Ten ways to unleash Canada’s potential
No Canadian has any doubt of the magnitude of this economic moment. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s mercurial tariff mandate unleashes market mayhem and geopolitical unease, Canadians have galvanized — buying local, putting the maple leaf on everything, ratcheting our elbows way up.
Which may explain the pronounced air of intent at the Public Policy Forum’s 2025 Canada Growth Summit, which took place this week at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel. Over the course of a dozen sessions, more than 40 speakers put forward a series of smart, actionable ideas for how governments, businesses, policymakers and communities can work together to advance our collective fortune.
There was plenty of debate — when isn’t there when you put more than 400 heavily caffeinated wonks, politicians and businesspeople in the same room? — but as the day unfolded, a few themes emerged. This is a moment for pragmatic clarity, not wishful thinking; for focus, not blue-sky experimentation. It’s a time to, finally, activate our long-lamented untapped economic potential.
Here are 10 of the day’s best ideas to make that happen.
Idea 1: Get real about our reality
In many ways, the day functioned as an eight-hour reality check, as speakers cautioned against letting nostalgia, denial or blind hope colour decision-making. “We are a medium power,” said Gitane De Silva, founder and principal of GDStrategic, during a spirited discussion on Canada’s government response to the early days of Trump’s 2.0 era. While she said we should be bullish about areas where we have leverage, such as energy and food, she advised against pretending that we have more negotiation heft than we do. De Silva went on to recommend an equally clear-eyed assessment when choosing which industries warrant concentrated investment: “We need to focus on solving the problems (other markets) have, not the ones we want to solve for them.”
Idea 2: Double down on Indigenous engagement
The Summit’s annual Indigenous Ownership and Economic Reconciliation Breakfast offered a snapshot of progress, as a slate of business and finance leaders detailed the efficacy of new models to deploy capital and encourage Indigenous ownership of major projects.
The matter couldn’t be more timely, according to Mokwateh Principal JP Gladu, who co-hosted the session: “When Indigenous people are at the table, projects move faster, with more certainty, and with fewer roadblocks,” he said. While this has always been the case, he pointed out that a critical mass of non-Indigenous stakeholders — some of whom may have treated Indigenous engagement perfunctorily in the past — are quickly catching on to the potential of collaborative approach. “The conversation has changed,” Gladu said.
Idea 3: Make regulation make sense
The matter of regulation is always going to be a lightning rod at a policy event, as it’s hard to make a due-process devotee get religion about fully unfettered capitalism — and vice-versa. And indeed, a morning panel featured vastly different perspectives on the role of policy in accelerating business investment in Canada, from Social Capital Partners CEO Matthew Mendelsohn’s call on governments to encourage more equitable distribution of money (“Investment that produces hoarding of capital is not good”) to ARC Energy Research Institute Founder Peter Tertzakian’s blunt assessment of the Canadian regulatory environment: (“Disjointed, dysfunctional and something no one can understand.”)
But on one matter the panelists agreed: Canada’s notoriously Byzantine set of multi-jurisdictional rules, long a business bugbear, has become a serious barrier to investment. “We need regulations that are simple, clear and allow us to quantify risk,” said Michele Harradence, President, Gas Distribution and Storage at Enbridge. “They can’t be moving under our feet all the time.”
Idea 4: Encourage permanently harmonious provincial relations
A silver lining of the tariff threat? Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories are truly motivated to tackle the chronic challenge of inter-provincial trade barriers. “One of the most exciting things to happen is the fact that we have all the premiers talking about this in a positive way,” said Sarah Thiele, Clerk of the Executive Council with the Government of Manitoba. “That shift around the political conversation is just so vitally important.”
The challenge, the panelists agreed, is to make the collaborative vibes last beyond our current political moment. On that, Michelle DiEmanuele, Secretary of the Cabinet of Ontario, advised nurturing key conditions for success including good leadership, strong relationships (not just at twice-a-year Council of the Federation meetings), and the ability to focus on matters provinces can control. “If we can do that, we can change our trajectory,” DiEmanuele said. “That’s what’s going to make this a non-trend.”
Idea 5: Negotiate as one
Building on that last point: Several speakers emphasized the need to put outstanding internal differences aside to present a united Canada to the world. “We cannot be fractured in our approach,” said David MacNaughton, president of Palantir Technologies Canada, and former ambassador to the United States.
