Canadian innovation has a cost problem almost nobody talks about. Not the cost of building things, but the cost of giving them away after they work.

Jim Balsillie’s argument is pointed: Canadian policy is captured by foreign corporate interests and still built on a 1970s production economy model. The result is that Canada funds the research, loses the IP, exports the data, and competes on cheap labour instead of owning value.

If Canada had kept pace with the US in the data economy since 2010, there would be an extra trillion dollars a year in the economy. The BBM conversation, what it could have been and what it became, makes the same case differently.

Topics: Canadian innovation, digital sovereignty, BlackBerry, data economy, IP policy

GUEST: Jim Balsillie | Council of Canadian Innovators

Originally aired on2026-05-26