Canada's AI Pillars Are Written. Now Write the Rules That Let People Build.
- Allie K
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
April 29, 2026
AI is not just a technology story. It's an agency story.
The tools people use to manage their health, access information, and make decisions are increasingly designed elsewhere, for other markets, by other priorities. When that happens, we do not just lose market share. We lose control over how systems evolve and who they serve.
You cannot regulate your way to sovereignty. You have to build it.
It means creating the conditions Canadians need to build for Canadians: capital, regulatory clarity, procurement access, and cultural permission to take risk.
That includes the clinician with a better solution, the patient advocate who sees the gap, and the founder who wants to build a direct-to-consumer health tools that actually work for the people who need and want them most.
Yes, health largely sits within provincial jurisdiction. But not entirely. And in an era of digital change moving as fast as AI itself, we would be failing ourselves not to start treating health innovation as a nation-building project.
Individual agency has to be the lens
Not solutions that trickle down from institutions, but tools and environments that put people, as consumers of health information and digital tools, as participants in their own care, and as entrepreneurs, in the driver's seat.
Look, the conditions matter and the policy gaps are real. But I have watched too many smart people spend their energy criticizing government instead of building the thing.
Both can be true: the system needs to change, and you do not need to wait for it. The solutions are not going to come from a committee. They are going to come from people with ideas that have the courage to take risks.
Canada's Spring Economic Update
Yesterday, the Liberal government tabled the 2026 Spring Economic Update and part of the update included six pillars of a forthcoming AI Strategy (pg. 66).
The pillars are:
Pillar 1: Protecting Canadians and Safeguarding our Democracy
Pillar 2: Empowering Canadians
Pillar 3: Powering AI Adoption for Shared Prosperity
Pillar 4: Building the Canadian Sovereign AI Foundation
Pillar 5: Scaling Canadian Champions
Pillar 6: Building Trusted Partnerships and Global Alliances
Scaling Canadian champions is the signal private sector founders needed to hear.
How the AI pillars were created ..
In October 2025, the government ran a 30-day national sprint gathering input from founders, researchers, workers, creators, and students, producing over 11,000 submissions from Canadians and 28 expert Task Force members.
That input was synthesized into a national report, which formed the basis of the six pillars that followed. Pulling that together in a matter of months is genuinely impressive.
One detail worth paying attention to: among respondents who identified their sector, 12% were from health-related fields.
That matters .. but not just for the reason you might think.
After nearly a decade working in strategy and leadership roles across the health sector, I’ve seen how publicly funded organizations engage in policy processes. They have the infrastructure, the mandate, and often the incentive to submit detailed recommendations.
Everyday citizens, patients, and early-stage innovators do not.
Not because they lack insight, but because this has not historically been a space that invites or rewards their participation in the same way.
If we are serious about building systems that people actually use, that gap in who shows up, and whose input gets operationalized, is worth examining more closely.
The Gaps Are Real
As the Council of Canadian Innovators has argued, the 21st-century economy belongs to those who write the rules, not those forced to follow them. Canada, in their view, risks remaining reactive rather than shaping those rules.
That is not posturing. That is investors and builders who operate in this system every day. They are right that the update missed several concrete asks: reformed SR&ED incentives, commercialization vouchers, IP protection from foreign acquisition, and procurement reform that treats Canadian governments as customers of Canadian companies, not just funders.
That last point is something John Ruffolo, Co-Founder of CCI and Founder of Maverix Private Equity, put directly before the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy just days ago. His core argument: Canada is not losing companies. We are giving them away structurally.
Every successful innovation ecosystem is built on a capital formation ladder, from friends and family capital at the base, up through angels, seed funds, growth equity, to pension and sovereign wealth funds at the top. When one rung weakens, the whole system becomes unstable. Canada's ladder exists. Several rungs are too thin, especially in the growth phase, where companies needing tens or hundreds of millions are left choosing between selling early, relocating, or accepting US capital that pulls IP and governance offshore.
