Ontario’s AI Playbook: Five Priorities to Turn Research Leadership Into Economic Value

By Hina Ahmed
CCI Director of Ontario Affairs

Research excellence does not automatically produce globally competitive companies. It’s the first step, but commercialization is where the economic value is created.

Ontario has the talent, the research institutions, and the breakthrough discoveries. What we lack is a coordinated strategy to ensure those advantages become Canadian companies, Canadian intellectual property, and Canadian economic prosperity.

With the release of Canada’s National AI Strategy earlier this year, Ontario has an opportunity to build an AI strategy centred on economic sovereignty, commercialization, and the long-term success of Canadian innovators.

Research alone will not generate the greatest economic value in the global AI economy. Research creates breakthroughs. Commercialization creates economic value.Without deliberate action, Ontario risks becoming the world's R&D lab while other countries capture the jobs, investment, and wealth created from technologies invented here.

Canada has seen this story before. We cannot afford to repeat it.

As the business council representing Canada's fastest-growing technology companies, CCI has seen firsthand what distinguishes regions that invent technology from those that build globally competitive industries around it.

Ahead of Ontario's forthcoming AI Strategy, we outlined five priorities that would position Ontario to lead not only in AI discovery, but in AI commercialization.

1. Leverage existing policy tools

Ontario consistently produces world-class AI startups, yet too few scale into globally dominant businesses. Closing that gap requires policies that improve access to customers, growth capital, highly-specialized talent, and procurement opportunities that allow Canadian firms to compete and grow at home before expanding globally.

Ontario should use tools already available, including Bill 194, to prioritize trusted Canadian AI and cybersecurity solutions in public procurement. It should also maintain technology-neutral, outcomes-based regulation while ensuring Ontario companies help shape international AI standards rather than simply comply with them.
‍

2. Use public buying as an economic strategy

Modernizing public buying so Canadian innovation companies can compete for public sector contracts, and launching an Ontario AI Adoption Initiative, would accelerate adoption across the economy while helping homegrown companies build the commercial track record needed to compete globally.

In “Buying What We Build,” CCI’s report on building a stronger Canadian innovation economy, we outline how procurement can be leveraged to create domestic markets for innovators and turn public spending into economic growth.
‍

3. Invest in Canadian AI infrastructure

Compute capacity, cloud infrastructure, and trusted data have become strategic national assets. Jurisdictions that control them will shape the next generation of economic growth.

Ontario, and provinces across Canada, should expand secure Canadian compute and cloud capacity in partnership with industry and research institutions while ensuring sensitive public-sector and strategic industry data remains under Canadian jurisdiction. AI sovereignty depends on infrastructure sovereignty.
‍

4. Treat data as a strategic asset

Data is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable economic resources in the global economy. Ontario possesses unique advantages across healthcare, advanced manufacturing, natural resources, financial services, transportation, and public services.

Ontario should establish a modern framework that enables responsible access to high-value public datasets while protecting privacy and security. At the same time, it must strengthen intellectual property supports so Canadian companies retain ownership of the technologies and economic value they create.
‍

5. Compete where Ontario already leads

Ontario does not need to lead every AI application. It needs to dominate where it already possesses globally competitive advantages.

Strategic investment should focus on sectors where Ontario combines industrial strength with AI expertise—including healthcare, advanced manufacturing, natural resources, financial services, and transportation. Regulatory sandboxes and commercialization testbeds can accelerate deployment, reduce adoption barriers, and position Ontario as the jurisdiction where AI moves from research into real-world economic value.

Ontario has proved it can compete at the forefront of AI research. Now, we need to lead in its commercialization. The jurisdictions that commercialize AI, own the intellectual property, build domestic champions, and deploy the technology across their economies will capture the jobs, investment, and prosperity it creates.

Ontario has everything it needs to lead. What we require is the policy ambition to keep ownership, talent, and economic value anchored here at home.

‍

About the Council of Canadian Innovators

The Council of Canadian Innovators is a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. Established in 2015, CCI represents and works with over 175 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and top senior executives behind some of Canada’s most successful ‘scale-up’ companies. All our members are job and wealth creators, investors, philanthropists, and experts in their fields of health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, AI and digital transformation. Companies in our portfolio are market leaders in their verticals, commercialize their technologies in over 190 countries, and generate between $10M-$750M in annual recurring revenue. We advocate on their behalf for government strategies that increase their access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers, as well as expanded freedom to operate for their global pursuits of scale.