News That Matters To You

By Heather Fricke
Canada’s ambitious AI adoption strategy risks prioritizing machine fluency over shared understanding, says Heather Fricke of Frick-E Energy. What's required, she says, is closing what she calls the "Human-AI Understanding Gap." This means measuring understanding: whether the AI actually understood the business, the human judgment behind the task, and the context required to make the right decision.

By Nathan Fast
Canada risks losing its pioneering global AI leadership by failing to build domestic compute infrastructure and adopt local technology, says Nathan Fast at Vancouver-based HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. To secure its future, Canada must bridge the gap between world-class AI research and the practical, sovereign deployment and adoption of AI systems, built on Canadian power, under Canadian law, and with community input, he says.

By Peter Josty
While Canada maintains a moderate level of inequality compared to other wealthy nations, the richest fraction of the country's population has seen their wealth skyrocket over the last four decades. Peter Josty of The Centre for Innovation Studies explores how shifting tax policies and economic trends reveal that overall wealth inequality in Canada remains steady, in the face of the social and political risks of inequality.

By Andrew Maxwell
Traditional manufacturers often struggle to innovate because their operational excellence engines inadvertently stifle the experimentation required for future success. In an ongoing series looking at multiple aspects of innovation, Andrew Maxwell from York University explains that to remain relevant, firms must consciously build structural space for business model redesign and the innovation engine, alongside their existing production discipline.

By Gordon Harling
Gordon Harling of CMC Microsystems argues that opaque and complex procurement processes and cultural barriers prevent Canada's small and medium-sized businesses from effectively supporting Canada's defence sector. To bridge this gap, he proposes shifting toward challenge-based funding and third-party management to ensure Canadian SMEs have a level playing field to deliver critical dual-use technologies.

By Peter Josty
High-growth firms make a significant contribution to job creation, productivity and innovation, but they are unpredictable, episodic phenomena rather than a static category of businesses, says Peter Josty of the Centre for Innovation Studies. Because these companies are nearly impossible to identify before their growth spurts, government efforts to specifically target and foster them often prove ineffective.

By Kineta Tober
Kineta H. Tober, a European MSc student in cyberpsychology, researches how voice-based AI companions can offer residents with dementia the patient, conversational engagement that overstretched care staff often cannot provide. By scaling these assistive technologies, Canada could bridge the critical gap between dementia care needs and the current realities of limited staffing and pilot-focused funding, she says.

By Rosalind Lockyer
Rosalind Lockyer of PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise argues that Canada’s support systems for entrepreneurs are fundamentally failing women by forcing them to pay a 'legitimacy tax' on their businesses and navigate complex, broken bureaucracies. Transforming these outdated institutional practices is essential to unlocking the full economic potential of women and gender-diverse business owners across the country, she says.

By Jason Leong
Jason Leong of PocketSmith argues that Canadian regulators and policymakers should not use bank switching rates as the primary metric for open banking success. Instead, the country should focus on fostering a richer, more competitive ecosystem of financial tools and services, along with reliable data infrastructure and quality data that enhance services for existing bank customers.