Canada

Canada was right to scrap the streaming levy, which would have functioned as a consumption tax on Netflix and Disney+ subscribers without ensuring that the money supported Canadian shows they would actually watch.

The United States has imposed tariffs on Canada and mused about making it the 51st state, and Canadians are reasonably asking what it means to run hospitals and government services on infrastructure operated by firms answerable to US law and, in the end, to US politics.

As U.S.-Canada trade tensions escalate, both countries risk weakening the North American production base they need to compete with China—and turning a manageable dispute into a costly, self-defeating trade war.

Canada risks permanently losing advanced manufacturing as stagnant productivity, weak innovation, and risk aversion undermine its competitiveness. Reversing course requires a national strategy focused on productivity, innovation, and technology-based growth.

Canada may reach its AI adoption target and still miss its promised productivity gains. Delivering those gains will require deep adoption by large firms, supported by regulatory certainty and stronger tax treatment for AI deployment.

Canada’s new AI strategy sets the right goal but focuses on the wrong problem: lowering costs when most firms struggle to identify valuable uses for AI. Ottawa should help businesses find and implement the right tools, not simply subsidize their purchase.

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.