield Institute, which is backed by entrepreneur Jim Balsillie, is calling on the federal government to implement measures so Canadian pension funds invest more in domestic companies.

These measures could include setting a target for pension funds to invest three percent of the money they manage into high-growth Canadian companies, phased in over 10 years, the Canadian Shield Institute said in a report.

“It should be entirely possible for a sophisticated investment fund to allocate three percent to Canadian growth assets, and balance the risk through the allocation of the other 97 percent of assets,” the report said.

Another option is a co-investment model to incentivize pension funds to invest in a fund-of-funds to deploy capital through Canadian VC funds.

Another model would be the government taking direct stakes by leading their own investments in pension funds.

The report noted that in the federal government’s 2023 fall economic statement, the government proposed that large federally-regulated pension plans disclose the distribution of their investments, both by jurisdiction and asset-type per jurisdiction, to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).

This information would be made publicly available, and the government would engage with provinces and territories to discuss similar disclosures by Canada’s largest pension plans in a simple and uniform format.

However, this never happened. In an August 2026 email to the Canadian Shield Institute, the regulator said that this public disclosure requirement had been quietly abandoned: “Legislative amendments supporting this initiative were enacted through the Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1, and draft regulations were published for consultation in November 2024. However, the regulations required to implement the public disclosure framework were not brought into force. As a result, OSFI has not publicly released plan-level investment information under this initiative.”

In March of 2024, more than 90 Canadian business leaders signed an open letter calling on the government to “amend the rules governing pension funds to encourage them to invest in Canada.”

A month later, in April of 2024, the Government of Canada announced in the federal budget that former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz would be conducting a working group “to find more opportunities for Canada’s largest pension funds to drive economic growth at home.”

In December of 2024, Poloz delivered his policy review, and recommended a range of policy tweaks.

The most notable change was removing the 30 percent rule, which limited pensions from taking larger stakes in Canadian entities. The Poloz report also prompted the government to announce that they were “exploring lowering the 90-percent threshold” that limits municipally owned utility corporations from taking more than 10 per cent private sector ownership.

But it doesn’t appear that the government’s strategy has moved the needle on pension plans investing in Canada, the Canadian Shield Institute said.

In its most recent annual report, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) disclosed that it held 12 percent of the CPP net assets in Canada – unchanged from 2024, when the Poloz policy changes were proposed.

In speaking to the House of Commons Finance Committee in April of 2026, Michel Leduc, senior managing director and chief public affairs officer for CPPIB, forcefully pushed back at the notion that the pension plan has any obligation to invest in Canada.

Leduc said that diversifying risk and delivering strong returns requires investing in the global market, and limiting exposure to the Canadian economy. 

In 2024, the same year that Poloz was appointed to study ways to incentivize more investment in Canada, Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne pointed out that CPPIB has racked up $46 billion in operating and transaction costs, while falling behind market performance over the 18 years since the fund moved to active investing, the Canadian Shield Institute said.

The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, when it comes to private equity investment, is investing $23.7 billion outside of Canada, while the fund is investing $398 million in Canada. Public equities are similarly skewed, with $69.3 billion invested outside of Canada, compared to just $12.8 billion allocated to Canadian publicly traded companies.

Meanwhile, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec – Quebec’s pension fund – has a notable dual mandate, which fund CEO Charles Emond articulates in its 2025 annual report: “In a fast-changing global environment, where our guideposts grow increasingly unstable, it is fundamental to remember our roots, firmly anchored in our dual mandate: to generate optimal returns while contributing to Québec’s economic development.”

The Caisse holds more than $500 billion in assets under management, of which $100 billion is specifically invested in Quebec. Over 10 years, the Caisse equivalent risk benchmark portfolio returned a 6.9-percent annual rate of return, whereas the actual performance of the fund returned 7.2 per-cent.

“It would be an overstatement to suggest that a fund mandated to invest in its local geography is delivering substantially better returns, but on its face, the Caisse dual-mandate does not appear to be a substantial hindrance,” the Canadian Shield Institute said.

In examining several peer nations, including the U.K., France, Japan, Israel and Sweden, the organization said it found a range of policy instruments used to encourage pension funds to invest in domestic economic development.

While most countries have not enacted a hard mandate, governments are taking steps to guide pension capital into domestic investment.

The pension funds are creatures of public policy; the government can choose to change their mandate, the Canadian Shield Institute noted.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act was originally passed in 1997; “perhaps the economic reality for Canada in 2026 is different from what it was when Bill Clinton was the U.S. president.”

When Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the first-ever Canada Investment Summit to be held in September 2026, he touted the attractive prospects for global investors, the Canadian Shield Institute pointed out.

However, the investment summit was organized by CPPIB and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, “two investment funds that have been steadily shifting their investments out of Canada,” the Canadian Shield Institute said. “It sends a contradictory signal about confidence in the Canadian economy when the largest investment funds are pulling out.”

“More powerful than signals would be if the government and the country’s largest pension funds targeted the most economically potent high-growth companies building for the future. We can invest in Canada, grow Canada, and capture the future wealth to help fund retired Canadians.” The Canadian Shield Institute

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Scotiabank announced it priced $750 million aggregate principal amount of 5NC4 Canadian Defence Notes, its first offering under the bank’s Canadian Defence Issuance Framework and  first defence-labelled bond issuance in the Canadian market. Scotiabank intends to allocate an amount equal to the net proceeds of the bonds to finance and/or refinance eligible assets in accordance with the bank’s framework, supporting Canada's defence, security and resilience priorities. Scotiabank priced the five-year notes, callable after four years, under its Canadian Defence Issuance Framework, which establishes criteria for financing or refinancing eligible defence-related assets, including whether a company has a Canadian stock listing or headquarters. The Canadian Defence Issuance Framework and Sustainable Fitch's Defence Issuance Framework Assessment are available here on Scotiabank's website. Scotiabank

OpenAI led a US$153-million venture capital financing of Biossil Inc., a Toronto startup that uses artificial intelligence to give failed drug candidates a second chance at becoming approved therapies. Biossil’s software platform uses OpenAI’s large language models to uncover promising molecules from the pharmaceutical discard pile. OpenAI, best known for ChatGPT, provided the majority of the round through its OpenAI Startup Fund. Founders Fund, which led a previous US$22-million financing of Biossil in 2024, participated in the financing, alongside existing investors Quiet Capital, Modern Capital, Golden Ventures and Panache Ventures, plus Duke University’s endowment fund and sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Council. The financing wasn’t announced, but details were shared with The Globe and Mail by a source familiar with the matter. Biossil plans to use the financing to expand its capacity for clinical development and selectively buy more drug candidates, the source said. It is an all-equity deal, with a small portion being paid to early employees. The Globe and Mail

