This essay from CCI’s CEO was originally featured in the CCI Newsletter and shared with subscribers on March 2, 2026. To receive our monthly briefing on the scale-ups shaping Canada’s future, the policies that matter, and insights you won’t find anywhere else—subscribe here.

Hi CEOs,

In recent weeks, amidst near daily shifts around US-Canada trade and tariff frictions, a consistent theme has surfaced in conversations we have been hosting with founders and CEOs across the country — in Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, St. John's, Ottawa and elsewhere. Canadian business leaders are watching the United States closely, and the conclusion is becoming difficult to avoid: Behind the headlines, Washington has mobilized a series of strategic policy actions is acting with strategic intent to ensure that the value created by emerging technologies accrues to American firms and remains anchored inside its borders. This intent is visible across multiple policy fronts.

The reassertion of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act makes clear that federally funded innovation is expected to translate into domestic production. Legislative and policy efforts around data, artificial intelligence and advanced technologies are designed to concentrate research, compute capacity, infrastructure and commercialization within the United States. Trade authorities such as Section 232 and other national-security tools continue to be used to manage market access, while periodic signals around the future of USMCA reinforce that economic integration is being treated as strategic leverage rather than as a permanent foundation.

CEOs and founders sip and strategize at our Vancouver cocktail reception with National Bank

At the same time, the United States is moving aggressively to shape the rules that will govern future markets. The creation of a Standard-Essential Patent working group at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reflects a deliberate effort to capture long-term economic returns through leadership in technical standards. And while Washington has stepped back from 66 international bodies, it maintained and reinforced its engagement in three standards bodies (ITU, IOS, IEC), entrenching control where the technical frameworks that structure global markets are set.

Even the latest U.S. National Security Strategy makes explicit that supply chains, intellectual property, standards and critical technologies are now instruments of economic power.

Taken together, these actions point to a highly coordinated approach. Intellectual property, data, onshoring, supply chains and standards are not being managed as separate policy files. They are being managed as interlocking components of a national economic architecture designed to anchor value domestically. This shift is shaping the tone of discussions we are hosting across Canada at the Council.

Ottawa innovators and policy leaders connect at CCI’s Innovator Exchange, hosted by Gowling WLG in the nation’s capital.

This shift is shaping the tone of discussions we are hosting across Canada at the Council.

In exchanges we've hosted in Ottawa and Toronto around defence procurement, executives are asking whether new public spending will build Canadian capability or primarily expand the footprint of foreign suppliers. In conversations about artificial intelligence and health care, the question is where the data will reside and who will capture the commercial value it generates. Across sectors, there is growing concern that without deliberate policy choices rooted in new economic realities, Canada risks becoming a development environment for technologies whose economic benefits are realized elsewhere.

B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey fields questions from innovators during CCI's B.C. budget debrief hosted at AbCellera

Canada’s innovators are not waiting for this reality to be explained to them. The question is whether governments are prepared to act strategically and with the same urgency to enable a Canadian response that ensures the economic value they create stays in Canada.

For our companies, this starts with procurement. Public spending in defence, health, digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence should be structured to build domestic capability and give Canadian-headquartered firms a path to scale. It requires treating data/AI, intellectual property and standards participation as economic infrastructure rather than technical afterthoughts. And it means recognizing that Canadian companies that reach global scale are not simply another part of the business landscape — they anchor decision-making, investment and future growth at home.

Canada requires clarity and action in the strategic environment we are operating in. We must leverage the experts we have in Canada to inform and implement our next steps.

The United States is not leaving the location of future economic value to chance. Canada cannot afford to either.

And while I have you: our upcoming Capital & Growth Summit on May 1 will focus on these same issues — scaling global companies, navigating geopolitical uncertainty, and backing the firms with the greatest strategic leverage. Tickets are now available.

Keep growing,

Patrick

Patrick Searle is the Chief Executive Officer of the Council of Canadian Innovators, a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. If you are interested in learning more about the Council or joining our cause, get in touch.

INNOVATION UPDATES

B.C. Budget 2026: B.C.’s 2026 Budget promises modernization of the SR&ED tax credit, a $400M Strategic Investments Special Account focused on priority sectors such as AI, quantum, and life sciences, and a commitment to consult on a patent box measure. In our response to the budget, our B.C. Director Kiersten Enemark warned that results will hinge on pairing funding with practical industrial policy tools that keep value capture and headquarters in B.C. She also flagged concerns that new sales tax measures on professional services could raise costs for innovators, and noted the absence of innovation procurement reforms that help scale companies while delivering public value. Read the full statement here.

Alberta Budget 2026: Alberta’s 2026 Budget arrives amid lower resource revenues, trade uncertainty, and rising costs. In CCI’s response, Prairie Affairs Director Jess Sinclair called it a no-frills budget focused on core services, while pointing to a few bright spots for the innovation economy: funding for government IT modernization, targeted talent retention for tech firms, and the centralization of health procurement aligned with CCI advocacy. She stressed that Alberta’s path to resilience will depend on practical policy conditions that help innovators scale and reduce exposure to commodity swings. Read the full statement here.

