Canada has never lacked intelligent people.
Canadian universities conduct important research. Canadian scientists contribute to discoveries recognized around the world. Canadian engineers, software developers, medical researchers and entrepreneurs regularly create technologies with global potential.
The frustrating part of the story often comes afterward.
A Canadian idea becomes a Canadian startup. The startup grows. Foreign capital arrives. Intellectual property moves. The company is purchased. Senior management shifts elsewhere. Production takes place somewhere else, and Canada celebrates having participated in the beginning of a value chain whose largest economic rewards eventually accrue outside the country.
Foreign investment is not inherently bad.
Successful Canadian companies need access to capital, customers and international expertise. Selling a business can be an entirely rational decision for its founders. Open markets have benefited Canada enormously.
The problem appears when selling becomes the default end point of Canadian innovation.
Economic nationalism should therefore include something we rarely discuss in patriotic terms: ownership.
Who owns the patents?
Who owns the data?
Who owns the company?
Where is the headquarters?
Where are the highest-value jobs?
Where are the profits reinvested?
Where are tomorrow’s executives trained?
These questions matter because modern economies create enormous value through intangible assets. Intellectual property, software, algorithms, designs, brands, proprietary processes and data can matter as much as factories and physical resources.
Canada’s own intellectual-property agency is explicitly treating the issue as an economic priority. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s 2026-2031 strategy describes intellectual property as a driver of innovation, productivity and economic opportunity and includes supporting Canadian trade and the knowledge economy among its strategic priorities.
That should become part of a much larger national conversation.
For generations, one of Canada’s economic strengths has been extracting and exporting natural resources. The model can create enormous wealth, but it also carries an obvious risk: the most profitable stages of production may take place elsewhere.
A tonne of mineral ore has value.
The refined material has more.
A component manufactured from it has more again.
The patented technology containing that component may be worth dramatically more.
Canada should want to participate at every stage.
The same logic applies beyond resources.
If Canadian researchers create world-class artificial-intelligence technology, we should want Canadian companies capable of commercializing it.
If Canadian scientists develop medical technology, we should want some globally significant life-sciences companies headquartered here.
If Canadian engineers develop advanced aerospace, robotics, nuclear or defence technologies, we should want the expertise and intellectual property to create long-term Canadian industrial ecosystems.
This does not mean every Canadian startup must remain Canadian-owned forever.
It means Canada should become a place where remaining independent is a realistic option.
That requires capital.
It requires sophisticated investors willing to finance companies beyond the startup phase.
It requires managers capable of scaling businesses internationally.
It requires competitive taxes and regulation.
It requires access to talent.
It requires governments to understand that commercialization matters alongside research.
And perhaps most importantly, it requires a cultural shift in expectations.
Canadians sometimes respond to the creation of a billion-dollar company as though the logical next question is which American multinational will eventually purchase it.
Why should that be the assumption?
Canada has produced globally important companies before.
We can do it again.
A stronger Canadian nationalism would celebrate entrepreneurs who build companies here with the same enthusiasm we bring to athletes representing Canada internationally.
There is something deeply patriotic about creating an organization that employs thousands of Canadians, exports around the world, trains future entrepreneurs and pays taxes into Canadian communities.
There is also a national-security dimension.
Advanced technologies increasingly intersect with defence, communications, artificial intelligence, energy and critical infrastructure. Countries are becoming more careful about who owns strategically important technologies and supply chains.
Canada should be equally thoughtful.
Economic openness does not require indifference.
We can welcome foreign capital while identifying industries where maintaining Canadian capacity matters.
We can participate in global markets while encouraging domestic ownership.
We can collaborate internationally while ensuring Canadian ideas produce Canadian prosperity.
The goal should not be autarky, isolation or economic protectionism for its own sake.
The goal should be capability.
Canada should possess enough capital, talent and ambition that the country’s best businesses do not automatically need to leave home in order to become world-class.
Nationalism is usually represented by something old: a flag, a monument, a historic building.
But nationalism should also be interested in things that do not exist yet.
The next Canadian technology company.
The next medical breakthrough.
The next advanced manufacturer.
The next global brand.
The next industry we have not even invented.
A country demonstrates confidence in its future when it believes its best ideas deserve to grow up at home.
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