Publications: Lawrence Zhang

The Canada Strong Fund is trying to be a sovereign wealth fund, development bank, commercial investor, industrial policy vehicle, and retail savings product all at once. Until Ottawa clearly defines its purpose, it risks becoming a debt-financed vehicle searching for a rationale.

Ottawa is choosing its next Competition Commissioner, who will decide if firms are allowed to get big by competing or punished for trying. Canada needs competition policy that protects consumers without treating scale, investment, or ambition as suspect.

Canada’s business R&D weakness is not mainly that too few firms do research. It is that too few Canadian firms reach the scale where R&D becomes globally significant, leaving Canada with lots of research activity but too few firms that commercialize and compete at industrial weight.

Canada’s cloud debate is asking the wrong question—control, not domestic ownership or server location, is what determines security and resilience in practice.

Opposition to AI automation at the Canada Revenue Agency misses the point. Smarter systems can improve targeting, boost compliance, and deliver better results with fewer resources than a labour-intensive enforcement model.

Canada is considering banning social media for teenagers, but the evidence suggests this approach is misplaced. Harm is not driven by access alone, but by specific online experiences, and a blanket ban would do little to address them.

Canada Post’s cost structure no longer scales in a low-volume world. Labour flexibility, automation, work sharing, retail consolidation, and parcel growth are necessary to reduce the cost of reaching every address while preserving universal service.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness (CCIC) appreciates the opportunity to contribute to Global Affairs Canada’s consultation on a potential Canada-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement.

Canada should prioritize boosting productivity through the adoption of advanced technologies across its firms and governments, rather than pursuing domestic ownership of existing infrastructure in the name of “digital sovereignty.”

Canada’s path to lasting competitiveness lies in strategic indispensability: specializing in a small number of high value-added goods or services that the world can’t do without. Ottawa must continue making explicit decisions about what gets built and what does not; otherwise, it risks spending heavily with little to show for it.