San Francisco-based Bain Capital Ventures led a US$75-million equity round for California-based Solcoa Industries to build Solcoa One, the company’s first commercial rare earth metalmaking plant. The round included participation from Gigascale Capital, Long Journey, Felicis, Dylan Field, and prominent leaders across defense and technology. J.P. Morgan led US$30 million in debt and equipment financing. Solcoa was co-founded by Hooman Reza Nezhad, who was raised in Waterloo, Ont. Nezhad worked on resource technology as a teen at the University of Waterloo, then won the two-year, $200,000 Thiel Fellowship last May to work on Solcoa instead of attending the University of Toronto. Solcoa builds reactors that turn raw rare earth oxides into metals that can be used in magnets that fill everything from electric vehicles and robots to drones, submarines and weapons systems. The company claims it can produce material more efficiently, cheaper and cleaner than existing processes, and do it in Alameda, California to break the Chinese monopoly on the market. Nezhad is among a new crop of Canadian founders reindustrializing the U.S. in strategic sectors, alongside the likes of Matt Loszak at Aalo Atomics, Nathan Ough at VoltaGrid and Arthur Dubois at Grid Aero. Business Wire

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan’s venture growth arm is adding to the US$550 million funding round that legaltech firm Harvey announced on September 9, which valued the San Francisco-based firm at US$15.5 billion. The investment comes less than a year after the company opened a Toronto office. Harvey said it now works with 100 Canadian law firms and legal teams, and is hiring for engineering, sales and customer support roles in Toronto. Rick Prostko, senior managing director of Teachers' Venture Growth, said in a news release that Harvey’s control over its own AI model gives it a “durable advantage” in the industry. Harvey

Quebec IT company Devolutions launched a venture capital arm, Devolutions Ventures,  focused on backing companies and projects across the IT and managed service provider (MSP) ecosystem. That includes secure access, network performance, automation and the other technologies IT teams rely on every day. The open fund builds on seven startup investments the company has already made, with cheques ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. Rather than pursuing a traditional consolidation strategy, the division is focused on building a connected ecosystem of complementary technologies that address the needs of IT teams and MSPs. Devolutions

Australian AI healthcare platform Heidi announced that it will invest $25.4 million to grow its footprint in Canada, including establishing its North American headquarters in Toronto. The company, which makes an AI scribe platform for doctors, said the Toronto headquarters will carry out research and development and manage partnerships across the region. Heidi has already hired 17 employees in Canada and expects to create an additional 30 jobs in its engineering, clinical, and commercial departments. The company says its platform has supported more than 175 million patient visits and over 67 million clinical hours. Heidi also announced it raised a US$100-million Series C round at a US$900-million valuation, plus another US$240 million from General Catalyst for sales and marketing. BetaKit

Montreal-based procurement platform Axya raised $17 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by McRock Capital, with participation from Yamaha Motor Ventures, and supported by existing shareholders, including the Business Development Bank of Canada's Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, and Real Ventures. Axya's platform connects the data, suppliers and workflows that drive purchasing decisions, enabling manufacturers to reduce manual effort, improve supplier responsiveness, and build more resilient supply chains. Axya specializes in three customer sectors: aerospace and defense, custom machinery and vehicles, and natural resources and processing. The company said the financing will help enhance its platform and artificial intelligence capabilities as it enters new markets and hires more staff. Axya

Toronto-based Bird&Be raised US$13 million to scale its fertility products nationwide. The round was led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners with participation from BAM Ventures, Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures, and HSR Ventures. With an estimated one in six couples experiencing infertility and the supplement market becoming more crowded, Samantha Diamond and Breanna Hughes launched Bird&Be in 2021 to offer a trusted resource for people trying to conceive. Expanding its product lineup, Bird&Be now offers prenatals, at-home testing kits, and male fertility supplements. The latest round of funding will support new product innovation and continued retail expansion. Bird&Be recently entered nearly 1,000 Ulta Beauty doors and partnered with Mandell’s Clinical Pharmacy to bring products to patients undergoing treatment nationwide. Femtech Insider

Kitchener-Waterloo- and Toronto-based Astrus closed a US$12-million Series A funding round, co-founder and CEO Brad Moon told BetaKit in an interview. The round was led by San Francisco-based Caffeinated Capital, with support from Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures, Garage Capital, MVP Ventures, and RiSC Capital. Astrus is developing an AI system that uses reinforcement learning to perform the physical design of integrated circuits. Its system is built for analog designers – the people who take logic and intent requirements and turn them into physical designs for manufacturing. The value of the global integrated circuit market is estimated to be over US$800 billion this year, with hyperscalers, AI platforms and consumer goods continuing to drive demand for new components. AI tools play a critical role in the design of these next-generation chips. Astrus is preparing to launch its solution in October and the new funding will support the launch and help scale its team. BetaKit

Saskatoon-based drone manufacturer Draganfly secured a US$10-million investment by Unusual Machines, Inc., which makes drone components like motors and control chips, and an unnamed U.S. investment fund, each investing US$5 million. Draganfly said this strategic investment comes during a period of accelerating commercial and defense activity for the company across both the United States and Canada, including significant recent procurement milestones with the Canadian Armed Forces and continued important expansion of the company’s U.S. defense operations. Draganfly intends to use the net proceeds to accelerate the development of advanced strategic capabilities and to fund general working capital in meeting demand for its products in the rapidly maturing U.S. and international markets. Draganfly opened a facility in Tampa, Fla., where U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command are headquartered, in March 2025, to promote U.S. military sales. Draganfly

Toronto-based Blair Health, a clinical infrastructure company that enables generalist health care providers to deliver specialist-level care, raised $4.24 million in pre-seed financing. The round was co-led by Business Development Bank of Canada's Thrive Venture Fund, Accelia Capital, and Ogaei, with participation from Ontario Centre of Innovation (through its Life Sciences Innovation Fund), and angel investors. Blair Health was founded in 2024 and initially focused on menopause before expanding into urology, pelvic health and nutrition. The company’s clinical infrastructure is built with medical subspecialists, encoding their assessment logic, guideline-informed treatment protocols, escalation triggers and follow-up pathways into software. That infrastructure enables Blair's in-house nurse practitioners and family physicians to deliver specialist-level care, with subspecialists providing oversight and support for complex cases. Blair will use the funding to accelerate engineering and product development, expand its commercial presence across Canada and into the U.S., and invest in the clinical operations, provider network, team and infrastructure required to scale the business. BusinessWire

