Canada

The USMCA’s digital trade rules set the global standard. Now, policymakers should modernize them for the age of AI, close loopholes that enable data localization and discriminatory taxes, and build a more secure, competitive North American digital economy.

Canada should significantly expand commercialization-focused grant programs through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and increase Canada’s overall health science research investments to a scale commensurate with global competition.

Canada funds university research but gives universities too little reason to turn that into Canadian firms, patents, and industrial capacity. To better align their incentives with national goals, funding should flow in part on standardized commercialization outcomes, with universities left to decide how to deliver them.

Bill C-34 gives platforms a reason to design safer services for children. But sequencing matters: If Ottawa brings the restriction into force before the Digital Safety Commission is operational, the fastest path to compliance will be removing the very users the bill means to protect.

Canada says it wants to be a technology and innovation economy, but its research budget still treats balance across disciplines as the priority. If innovation is the actual goal, the Carney government should shift funding from social sciences and humanities toward NSERC and CIHR.

A ban on personalized pricing would not make Canada more affordable; it would eliminate discounts at the bottom of the distribution and raise the floor for price-sensitive shoppers, the very consumers these proposals aim to protect.

Canadian innovation, productivity, and competitiveness are weak. Absent serious policy change, they will likely get even weaker. A turnaround requires addressing Canada’s core challenges—most fundamentally, a Canadian political economy that is not designed for the techno-economic environment the country now faces.

Canada’s privacy regulators are restricting the use of public online data for AI training, but this approach could undermine AI innovation. Canada should instead adopt a harm-based framework focused on concrete privacy risks.

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.