Procure to Protect: Why Canada Needs a Mandate to Innovate Now

By Daniel Perry
Director of Federal Affairs

Last week, more than 20 CEOs and senior executives from Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies converged on Parliament Hill for meetings with key government leaders.

We are in the early days of this new government, and our message to government was that Canada must become a global leader in deploying domestic innovation. Procurement must become a tool for propelling the growth of Canadian companies. While our peers know how to bet on their homegrown firms, and champion their success, too often procurement is a nettlesome barrier for Canadian companies.

While other nations are moving swiftly to adopt homegrown AI, cybersecurity, and dual-use technologies, Canadian firms remain stuck in endless pilot projects, unable to break through outdated procurement processes.
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Minister Joly: A Mandate to Scale Canadian Innovation

A key moment in the day came during our meeting with the Industry Minister Mélanie Joly. Minister Joly spoke candidly about the global risk environment, the return of industrial policy, and the need to build Canada’s economic and technological sovereignty. She outlined the government’s focus on defending key industries, creating jobs, and attracting talent, including a target of bringing 1,000 top researchers to Canada.

We shared CCI’s post-election policy roadmap, A Mandate to Innovate, which outlines practical recommendations to scale domestic companies in critical areas like AI, cyber, and digital infrastructure. Minister Joly was especially engaged on the topics of quantum, trusted AI, and dual-use drone technologies—and acknowledged the urgency of converting Canadian intellectual property into commercial advantage. We are expecting the government will publish their Defence Industrial Strategy later this year, and Minister Joly confirmed that sovereignty, procurement reform, and innovation adoption will be central themes.

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Procurement Reform: The Key to Sovereignty and Scale

Throughout the day, CCI’s team of CEOs met with senior government leaders in finance, economic development, defence and public safety roles. Across all of the meetings, our message was consistent: procurement is the most powerful—and underused—tool for driving economic growth in Canada’s economic toolkit.

We heard:

• Recognition of the “missing middle”: too many Canadian firms are too big for early-stage programs, yet too small to navigate federal procurement at scale.
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• Support for “buying Canadian”: officials acknowledged that sovereign suppliers should be prioritized in strategic areas like cyber, cloud, and AI.
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• The government would consider reforming the definition of a Canadian SME: to create more flexibility for procuring from scaling domestic technologies.

Public Services and Procurement Canada officials pointed to the National Shipbuilding Strategy as a model of strategic procurement that helped grow a domestic industry. Government officials said they would be interested in applying similar principles to digital technologies—with sovereign AI, cyber resilience, and cloud infrastructure top of mind.

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Cybersecurity and AI: No Time to Wait

Senior officials at Public Safety Canada and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security stressed the evolving threat landscape—from state-sponsored actors to ransomware syndicates. They welcomed the idea of a “cyber defence collective” to strengthen cooperation between Canadian cyber firms and government agencies. They also supported the concept of building a domestic certification model, like the UK’s GCHQ, to increase trust in Canadian technologies.

At Innovation Science and Economic Development, the discussion emphasized the need to “focalize” government efforts—aligning workforce, infrastructure, and regulation to support trusted AI adoption. We heard that they largely agree with ideas CCI put forward in A Mandate to Innovate on enabling sovereign compute, data infrastructure, and scaling commercialization pathways.
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What Needs to Happen Next

To translate this momentum into results, the federal government must act on the clear policy roadmap laid out in A Mandate to Innovate. CCI recommends:

• Commit to adoption targets: Move beyond pilots and establish clear, measurable procurement targets for Canadian technologies in strategic sectors.
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• Define and prioritize sovereign suppliers: Establish criteria—ownership, IP control, data residency—that enable departments to confidently buy Canadian.
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• Use fiscal and regulatory levers: Use the Fall 2025 Budget to introduce procurement incentives, tax credits, and modern R&D policies that support commercialization.
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• Fix IP rules in publicly funded research: Ensure R&D investments deliver economic outcomes through standardized licensing and commercialization models.
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A Mandate to Innovate, A Moment to Deliver

With a new government, a new Cabinet, and a new mandate focused on sovereignty and economic resilience, this is a critical window for change. Minister Joly and other senior leaders demonstrated openness to reform and a clear interest in working with Canadian innovators to make it happen.

Now it’s time to deliver—by turning policy alignment into procurement action.

To learn more about CCI’s federal advocacy priorities, contact Daniel Perry.

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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 150 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.