"Canada's tech sector, despite the country's well-regarded universities and robust government-funded research, has long been made up primarily of regional offices for U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, with only a few homegrown tech powerhouses to call its own-notably Shopify and the once-dominant Blackberry. But with the Trump administration imposing additional hurdles for visas for top tech talent, the Canadian government sees a chance to break that cycle."
"Government officials at the city, provincial, and federal levels made their case for tech investment last week at the ALL IN A.I. conference in Montreal. A cornerstone of the federal government's plan, announced last month, is to team up with Toronto-based large-language model developer Cohere, invest in it and offer it a ton of government contracts, and thereby create a made-in-Canada ecosystem that will then support smaller, up-and-coming A.I. players."
U.S. visa and trade moves have produced instability that Canada sees as an opportunity to attract top tech talent. Canada's tech sector has historically been dominated by regional offices of U.S. giants, with few major domestic tech winners beyond Shopify and the former Blackberry. Government officials from city, provincial, and federal levels promoted tech investment at the ALL IN A.I. conference in Montreal. The federal plan centers on partnering with Toronto-based Cohere, investing in the company and awarding government contracts to seed a made-in-Canada A.I. ecosystem to support smaller startups. Officials framed the strategy as preventing a repeat of past domestic tech failures and cited the $100,000 fee on new special skills H-1B applications as a recruiting opening.
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