From the Ground Floor of ALL IN: Building a Stronger Canada–EU Innovation Ecosystem

By Skaidra Puodžiūnas
Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy

Last week at ALL IN in Montréal, Canadian innovators showed up.

Across stages, meetings and the show floor, CCI members were out in full force, demonstrating technologies, making announcements and sitting down with customers, investors, policymakers and international partners.

Canada has spent years building a global reputation for artificial intelligence (AI) research and talent. What stood out at ALL IN was how much the conversation has shifted toward a continued opportunity: turning our advantage into globally competitive Canadian companies.

As Daniel Perry, CCI’s Director of Federal Affairs, put it:

“Walking the floor at ALL IN, you could see the strength of what Canadian companies are building. The opportunity now is to make sure they have the capital, talent and customers they need to scale — and keep more of the economic value they create here in Canada.”

For Jean-François Harvey, CCI’s Director of Quebec Affairs, ALL IN demonstrated both the strength of the ecosystem and the opportunity ahead:

“ALL IN has become a world-class showcase for Canadian innovation. The bigger question is how we turn the extraordinary technology and talent we have in Canada into greater productivity, prosperity and globally competitive companies.”

That question is becoming more important as technology bench strength increasingly shapes economic resilience. Artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing are becoming foundational capabilities. Governments and businesses are asking harder questions about who builds the technology they rely on, who controls it and how easily they can make different choices in the future.

And one of the biggest opportunities to do that is emerging across the Atlantic.

Building a Transatlantic Collaboration for Canadian Innovation

During ALL IN, CCI joined the European DIGITAL SME Alliance and the Digital Governance Council in calling for deeper Canada–European Union (EU) technology cooperation.

The timing matters. Canada and Europe are both looking at how they can strengthen their technological and economic resilience in a world increasingly shaped by a small number of large, vertically integrated technology platforms.

But technological sovereignty shouldn't mean trying to build everything ourselves.

A more useful goal is choice and control: ensuring companies and governments can understand their technological dependencies, combine technologies from different providers and change those choices when their needs change. That is why our joint letter puts ideas like interoperability, federation and orchestration at the centre of deeper Canada–EU cooperation.

The opportunity is bigger than simply giving Canadian companies access to European customers, or vice versa. It is about making independent technologies easier to combine so organizations can choose the best tools without facing enormous integration costs or becoming locked into a single technology ecosystem.

That could mean making it easier for a Canadian cybersecurity company to integrate with European digital infrastructure, for an EU artificial intelligence company to work with Canadian cloud or data technologies, or for organizations on either side of the Atlantic to replace one component of their technology stack without having to rebuild everything around it.

Canada and Europe aren't starting from scratch. The Canada–EU Digital Partnership already includes cooperation on areas such as AI, cybersecurity, digital credentials, standards and secure connectivity. Canada and Germany are also advancing a Sovereign Technology Alliance focused on creating a more diverse and resilient technology and AI ecosystem.

Up next will be turning those relationships into real commercial pathways for our companies.

Opening Transatlantic Markets to Canadian Innovation

That brings us back to what we saw at ALL IN. CCI members showed up (and took up space) because they are already building technologies with global potential.

As Louis Têtu, Chairman of Coveo, and Simon Ahdoot, CEO of Hypertec, reinforced at our Innovator Exchange, hosted alongside ALL IN, Canadian companies are already doing this work at global scale. Both have spent years building Canadian technologies, capabilities and customer bases that reach well beyond our borders. They are exactly the kind of companies Canada should be putting forward as we build new economic and technology partnerships — proof of what Canadian innovators can bring to the table, and why creating pathways into global markets matters.

Deeper Canada–Europe cooperation can help create those markets. Its success should ultimately be measured by what it enables companies to do: find customers, form partnerships, combine technologies more easily and scale internationally while retaining meaningful choice and control.

ALL IN showed what Canadian innovators are building. Now Canada has an opportunity to help shape a more open and competitive technology ecosystem across the Atlantic.

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About the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI)

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) is Canada’s business council for the 21st century economy. We are a collective of over 175 of Canada’s fastest-growing and most ambitious companies, and the founders, CEOs, and executives behind them, working together to improve the business conditions that help more homegrown companies scale, compete globally, and drive long-term prosperity.