Later that morning, veteran trade policy and negotiation expert Steve Verheul backed him up: “When you have people who want different things, who are not on the same page, it is obviously not ideal,” Verheul said. “And it is not ideal to send mixed messages.”
Idea 6: Pick a few top talent priorities
Canada needs a robust labour market to meet the moment, and ours is decidedly — in the words of Ken Chatoor, director of research and strategic foresight, Labour Market Information Council — “in flux.” We’ve got a lot going for us: World-class education systems, growing population, even a slate of high-profile American professors choosing to decamp here. But unemployment is inching upwards, tariff layoffs are taking hold, and there are major labour imbalances across the country in vital sectors that include health care and construction.
Andrew Thomson, the University of Toronto’s chief of government relations, put forward an idea that might stabilize the situation: Pick a few growth areas, such as advanced manufacturing or critical minerals, and focus on creating conditions that will make top talent come here. That approach is what allowed Toronto’s AI sector to grow from almost nothing to one that came to employ 55,000 people, or about one-third as many who work in Ontario’s entire automotive supply chain, in just 10 years. “We need to place some bets,” Thomson said.
Idea 7: Focus our AI strategy
A discussion on Canada’s AI prospects echoed the quality-over-quantity theme. “It’s a bit lamentable that in Canada, despite leading on the research side with such incredible people as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio … there aren’t more places where we’re winning,” said Jacomo Corbo, CEO and co-founder of PhysicsX. “The problem is that there isn’t a coherent vision for where we are going to win.”
Corbo points to the Netherlands, which set a goal to be a biotech leader by 2040, and the U.K., which set a similar ambition for fintech. Once both countries identified their priorities, they enabled regulatory sandboxes that allowed nascent ventures in the sector to build innovative offerings without bureaucratic delays. He suggests a similar approach could help Canada advance the adoption of AI in fields like health care, mining and energy — but only if leaders start prioritizing.
“We aren’t going to win at every part of AI,” added Nicole Janssen, Co-CEO, AltaML. “We have to start getting the right regulations in place that make people feel safe but also encourage innovation where we can win.”
Idea 8: Create a minister of opportunity costs
Keynote speaker Andrew Coyne, columnist for The Globe and Mail, was less keen on the idea of choosing favourites: “We have a history of trying to pick winners and trying to predict the future,” he said. “But no one knows where we’re going to be.” He advocated instead for Canada to adopt a much more competitive overall mindset, one that treats innovation as much as an economic endeavour as a scientific one, allows foreign investment in protected oligopolistic industries like telecommunications and agriculture, and weighs the risk of not doing something as consequentially as the risk of doing it.
Coyne even floated creating a federal minister of business opportunity costs, whose sole job would be to assess the money potentially being left on the table when major economic decisions are made. “If we want to solve the productivity paradox, it’s not actually that complicated,” he said. “We just need to get serious about competition.”
Idea 9: Embrace the new risk reality
Several speakers spoke about risk — specifically, how to square Canada’s stereotypical aversion to it with an economic moment that demands bold choices and big swings. “We tend to stop when we note a potential risk, instead of noting it and mitigating it,” said the Government of Manitoba’s Sarah Thiele.
Her point was picked up later by CDPQ Executive Vice President Marc-André Blanchard. Our historical prudence has served us well, he said. But if Canadian leaders engage more globally — with friends and foes alike — we can calculate our bets from a position of strength. “We need to be informed and aware, so we are able to assess the risk in the right way,” he said. “Because when we don’t know something, we tend to overestimate the risk and underestimate the opportunity.”
Idea 10: Hurry hard
Premier Doug Ford said during his address that his two current favourite words are “speed” and “faster” — neatly underlining the feeling in the air that we all have to pick up the pace by streamlining bloated processes, shortening approval processes, and flexing the muscles need to pivot in a world that can turn on a late-night Truth Social post.
“Right now in Ontario, it takes up to 15 years just to get a permit to open a mine. While the rest of the world is getting permits in a year or two years, it’s taking 15 years,” Ford said. “We need to tear down red tape, unlock our resources, unleash our economy and make Ontario and Canada the best place in the G7 to invest, create jobs and do business.”
“We need to do everything in our power as Ontarians and as Canadians to become as resilient — and that’s the word, resilient — and as self-reliant as possible.”