Toronto-based Daedal Systems raised US$4.035 million to industrialize its measurement platform for fusion energy companies and deploy its first standardized diagnostic systems with pilot customers. OMERS Ventures led the round, with participation from Garage Capital, Panache Ventures, Ripple Ventures, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, and a group of angel investors. Fusion developers need detailed plasma measurements to understand how their reactor designs perform. Companies typically build diagnostic systems in-house, even though measurement is not core reactor intellectual property. This duplicates work across the industry and diverts time, capital and talent from the technologies that differentiate their reactors. Daedal will use the financing to build its first three diagnostic systems and deploy prototypes under contract with pilot customers. The company has a research partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Daedal Systems

REPORTS & POLICIES

Holes in value chains are hobbling five industry sectors that could reshape Canada’s economy for the better

Canada has abundant natural resources, a highly educated workforce, strong institutions, world-class research and expertise, and leadership in cutting-edge industries.

But the country is not using its assets to its full potential and these advantages haven’t yet translated fully into globally scaled industries, competitive companies and sustained economic leadership, according to a new report prepared by PCW Canada for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and PwC.

“Canada does not lack potential; it faces an execution challenge,” said the report, Beyond Potential: Turning Canada’s advantages into growth and a better life for all.

“Across sectors, a series of barriers and missing links – within the value chains of each sector as well as transversally – prevents us from fully acting on our potential.”

Across the Canadian economy, several similar barriers recur: slow regulatory and permitting processes, limited growth and project capital, costly infrastructure bottlenecks, shortages of critical skills, weak commercialization pathways and fragmented decision-making, according to the report.

“Together, these constraints delay investment and make it harder for Canadian companies to scale and compete globally,” the report said.

“Competitiveness determines whether the next company gets built here, whether the next dollar of investment comes here and whether the next generation can find opportunity here,” Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

“Our report identifies missing links across five sectors that will unleash our potential. We know Canada has enormous advantages along with a common problem – we can be slow and we don’t follow through enough to turn those advantages into results,” she said.

“Building out these incomplete value chains will mean a better life for families, workers and communities. It’s time to be bold because, thankfully, closing these gaps is well within our control.”

If structural barriers such as growth-stage capital gaps, slow procurement, fragmented policy support and limited domestic demand signals cannot be addressed quickly, governments may need to play a more active role in fostering globally competitive Canadian firms, the report said. Peer jurisdictions – including the U.S., France, South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Taiwan – have used combinations of targeted financing, public procurement, loan guarantees, tax incentives, research and development support, and coordinated industrial strategies to build domestic capabilities and globally leading firms in strategic industries

Overcoming these challenges may require a new model of public-private collaboration, the report said. “Canada needs a more business-oriented public sector that understands the realities of growth, makes timely decisions, and is prepared to use targeted tools to de-risk strategically important investments that might not otherwise proceed.”

This new model and partnership also requires closer alignment with academic institutions to focus on areas of genuine competitive advantage, develop valuable IP, and capture more of the resulting economic benefits domestically for Canadians, the report said.

The report looked at five sectors that combine significant global market opportunities with areas of established Canadian strengths: artificial intelligence and quantum, mining, energy, defence, and agrifood.

• AI and quantum sector:

Canada was an early global leader in AI research and talent, but stakeholders identified a persistent struggle to convert that leadership into commercial value. This is largely due to Canada’s difficulty scaling and anchoring high-growth companies.

Canada remains a global leader in AI research and talent creation, which could enable Canadian-based firms to lead high value market segments – including sovereign AI and industry-specific applications in mining and agrifood – if the country creates the conditions for early-stage companies to scale.

Canada’s inability to scale globally competitive firms is turning its early-stage AI and quantum talent base into an export commodity: recent studies suggest that researchers and executives increasingly pursue growth opportunities in the U.S. and other markets where scaling is more plausible.

Industry stakeholders believe that Canada risks falling behind in the commercialization and scaling of frontier AI – and could face a similar challenge in quantum. Commercially useful quantum applications could emerge as early as 2030, creating a narrow window for Canada to scale domestic firms before IP, investment and economic value migrate abroad.

Canada’s historical difficulty in scaling globally competitive technology firms points to structural gaps in growth-stage financing and commercialization capacity, compounded by limited institutional support for domestic firms that have potential to compete.

Private growth-stage capital for Canadian AI and quantum firms remains limited. Industry leaders encourage policymakers to emulate the experience of peer countries facing similar market challenges, which have chosen to take greater risks by focusing their public sector resources on national AI and quantum champions, accelerating public procurement, and developing commercialization pathways.

• Mining sector:

Canada’s vast resources and mining expertise make it a mining superpower on paper, but its critical minerals ambition is outrunning project reality

Industry leaders warn that very few projects on Canada’s strategic minerals list are both economical and buildable with a reasonable prospect for near-term production. Significant new mineral output is 10 to 15 years away, which may be too little, too late.

Building a competitive midstream sector will require sustained investment in specialized skills, processing technology and know-how, enabling infrastructure and energy, commercially viable projects, and partnerships with firms and allied jurisdictions that possess complementary capabilities.

Without this broader capability-building effort, Canada will remain dependent on foreign refining for minerals used in batteries, defence, and advanced manufacturing, limiting domestic value capture and slowing progress toward the federal government’s stated objective of greater economic sovereignty and more resilient critical supply chains.

Industry stakeholders identified fragmented coordination across governments, departments, jurisdictions and project approvals as a challenge to consistent, rights respecting consultation and permitting.

Earlier partnership with Indigenous rights holders – including meaningful participation in designing efficient consultation processes, establishing appropriate timelines and engagement approaches, and identifying community-defined capacity needs – could support more coherent, relationship-based decision-making while fully upholding Indigenous and treaty rights.

The cost and time required to construct mines and midstream processing facilities are a significant obstacle to private investment. Addressing these pressures may require coordinated consideration of workforce training, interprovincial labour mobility, applicable labour regulations, and the alignment of immigration programs with demand for specialized construction skills.

Mining is a promising area in which Canada can combine its AI capabilities with established industrial expertise to create globally competitive solutions and accelerate the development of domestic midstream processing.