Defence Industrial Strategy: CCI views the new Defence Industrial Strategy as a signal that Canada is moving to strengthen domestic defence capacity amid rising geopolitical risk. The strategy points to new tools and reforms, including investment and financing measures, changes to Industrial and Technological Benefits, and more detail on the Defence Investment Agency. CCI is emphasizing that the next step is an execution plan that turns policy into procurement, protects Canadian-controlled intellectual property developed with public dollars, and ensures increased defence spending anchors domestic value capture and industrial capacity. Learn more here. Read the full statement.

Care at Scale Report Launch today at 11AM ET: Join us for an online discussion about our latest policy report, Care at Scale, which looks at public buying, data, and how we can achieve better health care for all Canadians. Our report lays out practical steps to modernize health care delivery by using public purchasing more effectively and enabling smarter use of health data, so proven innovations can reach scale and improve access and outcomes for Canadians. There is still time to sign up for the report launch!

THE BIG READ

A recent Globe and Mail essay by IP lawyer Natalie Raffoul and tech executive Neil Desai argues Canada is leaving economic value on the table by treating foreign subsidiaries as “Canadian” for the purposes of research funding and innovation incentives. Their core point is simple: Ottawa spends roughly $20 billion annually on innovation tax credits and research and commercialization programs, but too much of the intellectual property built with Canadian talent and taxpayer support can be owned and commercialized abroad.

The authors point to a familiar pattern. Foreign multinationals set up Canadian subsidiaries, access public programs and partnerships, then capture patents, licensing, and commercialization benefits outside Canada. They argue the fix is not to stop supporting R&D, but to modernize how Canada defines eligibility so funding favours firms that build lasting value here through Canadian control, Canadian revenue, and Canadian ownership and commercialization of intellectual property.

Read the full article here.

SCALE-UPS TO WATCH

In February, we welcomed several new members to the Council of Canadian Innovators last month:

• ICI Innovations Inc., led by Co-Founder and President Corey Tucker, is a Canadian-owned software company that helps regulators and project proponents manage complex project information across sectors like mining, renewable energy, oil and gas, and infrastructure. Headquartered in St. John’s, ICI's RIVAS platform improves how project data is organized and shared so decisions can move faster without weakening regulatory oversight.
  
• HalfSerious, led by Founder and Chief Executive Officer Eric Bourget, is a Canadian invention company that designs and delivers product-grade technology solutions for organizations facing complex, long-standing operational challenges. The team is also behind SquadBox.ai, a platform that helps organizations deploy secure, lower-cost AI agents to handle repetitive administrative work so teams can focus on higher-value priorities.
  
• Publicus, led by Chief Executive Officer Joe Noss, is a Toronto-based government technology company helping Canadian businesses win more public sector contracts and helping governments buy more intelligently. Its AI-powered procurement platform reduces friction across the procurement process by improving how opportunities are surfaced and evaluated, supporting clearer purchasing decisions and better outcomes for vendors and buyers.

CCI members also continued to demonstrate the growth and global leadership Canadian innovators are known for:

• Helcim launches new payment tools, expands key partnerships, and grows demand for its software integrations as momentum builds into 2026
  
• Loop launches Canada’s first direct API banking connectivity for businesses, giving finance teams a more reliable way to sync banking data with major accounting platforms
  
• Xanadu proposes four new independent directors as it prepares to transition into a public company
  
• Vive Crop Protection CEO Darren Anderson joins Disruptors to discuss what it takes to scale agri-food innovation in Canada
  
• Thornhill Medical releases a new white paper highlighting how its dual-use critical care technology can strengthen EU and NATO medical readiness in battlefield and emergency response settings

CCI IN THE NEWS

"If we don’t own the ideas coming out of our country, then we just continue to be this branch plant."

– CCI Chief Strategy Officer Dana O'Born featured in the article "Canada's defence industrial strategy is big on ambition, but not details, critics say" The Financial Post

“The elephant in the room is the incoherence coming from this government.”

– CCI Director of Quebec Affairs Jean-Francois Harvey in the BetaKit article "Québec has a new digital sovereignty plan. Will it work?"

“For example, one of our greatest challenges is to build a new generation of Canadian businesses: 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.”

– CCI in The Hill Times article "What price will Trump demand and where will Carney draw the line?"

“Employee ownership is fundamentally about keeping Canadian companies Canadian.”

– CCI Chief Executive Officer Patrick Searle featured in the article "‘Business leaders urge Ottawa to extend employee ownership tax incentive" in BetaKit

DISPATCHES

On February 5, CCI hosted a Defence Innovator Exchange in Toronto, supported and moderated by RBCx. The session brought together 100+ leaders from Canada’s dual-use and defence tech ecosystem alongside government officials for a candid conversation on emerging opportunities, procurement barriers, and what it will take to strengthen Canada’s defence innovation pipeline.

Canada can build and buy more capability at home, but only if procurement pathways are clearer, timelines are shorter, and trust-building steps are easier to navigate for companies that are ready to deliver.

Read the full dispatch here, and stay tuned for more updates on CCI’s advocacy work and upcoming policy conversations.

Have a great start to your month!

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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.