Commercializing Alberta’s Big Ideas Starts With Owning the IP

By Jess Sinclair
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

A few weeks ago, CCI brought together a group of our members CEOs for a day of meetings with Premier Danielle Smith, Innovation Minister Nate Glubish, and other senior Alberta government officials. 

Whenever we host these advocacy days, it’s an opportunity for government leaders to hear perspectives directly from business leaders, and it’s an opportunity to talk about issues like tax policy, government procurement processes, skilled talent attraction and more.

But a significant subject of discussion with officials this year was the need for a comprehensive approach to ensuring that more big ideas are commercialized in Alberta.

In the past few years we’ve seen enormous excitement about AI infrastructure and data centres in Alberta. But the thing to understand about the 21st century economy is that the data and intellectual property flowing through those data centres are far more economically valuable than the physical infrastructure.

For as long as we’ve existed, CCI has been calling for Canadian governments to take a more active role in the retention and control of intangible assets. 

When our governments support domestic firms in controlling their own patents, trade secrets, data, utility models and other assets of note, it ensures Canadian companies maximize their freedom to operate. You can find a more comprehensive primer on FTO here, but, in short, it allows our companies to keep growing in an industry without infringing IP rights of others or paying steep licensing fees.

So what does this mean for Alberta? I’ve written before about how the province has a proud history of successfully working with energy companies to commercialize the ideas and retain the technology that’s allowed us to explore and extract our collective energy resources.

CCI’s 2026 pre-budget submission calls for Alberta to develop and implement a provincial Intellectual property framework. This has been a longstanding piece of our advocacy efforts in the province, and we’re pleased to see an equivalent item included in Alberta Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish’s most recent mandate letter from Premier Danielle Smith.

The need to keep more taxpayer-funded IP and data here in Alberta has only grown in the AI era, and it’s good to see the government recognizing that.

I’ll be watching closely to see how the province acts on this file over the coming months.

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.