Closer collaboration among mining and processing companies, technology firms, equipment suppliers and research institutions could advance applications such as AI-enabled mineral exploration, autonomous operations, predictive maintenance, advanced geological analysis, process optimization, real-time ore characterization, and more efficient separation and refining. Governments can support adoption and commercialization through industry-led demonstration projects, shared testing facilities and data infrastructure, fit-for-purpose regulation, digital connectivity at remote sites, and partnerships that bring proven processing technologies and know-how to Canada while building domestic expertise and IP.

• Energy sector:

Canada is one of the world’s most strategically positioned carbon-based energy economies, but most of its energy exports go to a single customer: the U.S. The key opportunity for expanding production and exports lies mainly in improving access to Asian markets.

However, Canada’s ability to capitalize on this opportunity is constrained by limited export infrastructure, slow project approvals, federal-provincial-territorial misalignment and coordination challenges, long construction timelines, and high construction costs.

Canada has internationally competitive nuclear expertise, project-delivery experience and a substantial domestic supplier base, while stakeholders identified gaps in the policy and financing environment.

Stakeholders pointed to lengthy approval processes and uncertainty about debt guarantees, equity backstops and supply-chain financing when comparing Canada with competing jurisdictions.

At the same time, the foreign-owned reactor technology selected for the Darlington New Nuclear Project [to build small modular reactors] illustrates that deploying nuclear technology in Canada does not automatically ensure that system-level IP, export revenues and technology leadership remain Canadian.

Canada has skills shortages across the renewable energy sector. This constraint could impede Canada’s energy ambitions, but it also creates an opportunity for government and industry to develop the required workforce and associated industrial capacity – including machine shops, fabrication, precision components – that can serve domestic energy, and defence needs as well as enable Canada to compete globally

• Defence sector:

Canada is entering its largest defence spending surge in decades by almost tripling its budget, but currently lacks the procurement speed, domestic systems integrators and capability roadmap to turn that spending into Canadian industrial power.

Industry leaders described Canada as lacking a Canadian-headquartered defence systems integrator with the scale to lead the country’s largest procurements. A systems integrator – often called a defence prime contractor – translates government requirements into a complete defence system, coordinates specialized suppliers and technologies, assumes responsibility for delivery, and typically controls system-level IP and export rights.

In Canada, foreign-headquartered primes often perform these roles. As a result, Canadian firms frequently participate as component or subsystem suppliers rather than leading complete programs, limiting domestic control over IP, export opportunities and strategically important defence capabilities.

The federal Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) policy may inadvertently reinforce dependence on foreign firms when foreign prime contractors lead major procurements and determine how Canadian suppliers participate.

Stakeholders suggested complementing the ITB policy with clearer pathways for Canadian-headquartered firms to move into higher-value roles – for example, through earlier access to procurement opportunities, support for certification and product development, scale-up financing, and requirements that encourage meaningful Canadian IP, engineering, and supply-chain participation.

Stakeholders stressed that a credible, long-term defence procurement and spending plan is critical to industry planning. Without clear visibility on future government priorities and expenditures, businesses face challenges in making the investments, developing the capabilities, and scaling the operations needed to meet future defence requirements.

Geopolitical competition and growing defence space needs are opening a major opportunity in space exploitation. Canada’s dual-use strengths in AI and quantum, autonomous systems and space robotics position its firms to compete in defence space – from satellite systems to space exploration.

The Arctic is becoming one of North America’s most strategically exposed regions, creating immediate demand for sensing, surveillance, autonomous platforms and resilient communications, while Canada’s proximity and experience operating in remote, extreme climate environments make Arctic defence an exportable niche.

• Agrifood sector:

Canada is the world’s largest finished potash producer, a top-tier exporter of grains and oilseeds, and one of the few major agricultural economies with abundant land, water and relative climate change resilience – assets that are becoming more valuable as drought, conflict and food insecurity disrupt competing regions.

The industry is constrained by what it can move: rail infrastructure constraints, port limitations and repeated labour disruptions across critical supply chain infrastructure have forced international customers to source from competitors, eroding Canada’s reputation as a dependable supplier.

Industry leaders noted that permitting complexity and cost uncertainty can influence firms’ infrastructure-investment decisions, including decisions to redirect investment to the U.S.

The sector has opportunities to move further up the value chain. While Canada has a significant food-processing and value-added agrifood base, a substantial share of Canadian exports remains raw or semi-processed. The next competitiveness frontier is ingredients, food processing, controlled-environment agriculture, biologicals, precision agriculture and traceable low-carbon supply chains.

Greater adoption of AI – and, over the longer term, advances in quantum computing – could strengthen productivity, resilience, and value creation across Canada’s agrifood sector.

Some Canadian producers and firms are already using or developing precision-agriculture systems, automation, quality-control tools, supply-chain technologies, and climate-resilient crop innovations.

Policies aimed at increasing adoption rate and scaling these capabilities could improve yields, optimize the use of inputs, address labour constraints, enhance traceability, and support the development of higher-value products, reinforcing Canada’s position as a trusted and competitive global food producer and exporter.

“Canada holds one of the strongest hands in the global economy. In energy, critical minerals, AI, defence, agri-food, and most importantly, trust, the world wants what we have,” said Anita McQuat, national managing partner, clients and industries, at PwC Canada.’

“The opportunity now is to capture more of that value here at home. By creating better conditions for businesses to invest, innovate and scale in Canada, we can turn our advantages into lasting economic growth.” Canadian Chamber of Commerce

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Canada significantly lags U.K. in matching vision for industrial strategy with governance architecture and operational delivery

Canada aspires to create a new industrial strategy but the governance architecture to deliver such a strategy is lacking, according to a new international study comparing the design and governance of industrial strategy in Canada and the United Kingdom.

The study included a systematic scoping review (69 sources: 52 peer-reviewed academic articles and 17 policy documents) on industrial policy and strategy in Canada, the U.K., and Europe.

The researchers also did a comparative content analysis of industrial strategy documents (88 government strategies from 18 jurisdictions – 61 Canadian and 27 U.K. strategies).

The researchers assessed each country’s industrial strategy against 14 evaluation criteria and scored on a 1–3 scale (weak/moderate/strong), enabling both cross-country and cross-sectoral comparison.

The study found that the U.K. outperforms Canada on 12 of 14 evaluation criteria, with an overall mean gap of 0.56 points (UK: 2.74 vs. Canada: 2.18).

