CCI Urges PM Carney to Convene Canadian Business Leaders to Chart Sovereign Industrial Strategy

Last Friday, the Trump Administration released its new National Security Strategy. It is a blunt and consequential declaration that the United States now sees hemispheric collaboration and continental partnership as secondary to a drive for strategic dominance and control.

The Strategy is explicit that America’s prosperity, military strength, and national security will be anchored in domestic technological leadership, sovereign supply chains, standards-setting power, and dual-use industrial capability. In practical terms, the United States government now explicitly acknowledges a long-running reality: technology, IP, cloud, AI, data, cyber, quantum, energy platforms, and advanced manufacturing are treated as national security assets — not simply innovation files.

For Canada, this represents a profound moment for our national geopolitical strategy and a shift in the operating environment. In a world where intangible assets, AI & data, and dual-use technologies are determining economic advantage and national resilience, sovereignty and prosperity depends on homegrown companies that are capable of scaling globally, defining standards, and positioning themselves into value chains in global markets. Canada’s economic interests, our sovereignty and our national security are no longer separable.

Canada should be equally forthright about our own national interests. Sovereignty, prosperity and resilience of our country will rest on our ability to build, scale and retain Canadian companies that generate value at home, strengthen our supply and value chains, and give Canada strategic leverage and sovereign capability. It will also rely on building critical infrastructure like sovereign compute and cloud capacity.

As the national voice of Canada’s fastest-growing companies, the Council of Canadian Innovators believes that Canada can emerge stronger from this moment by:

• Maintaining Canada’s sovereignty and freedom to choose our future by diversifying our exports of technology, services and IP, and embedding value-added innovation into our exports of resources, food, and energy — not only to the United States, but to allies and commercial partners around the world.
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• Working collaboratively with Canadian business leaders to integrate security, economic, trade, IP, AI & data, and innovation policy across jurisdictions and silos, with domestic capability and sovereign leverage as shared goals. As a first step, the government should convene industry advisory groups to help guide trade negotiations.
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• Stopping the leakage of Canadian intellectual property, artificial intelligence data and talent, which currently sees Canada as the world’s third-largest exporter of inventors, and more than half of all patents filed by Canadians controlled by foreign companies.
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• Addressing long-standing barriers to economic growth and innovation by using the same full policy toolkit that other governments deploy to foster globally competitive firms — including sovereign procurement, flexible regulation, strategic capital, and unified industrial-security planning.
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• Strengthening Canada’s national unity and strategic alignment through cooperative efforts between federal and provincial governments to champion domestic economic interests — including a strong, national Buy Canadian policy for strategic sectors.

Canada requires a strategic reset that meets the moment. Our allies and global competitors are moving at scale to re-shore critical supply and value chains, lock in dual-use capacity, control data, assert technological standards, and embed domestic IP as a foundation of economic power. As a country, we are falling behind not because Canadian innovators lack ambition, but because our policy architecture has not yet shifted to contemporary global industrial realities.

Call to Action to PM Carney

The Council of Canadian Innovators calls on Prime Minister Carney to urgently meet with Canadian business leaders to chart a true sovereign industrial strategy that responds to this new global reality. Our members are ready to provide strategic intelligence, sectoral insight, and practical solutions to build domestic capability in dual-use technologies, supply chains, cyber infrastructure, IP creation, and data governance.

Prime Minister Carney should convene a strategic working session with Canada’s domestic scale-ups, innovators, and national champions at the earliest opportunity.

Quotes

In response to the National Security Strategy, CCI’s incoming CEO Patrick Searle issued the following statement:

“The U.S. National Security Strategy has now explicitly stated a reality that has been true for a long time: technology, IP, cloud, AI & data, cyber, quantum, and dual-use capabilities are national security assets — not simply innovation files. And America has moved into a doctrine of win–lose industrial strategy, reshoring capacity, asserting standards, and embedding domestic IP as the backbone of economic power.”

“Canada has not had a comparable strategic reset. This is a national security industrial moment and Canada needs to respond with urgency, clarity, and a domestic strategy built around sovereign capability.”

“The United States is saying clearly: sovereignty in the 21st century will be defined by who controls the standards, the IP, the AI & data, the cloud, and the dual-use technologies that nations rely on. America intends to build, export and control those systems at scale. Canada needs to decide whether we will be strategic participants or a vassal state to global tech giants.”

“We urge the Prime Minister to convene business leaders urgently to chart a sovereign industrial strategy that responds to this new global reality.”

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Media Contact:

James McLeod
Director of Communications and Content
jmcleod@canadianinnovators.org