Why is $240 million of Canadian taxpayer money going to a U.S. firm to build critical data infrastructure here at home? Even if the data centre is located in Canada, ownership matters and so does who can access that data. At a time of trade tensions and growing security risks, we should be backing Canadian companies and protecting our economic and national security.

Canadian intellectual property generated from federally funded research is often owned and commercialized abroad. Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of RIM, along with countless other experts repeatedly tell the Science and Research committee the same thing. Their testimony stands in stark contrast to what the Minister of AI and Digital Innovation recently told us: “Guardrails” exist to ensure Canadians see the economic return on these investments. However, he couldn’t point to a single concrete example. Instead, we continue to see the same policy pattern of ‘investment’ announcements but no real strategy to ensure ownership and commercialization stays here in Canada. #kitchener #Innovation