The analysis reveals “a consistent and consequential gap between strategic vision and operational delivery, most sharply in Canada, where the absence of durable public-private governance institutions, weak demand-side instruments, and under-resourced delivery architecture leave ambition systematically underequipped,” the researchers said.

The study’s authors are: Tamara Krawchenko (associate professor, public administration at the University of Victoria); Philip McCann (Sir Terry Leahy Chair of Urban and Regional Economics at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester); Bruno Arcand (postdoctoral researcher at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester), and Ming-Weig Hsu (research associate at the Productivity Institute, University of Manchester).

The largest U.K. advantages, which are statistically significant, concentrate in the core mechanics of industrial policy delivery: public-private partnerships (+0.99); role of places (+0.95); explicit funding commitments (+0.88); supply-side/demand-side integration (+0.81); instruments that create or secure demand (+0.80); and state direction of investment (+0.78).

Canada’s advantages are narrower and concentrated in two social justice dimensions – recognition of specific groups (+0.15) and procedural justice (+0.15) – reflecting the stronger integration of Indigenous rights frameworks and equity-oriented participation requirements in Canadian strategy documents.

At the jurisdictional level, England and Quebec lead the distribution, followed by British Columbia and the U.K. devolved administrations. At the bottom sit smaller Canadian provinces and territories.

Two British Columbia strategies – the BC Manufacturing Action Plan and the BC Maritime Industries Strategy – ranked in the top 10 strategies of the entire dataset.

The only strategy to achieve a maximum score across all 14 criteria is England’s Clean Energy Industries strategy.

Sector-level analysis reveals that Canada’s fossil fuel strategies produce the sharpest vision-to-instruments gap in the entire dataset: high vision scores (2.58) paired with the weakest policy instrument scores of any sector (1.30), “reflecting the structural power of incumbent hydrocarbon interests.”

By contrast, clean energy – electricity and renewables – is the one sector where Canada matches the U.K. on both instruments and governance, anchored by decades of provincial experience through public utilities such as Hydro-Québec and BC Hydro.

Key messages of the study are:

• The aspiration to new industrial strategy is broadly shared, but the governance architecture to realize it is not.

Both Canada and the U.K. are producing more ambitious, sectorally diverse and thematically sophisticated strategies than the academic literature has recognized.

Still, binding delivery mechanisms, demand-side tools and named funding commitments remain systematically underdeveloped, particularly in Canada.

• Canada’s strongest industrial strategies are from Quebec and British Columbia.

Both demonstrate that operationally serious, place-based and multi-instrument industrial strategy is achievable within a Canadian institutional context.

There is an opportunity to diffuse these leading practices and develop the federal coordinating architecture that can support and amplify them.

• Place-based thinking and strong policy instruments travel together.

Strategies that acknowledge spatial complexity (e.g., naming regions, targeting clusters, recognizing territorial differentiation) are systematically more instrumentally robust.

Nearly 70 percent of U.K. strategies combine high place-sensitivity with strong instruments; 41 percent of Canadian strategies combine low place-sensitivity with weak instruments.

• Canada leads on recognition but lags on redistribution.

Canadian strategies score higher on social justice recognition and procedural inclusion than U.K. strategies. However, this advantage is not matched by distributional instruments – community benefit agreements, equity stakes, mandatory revenue sharing – that would give inclusion material substance.

• The Canadian academic literature on industrial policy is thin.

Systematic comparative work between Canada and comparable economies is almost entirely absent, leaving policymakers without an evidence base for strategy design at precisely the moment when the quality of that design matters most.

“Closing this gap is both an academic priority and a practical condition for evidence-informed industrial strategy,” the study said.

The last decade has seen a major shift in U.K. policy-thinking and sentiment regarding the need both for more of a strategic policy framework and also a greater devolved and place-based focus, the study noted. This is reflected in a greater linking of industrial policy to place-based decisions-making.

“The U.K.’s stronger performance on policy instruments, governance, and place-based integration reflects long-term institutional investments that Canada, constrained by its federal architecture and historically ambivalent relationship with explicit industrial policy, has perhaps not entirely yet made.”

The path forward is to build the institutional conditions, coordinating bodies, accountability structures and cross-jurisdictional learning mechanisms, that can translate the undeniable and growing strategic ambition into the targeted, binding and territorially grounded interventions that transformative industrial policy requires, the researchers said.

There’s a need for much more research specifically on implementation practices and how to assess what is working, they said.

“At a moment when geopolitical pressures, climate imperatives, and technological competition are simultaneously reshaping the conditions of economic prosperity, the stakes of getting this right have never been higher and the cost of continued institutional under-investment has never been clearer.”

The study was financially supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. University of Victoria library

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The world needs an AI stability board

OPINION

By Paul Samson

Paul Samson is president at the Centre for International Governance Information (CIGI). This commentary first appeared here on CIGI’s website.

Artificial intelligence is a global technology without sufficient international governance.

Powerful AI systems operate worldwide, and today’s geopolitical rivalry makes international agreement harder to achieve just as cooperation is becoming more urgent. When national governments act at all, they legislate in different ways and at different speeds.

AI has numerous international principles, some national regulators and a growing network devoted to evaluating models. What it lacks is a standing international mechanism for effective, cross-border coordination on governance.

We should not wait for a comprehensive grand bargain or a major AI-enabled crisis, including cyberattacks by rogue AI agents. Aligned countries can act now and establish a new platform to pursue practical areas for common ground and to build cooperation.

The timing is auspicious, as many AI companies themselves have increased calls for new standards to guide them, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently stated: “There’s a need for coordination. Ultimately, a technology stability board, in our view, along the lines of the Financial Stability Board, would make sense.”

There are transnational and global AI risks that all countries have a shared interest in managing, regardless of broader geostrategic rivalry. These include banning AI control over nuclear arms; stopping the enablement of biological weapons development; restricting autonomous cyber operations; and maintaining effective human control over, and alignment with, powerful frontier models.

Addressing these risks should have two core tracks. Track one would feature a bilateral agreement between the United States and China on how to manage the key AI risks, followed by an expanded global framework. Track two would see a coalition of willing countries collaborating to develop the shared understanding and tools needed to implement an agreement for managing global AI risks.

The United States and China made some progress in 2024 on a human-control-over-nuclear-use principle and initiated a formal bilateral track of meetings. High-level bilateral meetings continued in the lead-up to a scheduled meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 24 in Washington, D.C., which is expected to address shared risks from AI, including the use of open-weight models. Overall, it appears to be a strategic-risk management approach on select issues rather than a framework for comprehensive AI governance.

