In “Canadian startups aren’t all feeling the Buy Canadian love” The Logic says out loud what Canadian innovators already feel. The “Buy Canadian” message has not translated into funding or revenue. The data on domestic investing and the stories from founders tell the same story: too little action at home.
Some worry that Buy Canadian might reward the wrong companies. This is not our current problem. The real issue is that too few Canadian companies are getting any lift at all which is why founders have for years chased validation and capital elsewhere.
Source Canada hopes to change this next week in Toronto. It’s a positive sign that 30 of the most prominent corporations in Canada have committed to spending the day meeting startups and doing deals.
We are not naive to the obstacles. For corporate and government procurement to succeed, startups need to solve real problems and have competitive products and pricing. At the same time the bar cannot be set so only large, foreign tech companies qualify.
We need new ideas, new policies and vigorous debate.
But no amount of talking or theorizing changes the fact that building a stronger, more resilient and more prosperous Canada means taking action. To be more precise, it means doing something differently.
That course correction might be revisiting procurement policies so they do not exclude Canadian startups in the first place. Or investing the time to get to know the tech ecosystem that exists. Or a corporation taking a meeting they would normally turn down, or making a bet on a new technology.
The main point we continue to make is this. We are not the only country in the world producing startups that are a combination of disruptive, unproven, risky and world-changing. Where other countries have embraced the inherent discomfort of backing mavericks, Canadians still look for foreign validation before making domestic investments.
It’s up to us to decide what we want to do differently to change the headline.