Alberta’s Next Boom Must Be Built on Innovation

By Jess Sinclair
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

In August of this year, Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner delivered a difficult fiscal update. The province, which had a forecasted surplus of $8.3 billion just a year prior is now staring down the barrel of a $6.5 billion deficit for the 2026 fiscal year, largely the result of an OPEC decision not to hold the line on supply which in turn led to softening crude prices, always a bellweather for financial pain in this part of the country.

Almost ten years ago, after a similar meeting of petroleum czars in Vienna, many Albertans held our breath as the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate began to soften, then plunged to an economically crippling price below $40 a barrel. It’s a ten year anniversary no one in the province wanted to celebrate, and there’s little indication things will be as dire this time around, but the ongoing resource revenue rollercoaster should give us all pause.

I was a junior staffer in the Calgary Premier’s Office a decade ago, under the late Jim Prentice. Some bigwig in the Premier’s Comms Office in Edmonton had me transcribe Jim’s (in)famous “look in the mirror” CBC radio interview by hand (technology was less advanced then), twice, as if I could somehow find some new revelatory context that would stem the mounting tide of Twitter rage.

As most of us understand now, Jim was right. Since that time even staunch conservatives in Alberta have accepted the futility of arguing against “diversification” of the province’s economy. Most policymakers actually understand that pitting the resource economy against the tech sector is a false dichotomy. Alberta’s tech-leveraged companies have enjoyed success because of our prowess in the energy economy, not despite it. More to the point, we once led the country in innovation industrial frameworks because of our vast exploitable resources.

But if we are to rediscover the ambition that led to the creation of Canada’s first provincial research organization, we have several frameworks in need of updates and attention as we move toward the 2026 provincial budget.

As policymakers reconvene in Edmonton this week for the fall sitting, two opportunities stand out in particular. First, the province needs to urgently wrap up work on a comprehensive intellectual property framework. The breadth and depth of ideas pioneered in this province are staggering – the result of excellent education inputs and the high standards in our cornerstone resource and agriculture industries, as well as our well-documented AI and machine-learning prowess. We are not adequately capturing the value of those ideas. Moreover, this work must double down on work to ensure Alberta firms have maximum freedom to operate, meaning companies quickly secure their own IP to avoid infringing on IP rights of others or paying steep licensing fees (often to foreign firms).

In addition, we are approaching the one-year mark since Alberta Technology and Innovation launched a strategy positioning the province as a destination of choice for hyperscale data centres. However, there is a concurrent need to expand the province’s own sovereign compute capacity to protect Albertans’ data from foreign actors and to ensure local companies have the access to the AI infrastructure they need.

In a world where data – from banking transactions, health information and telecommunications interactions — is increasingly stored in the Cloud, Canadian jurisdictions must protect the privacy of citizens and the economic interests of domestic companies against increasingly self-interested foreign policies like the US Cloud Act.

In advance of writing this piece, I spoke with Brent Lane, Founder and CEO of Calgary’s BigGeo, which is pioneering new approaches to geospatial AI infrastructure and data management. Alberta born and bred, Brent has built his business here because of the hustle and ambition so common among Albertans. “[Alberta has] the opportunity to lead the world in secure, private, and independent data storage and processing, not just for Canadian data, but for any nation that wants to keep its information protected and sovereign,” he says. “In today’s economy, data is as critical as the resources we pull from the ground. With our unmatched energy infrastructure, we’re in a prime position to power the next generation of the sovereign data economy."

These recommendations, and several others, are outlined in more detail in CCI’s 2026 Pre-Budget Submission to Alberta here.

I am pleased to see that a renewed mandate letter from Premier Smith to Alberta Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish makes reference to several of the subjects I’ve noted in this piece. Temporary fiscal headwinds notwithstanding, the province has a real opportunity to create multi-generational opportunities for future Albertans if officials seize the moment by implementing a few common-sense policies to support local innovators.

Jess Sinclair leads CCI’s advocacy efforts in the prairies, and can be reached at jsinclair@canadianinnovators.org.

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À propos du Conseil des innovateurs canadiens

Le Conseil des innovateurs canadiens est une organisation nationale basée sur ses membres qui remodèle la façon dont les gouvernements à travers le Canada pensent à la politique d'innovation, et qui soutient les entreprises d'envergure nationale pour stimuler la prospérité. Fondé en 2015, le CCI représente et travaille avec plus de 150 entreprises technologiques canadiennes à la croissance la plus rapide. Nos membres sont les chefs de la direction, les fondateurs et les cadres supérieurs qui sont à l'origine de certaines des entreprises à grande échelle les plus prospères du Canada. Tous nos membres sont des créateurs d'emplois et de richesses, des investisseurs, des philanthropes et des experts dans leurs domaines de la technologie de la santé, des technologies propres, de la fintech, de la cybersécurité, de l'IA et de la transformation numérique. Les entreprises de notre portefeuille sont leaders sur leur marché vertical, commercialisent leurs technologies dans plus de 190 pays et génèrent entre 10 et 750 millions de dollars de revenus annuels récurrents. Nous plaidons en leur nom pour des stratégies gouvernementales qui augmentent leur accès aux talents qualifiés, au capital stratégique et aux nouveaux clients, ainsi qu'à une liberté d'exploitation élargie pour leurs poursuites d'échelle à l'échelle mondiale.