Carney needs to keep his eye on the source code as trade playbook is rewritten

Mark Carney has pledged to spend billions to upgrade Canada's defences, but unless Canada changes how it treats intellectual property, we’ll spend that money building technologies we don’t control, warn Jim Hinton and Alexis Conrad. Photo by Cole Burston /Getty Images

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By Jim Hinton and Alexis Conrad

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We keep talking about sovereignty like it’s 1965. Flags, borders, boots on the ground. But in 2025, national power is built on source code, algorithms, patents and digital infrastructure. Canada is giving those away faster than we can build them.

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As Prime Minister Mark Carney tries to secure a trade deal with Donald Trump, the stakes are clear. These talks aren’t just about commodities and contracts. They’re about leverage. And if Canada doesn’t control its own innovation, we don’t have any.

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We can invest billions in defence and advanced technology. But if foreign companies own the intellectual property and control the data, then Canada doesn’t hold the power. We’re not building Canadian strength. We’re financing someone else’s. That’s not sovereignty. That’s surrender.

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Canada is prepared to spend up to $150 billion annually on defence by 2035. It’s the largest investment in our history. But unless we change how we treat intellectual property (IP), we’ll spend that money building technologies we don’t control, strengthening companies that don’t answer to Canadians and subsidizing the success of foreign nations instead of our own.

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Modern defence runs on dual-use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, quantum and advanced materials. The kind that can be used in both civilian and military settings. Their value lies in code, data, algorithms and patents.

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And in Canada, we still don’t treat any of that as a national asset.

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Each year, our universities conduct research worth more than $15 billion, much of which is publicly funded. But there’s no national framework to ensure that the IP created through this investment benefits Canadians. Instead, we’re watching it slip through our fingers. More than 75 per cent of Canada-funded AI research ends up in the hands of foreign companies, based on ownership data published by global patent offices.

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Between 2005 and 2022, researchers at 50 Canadian universities co-authored scientific papers with scientists linked to China’s military. More than 20 universities partnered with Huawei on hundreds of patents. Despite claims in 2021 that those ties had been cut, some filings continued as recently as this February, according to records with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It doesn’t stop there. Patent office records also show that Dalhousie handed electric battery IP to Tesla, and that the University of Toronto gave AI patents to Google.

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The talent is here. Canada ranks among the top 10 countries globally for research output. But when it comes to turning that research into commercial value and retaining ownership, we fall off the map.

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Meanwhile, other countries are playing to win.

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The U.S. CHIPS Act is pouring US$52 billion into domestic semiconductor development, with strict rules around IP, jobs, and ownership. South Korea gives homegrown firms a leg up in defence contracts. Finland ensures its IP remains Finnish. All of them see innovation as a matter of national interest. Canada, on the other hand, is still playing by 1990s free-market rules in a 2025 global security economy.