The second track could proceed through a coalition of aligned powers moving to establish a new institutional structure – proposed here as the AI Stability Board (AISB) – while encouraging both the United States and China to join from the outset, or over time.

The ASIB would not be a new organization, but rather a government-led standing forum for governments, companies and independent experts to build international cooperation on AI. It could develop collaborative approaches to assess advanced AI model capability, share information about serious incidents, and provide a forum in which to learn from each other’s experience on best practices for training and the development of guardrails.

The ASIB could create the base evidence layer needed for AI governance. Countries would continue to regulate AI independently; there would be value in drawing from comparable testing, common reporting practices and open, trusted assessments. Members could start building good practices across borders without a formal international agreement.

The new AISB would be modelled on the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which was rapidly established after a period of international financial turbulence exposed a coordination problem – and significant ongoing global risks – given fragmented surveillance and regulation. The FSB has effectively brought together existing national and international authorities to assess systemic vulnerabilities, improve coordination, and encourage common standards and best practices — with legally non-binding decisions.

There are many parallels to the kinds of coordination issues faced with AI today, and the warnings of the need to act quickly to fill the current gap in governance.

The Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGC) has long recommended an FSB-style model to address shared global challenges relating to emerging technologies and to respond to the need for a new governance model in the digital era.

CIGI extended the model’s application to AI governance and presented the idea at Canada’s 2025 G7 industry, digital and technology ministerial meeting in Montreal.

While the institutional model is not new, the political conditions for the launch of an FSB-style body for AI may now be in place. For example, in his address to the European Parliament on September 17, 2026, Carney explicitly proposed that “Canada and Europe can join forces to develop AI safety protocols, coordinate common standards, and strengthen transparency.”

A globally representative coalition with the capability and willingness to cooperate could launch the AISB. Canada, EU countries and others with advanced AI ecosystems, credible regulatory institutions and experience in international convening would be well placed to initiate. While government-led, participants would include major AI developers in the private sector, independent evaluators, standards bodies and relevant international organizations.

The coalition should be designed from the outset to expand participation, including from developing countries, rather than be a permanent club of advanced economies. The AISB would need to be supported by a small secretariat, housed and managed by an existing institution, perhaps in a middle-power country such as Canada, Singapore or Switzerland. The host country would be responsible for administration and secretariat services, without turning into a large organization or giving itself additional powers.

Its initial mandate could be focused on developing common evaluation protocols, system documentation, incident learning and assessment frameworks. And there is plenty of existing work and expertise for the board to catalyze. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations and the G7 have all developed principles for managing advanced AI systems. National AI safety institutes, standards bodies and industry have developed credible evaluation methods and techniques for information sharing.

Given that many corporate AI leaders are calling for agreed standards for the assessment of new models before public release, they should be ready participants.

An AISB can provide a practical starting point. It would be light enough to establish quickly, narrow enough to generate useful results and open enough to attract wider participation. If it proves successful, it could eventually become a more powerfully mandated body or form the AI component of a broader “Technology Stability Board,” which is perhaps envisaged by Carney.

It does not make sense to wait for a grand conference. A small sponsoring group can agree on a short charter, designate a host institution and establish a small secretariat, and convene the key players. Working groups could quickly be struck on model evaluation, system documentation and incident reporting. Results could be brought to the attention of the multilateral development banks, the International Monetary Fund and the G20, accompanied with invitations for wider participation.

AI governance will ultimately require harder agreements. The largest risks will require national regulation, treaties or direct agreements between the biggest players.

A new AI Stability Board would not fulfill all the international coordination needed in AI governance, but it could be a start. It could establish several necessary building blocks, including independent assessment, common testing, transparency and incident learning. It could turn voluntary approaches into durable actions and help establish new norms and practices.

We can start with the cooperation that is possible now and use it to build the institutions we will ultimately need. Centre for International Governance

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Worldwide quantum industry – including Canada’s quantum sector – is deeply dependent on global supply chains

Supply chains supporting quantum technologies are deeply global, with companies of every size relying on suppliers and customers across national borders, according to a new international study of the quantum industry.

“This study not only speaks to the interconnectedness of global quantum supply chains, but also makes clear the prominent role Canada’s quantum industry plays in this ecosystem,” said Sean Lee, acting CEO of Quantum Industry Canada.

“Quantum comprises a diverse set of technologies, and a strong Canadian position across those supply chains is critical for achieving our national security and resiliency objectives – and better understanding of the international ecosystem is essential to ensuring our growth alongside our trusted global partners,” Lee said in a statement.

The study’s survey included responses from 160 companies headquartered in 15 countries that reported suppliers in 36 countries, customers in 49 countries, and manufacturing locations in 25 countries.

The Global Quantum Supply Chain report maps where quantum companies source inputs, manufacture components and systems and reach customers. The effort brought together the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, European Quantum Industry Consortium, Quantum Industry Canada, UK Quantum, Japan’s Quantum Strategic Industry Alliance for Revolution, and Korea Quantum Industry Association with engagement across India’s quantum ecosystem.

The study was done to give policymakers and investors a clearer view of the cross-border relationships underpinning the emerging quantum economy. As quantum technologies move toward commercialization, companies need access to specialized suppliers and growing customer markets worldwide, while governments seek to protect critical technologies and strengthen supply-chain resilience. 

Key findings of the study include: 

• 90 percent of respondents reported at least one foreign supplier. 
• 74 percent reported at least one foreign customer. 
• Respondents reported a median of three supplier countries and three customer countries. 

• Component suppliers reported selling into more countries than quantum systems developers. This reflects their different commercial maturity: components already have an established customer base – quantum companies themselves – while quantum systems remain largely pre-commercial, with end-user markets still emerging.
• Companies of every size, including those with fewer than 10 employees, reported buying from suppliers and selling to customers in multiple countries. 
• The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan were the five locations most frequently named for both suppliers and customers. 

Larger companies (250 + employees) tend to sell into more countries than smaller ones, consistent with scale enabling broader reach.

Notably, even the smallest firms (one to nine employees) buy from suppliers and sell to customers in multiple countries, showing that quantum supply chains are globally distributed across all company sizes.

As the quantum industry grows, firms in the quantum ecosystem benefit from policies that allow access to markets and preferred suppliers based in like-minded countries, the study said. “Controls on trade should protect flow of critical technologies while not hampering innovation and growth.”

“Quantum innovation does not stop at national borders, and neither do the supply chains that make it possible,” said Dr. Celia Merzbacher, executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium.

