Saskatchewan’s Innovation Wake-Up Call

By Jess Sinclair
CCI Director of Prairie Affairs

If you’re looking for optimism in Saskatchewan’s tech ecosystem, you can find some encouraging signals in recent government announcements.

The province had increased the Saskatchewan Technology Startup Incentive (STSI) funding program cap from $3.5 million to $7 million and was in the process of expanding eligibility for the program. That program gives residents who invest in early-stage companies a break on their taxes.

The province also launched a Research Strategy in May through Innovation Saskatchewan, the Crown corporation that oversees the prairie province’s government-funded incubator and accelerator programming. The strategy lays out several means by which the province will continue to support local innovators in patenting and commercializing their ideas.

What’s missing is a sense of urgency. As a Regina kid, I’m old enough to remember the Percy Schmeiser case in the late ‘90s, where a Saskatchewan farmer had to defend himself against the Monsanto Corporation for (allegedly accidentally) cultivating Roundup Ready Canola™️ on his land — a crop for which Monsanto owned the patent. In addition to the actual legal machinations that ensued, the case has been litigated publicly by any number of policymakers and activists in the years since to suit their own politics.

But in the background, foreign multinationals continued to consolidate what have become de facto monopolies over agricultural technologies, some of which originate in the Canadian prairies. Four (US-based) agrochemical firms own 60% of the world’s seed patents, and Chinese firms are ramping up their own AgTech patenting activity after years of securing ownership of Canadian-made innovations in agriculture.

Both the US and China inherently understand that success in the 21st century economy depends on capturing the value of big ideas. Intangible assets like software, intellectual property, commercialized research, and data are inherently valuable, but they also enable new ways of leveraging the natural resources (including arable land) so abundant in Saskatchewan.

The government should be thinking about innovation as much more than a sector of the economy; our competitors understand that innovation strategies are the foundation of success in the whole economy.

Minister Warren Kaeding, responsible for the innovation file in Saskatchewan, should be making plans that are suitably ambitious, and he should be working to align with the work being done across Canada. No one can do this alone.

A good place to start is with a report co-authored by Ontario, B.C. and federal officials earlier this year — Powering Productivity Growth: Why Canada Needs a Unified Approach to IP Education.

To get a CEO’s perspective on things, I reached out to Kurtis McBride, CEO of Ontario’s Miovision, to understand how he thinks about IP policy.  “The patent process is cumbersome and often expensive for scaling firms, but we have seen action taken by some Canadian jurisdictions (like Ontario) to improve the landscape,” McBride told me.

I’ve heard from a lot of CEOs that they’re so focused on growth, commercialization and sales that it’s often hard to spend the necessary time to develop and defend their IP portfolio. Government policy and public agencies can help. Ontario has Intellectual Property Ontario, and federally we have the Innovation Asset Collective, both offering IP support for innovative businesses.

Saskatchewan could be looking at something similar.

Minister Kaeding should also work with his colleagues in Finance, Agriculture, Energy and Resources, and Advanced Education to convene an Intellectual Property working group to begin the work of creating a comprehensive IP framework for the province.

As MLAs convene in Regina for the fall 2025 Legislative sitting, the ongoing trade wars with America and China that continue to impact the province’s bottom line will be top of mind for many. The province can put itself back in an advantageous trade position once policymakers begin to protect the big ideas of the innovators that add value to every sector of Saskatchewan’s economy.

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.