If you have time to watch his presentation and discussion to the committee, I highly recommend it: https://senparlvu.parl.gc.ca/harmony/en/powerbrowser/powerbrowserv2?fk=693006&globalstreamid=3
His four asks to government are clear: align pension funds and financial institutions with domestic risk-taking; build scale in the growth-capital ecosystem; stop equating early exits with success; and use procurement, not grants, to build national champions. As he put it plainly: "Grants do not create the revenue certainty and reference customers that procurement does."
Recent data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association shows a sharp decline in deal activity since 2021, alongside persistent gaps in Canada’s venture investment intensity compared to global leaders. Industry observers increasingly warn that capital is concentrating in later-stage companies, leaving early-stage innovation underfunded. In the economic update, under "Pillar 5" of the forthcoming AI Strategy it states "To scale great AI companies in Canada, AI for All will unlock growth capital and leverage government as a strategic anchor customer." Let's hope this growth capital fosters innovation at all of the rungs that Mr. Ruffolo discussed above.
Private Sector Partnerships: The Real Engine
This is where the conversation needs to land.
Innovation does not happen just because government funds it. It happens because the conditions exist for private companies, bold founders, and risk-tolerant investors to build things that people actually want to use.
In the U.S., AI-focused companies are now attracting the majority of digital health investment. In Canada, funding is contracting, early-stage capital is thinning, and our share of North American investment remains marginal.
The gap is not a talent gap. It is a backing gap. Canadian founders are building remarkable things in health AI, wellness technology, and direct-to-consumer platforms.
What they are not getting is the growth capital, the government procurement contracts, and the domestic reference customers that would let them scale here instead of relocating or selling south.
The Canada Strong Fund and the scaling champions pillar are the right instincts. The execution has to be aggressive enough to compete with the pull of other innovative jurisdictions. A founder in Toronto or Waterloo with a breakthrough idea in consumer health should feel, genuinely, that staying is the better bet. Right now, too many of them do not.
A Word on Regulation
We need a regulatory backbone. But we should be honest about what over-regulation costs.
Medical consensus is not static. Clinicians know this better than anyone, and they are often the most frustrated by how slowly systems adapt. Many of them are also the innovators this country most needs to back.
Look at Canada’s food guide.
Consider the arc. Since 1942, Canada’s food guide has been revised repeatedly as the science evolved. Nutritional guidance has shifted, sometimes significantly, as evidence improved. What was once considered best practice does not always hold over time.
Publicly backed guidance matters. But it is never final.
The people inside the system are often ahead of the structures around them. Those structures, while important, create real friction. Slow procurement, rigid approval processes, and institutional bottlenecks make it difficult for good ideas to get through the door, even when the clinician at the bedside already knows what needs to change.
That same humility needs to apply to health AI regulation. Rules written for today’s evidence can become tomorrow’s barriers. What we need are parameters built with clinicians, innovators, and citizens at the same table. Frameworks that protect people and evolve with what we learn, not ones so slow that we hand the market to someone else while we deliberate.
The nurse who sees the workflow problem every shift. The physician who knows what the patient actually needs at home. The founder building a direct-to-consumer tool rooted in lived experience. The insight is already here.
What is missing is a system that backs it, funds it, and gets out of the way long enough to let it become something real.
Regulation and building are not opposites. The countries winning in health AI are doing both at the same time.
The Spirit Is There. Back It.
The Be Giant Upstart Index found that 68% of Gen Z respondents say Canada is globally competitive as a place to start and grow a business, compared to 61% of millennials, 50% of Gen X, and 47% of Boomers.
Half of respondents said regulation was a significant obstacle, and three in five believe Canada is losing entrepreneurial talent to other markets.
I’m hopeful about what the Mark Carney administration can bring. His pragmatic approach and strong economic lens are exactly what this moment calls for.
But optimism should not mean passivity. The policy decisions being made today will shape the economic, health, and innovation landscape for decades. We need to keep our finger on the pulse, ensuring that future generations not only feel the impact of these decisions, but have meaningful pathways to help shape them.
I don’t align with any one political affiliation, but I do believe in thoughtful leadership, evidence-informed policy, and a willingness to adapt as the world changes.
We have a generation that wants to build here, and a system that keeps making it harder than it should be. Today's update laid some of the groundwork. The rest is on us.
Something in here resonate with you? Reach out.
Allie K
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