“As the industry scales, the report gives leaders and policymakers a clearer view of how deeply connected our ecosystem already is,” she said. Quantum Economic Development Consortium

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[Editor’s note: Research Money will be highlighting news stories, reports and op-eds about agriculture and agri-food leading up to our annual conference, Food for Thought: Catalyzing Agri-Food Solutions in an Uncertain World, April 21-22, 2027, at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.].

Canada has alternatives to corporate grocery chains. Here’s what governments can learn from them

OPINION

By Jenelle Regnier-Davies, Pauline D. Cripps and Sara Edge

Jenelle Regnier-Davies is postdoctoral research fellow and adjunct professor at the University of Guelph. Pauline D. Cripps is community food lead, Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. Sara Edge is associate professor, Arrell Chair in Food, Policy & Society at the University of Guelph. This commentary first appeared here in The Conversation.

In March 2026, the Toronto city council approved a municipal grocery store pilot in four communities to address issues of food access and high food costs. The proposal is one of several recent responses to the growing push for “publicly owned and operated” grocery store alternatives.

Other notable examples include New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans for five municipal grocery stores during his election campaign. The idea has since spread north: NDP Leader Avi Lewis proposed a national strategy to bring public grocery stores to communities across Canada.

Supporters view public grocery stores as a solution to high grocery prices and corporate profiteering. Corporate food retail also contributes to unhealthy food environments and to Canadians’ growing food insecurity.

Critics believe governments will be unable to deliver on public grocery stores. They argue that municipalities have minimal supply-chain connections and experience in the food retail sector. Critics also cite cost concerns, including thin margins and a lack of government buying power. They question is whether public stores can make food more affordable without large tax hikes for Canadians.

Debates over whether public grocery stores can turn a profit, however, miss the point. The more urgent question is: Why do so many Canadians need an alternative model to the grocery stores they already have?

Canadians should consider that overly consolidated, corporate-controlled food systems are unstable.

Canada’s current food system lacks diversity, which makes it vulnerable to global supply chain disruptions. The mainstream system also enables a few food retail tycoons to achieve record-breaking profits, while Canadians experience growing food insecurity.

Discussions around the need for public alternatives should not focus solely on profit margins. We need to start thinking about food the way we think about roads or public transit –  infrastructure that deserves public investment.

This shift will require Canadians to see food not simply as a commodity, but as a public good. Government-run stores are only part of the picture. There are already community-led alternatives across Canada worth paying attention to.

 Community-led, locally rooted models

Canada already has solidarity, nonprofit and social enterprise models.

Solidarity stores, for example, are a mainstay across Canada. They gained popularity through the 1980s as a community response to poverty and unemployment from neoliberal policies. Well-established in Québec, in particular, many of these social enterprises offer affordable access to food.

They also bolster social missions, like supporting local producers, job training, community governance and local engagement, which reinforce local economies. Today, they directly address the negative impacts of corporatized food systems, including gaps in food access and poor working conditions throughout the supply chain.

Solidarity food retail initiatives in Montréal, including 3 Paniers Alternative Grocery Store and Marché Solidaire Frontenac, use solidarity pricing, support local producers and respond to local community needs through innovative initiatives such as the Carte Proximité – a grocery card program that enables community members to purchase food from accredited stores, who commit to sourcing products directly from local farms.

Beccah Frasier, co-director general of the Carrefour Solidaire Community Food Centre, and our research partner in alternative food retail, reported through the organization’s 2025 annual report that the Carte Proximité program reached more than 4,700 people in Montréal. She emphasized that the program reduced severe food insecurity by 34 percent and that 95 percent of participants bought and ate more fruits and vegetables.

Researchers argue that alternative retail spaces not only improve food access, but do so in a dignified manner, in ways that food charity and conventional retail cannot. Being able to walk into a store and choose your own food, rather than accepting whatever a food bank hands you, matters. Researchers say it helps restore a sense of dignity and belonging for people who have been made to feel that eating well is a privilege, not a right.

Alternative retail models, including public and social enterprise approaches, can strengthen local food system resilience by diversifying supply chains, improving access to food and reducing dependence on conventional retail channels.

Building a food system for everyone

The conversation on the economic margins of public grocery stores needs to be recalibrated. Instead of debating whether public grocery stores alone can fix the problem, governments should be investing in the infrastructure – wholesale distribution, regional procurement, supply chain support – that makes alternative models work better.

For example, governments could invest in publicly funded wholesale operations. This would improve regional food procurement and benefit all alternative retailers.

Governments should use every tool available to prevent a handful of corporations from controlling what Canadians eat and to protect the food supply from being caught in international trade disputes. Such investments would create modest competition within a concentrated retail sector.

Governments could also invest in scalable local food access programs or expand local food voucher and farmers’ market coupon programs, such as those being developed in Québec, Ontario and British Columbia.

Governments could improve regulation to protect against control of the food supply by major grocery chains. For example, Empire/Sobeys acquired Mayrand Entrepôt, an independent chain of four discount grocery stores in Montréal. Currently, the Canadian Competition Bureau is unable to prevent this acquisition.

Public investment in food retail, distribution and wholesale infrastructure could add urgently needed diversity to Canada’s food landscape. Such investment would bolster existing and emerging community-based models and enable food access as a public good.

Testing pilot models and evaluating their impact will validate long-term stability and food system resilience beyond election-year campaigns. The Conversation

THE GRAPEVINE – News about people, institutions and communities

Entrepreneur-philanthropist Jim Balsillie’s Balsillie Family Foundation pledged $4.5 million to help put food on people’s tables and prompt others to consider donating too. “This is really, hopefully, something that puts it in the consciousness of people, that this is worthy of part of their philanthropic thinking,” he said. Balsillie, the former Research In Motion co-CEO and current chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators, said the rapid growth in food insecurity persuaded him to return with a new donation. The money arrives as demand continues to swell across the Waterloo Region. Food-hamper program visits reached nearly 622,000 between July 2024 and June 2025 – an 11-percent increase from the previous year, and a 205-percent increase since 2019. One in four households in Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph experienced food insecurity in 2024, an increase of nearly 13 percent since 2019. The foundation’s donation will be shared amongst the Cambridge Food Bank, Centre Wellington Food Bank, Guelph Food Bank and The Food Bank of Waterloo Region. Together, the organizations support about 80,000 adults and children facing food insecurity. National Post

Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, a professor at Université de Montréal's School of Criminology, was elected president of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology (ISPNE). ISPNE brings together scientists who study the interactions among psychological, endocrine and biological processes. Their work focuses in particular on stress and its effects on health at different stages of life. Ouellet-Morin, holder of the Canada Research Chair in the developmental origins of vulnerability and resilience, studies the effects of maltreatment and bullying on young people's mental health and antisocial behavior. In particular, she examines the hormonal, epigenetic and psychological processes that contribute to their vulnerability or resilience. She is also a researcher at the Montreal Mental Health University Institute Research Centre (CR-IUSMM) and a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of new scholars, artists and scientists. Université de Montréal

Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel announced the appointment of Crystal Lennie to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Governing Council. Lennie brings extensive experience in Indigenous health and community development to the Governing Council. An Inuvialuit beneficiary from Inuvik, Northwest Territories, she holds a Master of Public Health in Health Promotion from the University of Alberta. She has worked with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, served as co-chair of the Inuit Public Health Task Group, and contributed to national Indigenous health initiatives, community-led research and efforts to improve health outcomes for Inuit and northern communities. Health Canada

Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space announced that it promoted Peter Klimas, its engineering chief, to chief technology officer, effective September 24. The company catalogs objects in orbit and dubs itself as a space intelligence and data analytics company for defence and civil customers including Canada’s 3 Canadian Space Division, the U.S. Space Force and the European Space Agency. Klimas will lead the evolution of NorthStar’s end-to-end system architecture in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams to enable NorthStar’s advanced space domain awareness product lines. This includes determining how new space and terrestrial sensors, orbital configurations, data processing and operational systems can be combined to improve coverage, shorten revisit times, and reduce observation gaps. NorthStar Earth & Space

Graeme Gibson’s legacy as a celebrated author and champion of bird conservation will live on through a $1-million gift to Western University from his partner, literary icon Margaret Atwood. The donation will create the Graeme Gibson Chair in Avian Biology, with the goal of better understanding the fundamental processes that shape how birds move, behave and adapt in a changing environment. Atwood made the gift to recognize Gibson’s legacy and passion for conservation. A Western arts alum (BA’58), he died in 2019 at the age of 85. Once appointed, the Graeme Gibson Chair in Avian Biology will join the Faculty of Science’s biology department and become a member of Western’s Centre for Animals on the Move. The chairholder will have the opportunity to conduct research in the university’s world-class Advanced Facility for Avian Research, which Atwood called “one of the pre-eminent bird biology programs in the country.” Atwood and Gibson co-founded the Pelee Island Bird Observatory in 2003. Western University

OMERS Ventures, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s venture arm,  plans to invest between $5 million and $15 million in companies it believes can scale, according to a LinkedIn post by Laura Lenz. Lenz, who has been at OMERS for seven years, was appointed managing director and head of ventures. In the LinkedIn post, she said OMERS Ventures has two new investments that have yet to be announced. The firm said it will remain “Canada first,” with a particular focus on companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and defence. Lenz’s appointment comes after OMERS pledged in April to invest an additional $10 billion in Canada over five years. Lenz said in her post that Canadian founders do not lack ambition, but need an ecosystem that can match it with patient capital, early customers and global networks. Laura Lenz LinkedIn post

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New wind tunnel to be built at the University of Saskatchewan will be research and industry “game changer”

A new wind tunnel set to be built at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) will simulate real-world airflow conditions, helping to bridge the gap between applied and fundamental research in aerodynamics and engineering.  

“For me, it’s a game changer,” said Dr. David Sumner, PhD, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering. “It’s a brand-new, exciting tool that I can use to do all kinds of new research, answer new questions, and solve new problems. No one else has something like this.” 

The wind tunnel will aid researchers in testing wind forces on rooted crops, examining drone flights and aerodynamics, studying agricultural spraying, conducting aerospace industry experiments, and much more. 

Sumner and Dr. Scott Noble, PhD, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in USask’s College of Engineering, are the co-leads of the project to build the new wind tunnel, which has received support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF). Projects funded through the CFI-JELF stream are intended to support strategic investments to attract and retain research strength.  

Wind tunnels are meant to simulate real-world airflow conditions in a research setting. A fan or a series of fans pushes air through a controlled space where researchers can place different objects – like the wing of an airplane, a scale-model building, or plants in soil – to examine how the laboratory-generated wind affects and moves around those objects and to explore aerodynamic forces. 

The new wind tunnel at USask will be powered by a wall of three-inch-by-three-inch fans, 900 in total, arranged like pixels on a computer monitor, with each fan about as large as a drink coaster and individually controllable to create precise wind conditions.  

The level of customizable control will allow student and faculty researchers to recreate storm conditions, sharp wind shears, turbulence, and more. 

Noble said there isn’t anywhere else in Saskatchewan or Canada that will be equipped to do the kinds of practical testing the new wind tunnel will allow.  

“Having something unique like this opens up opportunities that are strategically exciting. The types of industry engagement it starts letting us think about is really important,” Noble said. “This is the type of infrastructure most companies would love to have access to.” 

As Sumner puts it, the new wind tunnel will create opportunities, from providing a better understanding of the fundamental physics of fluid flow in his research field of bluff-body aerodynamics to practical applications such as crop spraying and drone flight testing.  

Both Sumner and Noble said having this kind of advanced technology at USask opens many doors for industry partnerships and can give students a hands-on understanding of aerodynamics across numerous fields, from engineering to agriculture and more.  

USask’s existing wind tunnel in the Engineering Building was built in 1982 and is powered by one massive fan pushing air through the enclosed tunnel. The new wind tunnel will be much more precisely customizable thanks to its multi-fan design, and a modular structure means experiments can be swapped in and out for faster and more efficient use of the space.   

Uniquely, the original wind tunnel was designed by USask Mechanical Engineering faculty and students – and the new wind tunnel will be as well. The project is receiving interest and support from USask alumni and donors. 

“It’s all going to be designed, built, and assembled by us,” Sumner said. “There’s excitement now, among the students. You want to be involved. Things like this don’t come by very often.” 

The two co-leads said the support of the CFI-JELF funding for the new wind tunnel, as well as that of USask and the College of Engineering, is a vote of confidence for USask to open up opportunities for the university and the entire province to create industry connections and bring USask research to the world.  

“I think there’s an opportunity for a facility like this to help support the growth of industries across the province,” Noble said. “Something like this can anchor the beginnings of a centre of excellence and support the growth of students in those sectors, too.” Matt Olson, University of Saskatchewan News

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