Canada needs more patriotic investing, Nrth tech conference speakers argue

TORONTO — Members of Canada’s business community at a technology conference Wednesday called on institutional investors to punch up the patriotism in their portfolios.

As the trade war with the U.S. rages on and renews interest in homegrown enterprises, speakers at the Nrth conference urged pension funds, investors, banks and government to do more to support domestic companies.

“We should bask in the glow of being the sexy underdogs of the world right now and push harder,” said Vass Bednar, the executive director of the Canadian Shield, a think tank promoting sovereign policies.

She took aim at the country’s pension funds, pointing out they have invested less domestically despite their coffers growing.

When they do spend in Canada, Bednar said they “play it safe” and take the “pretty lazy” route of putting money into government bonds and infrastructure. Bednar argued pension funds should be bolder and ascribe to an American drag queen’s mantra.

“If I can just connect the pensions to RuPaul for a second, if you don’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else?” Bednar said.

Her co-panellist, North Exit Ventures general partner Tal Schwartz, suggested the country adjust its tax policies and capital allocation so startups reach their mid to late stages and investors feel incentivized to back businesses in high-risk industries.

“Often we’re investing in companies before there is a company, but in order for that company to then scale and retain its Canadian identity and presence, it needs access to later-stage investment as well,” Schwartz said.

“That’s an area that Canada ... is a bit of a labyrinth in.”

He pointed to Portage, a global fintech investment firm based in Toronto, that closed its fourth venture capital fund at about US$600 million earlier this month.

“That’s fantastic,” he said, but the country “needs a dozen of those in order to support some of the innovation that we have here.”

Other speakers wanted financial systems to better support sovereignty.

Some focused on tokenized deposit networks — traditional bank deposits which get recorded on a decentralized database or distributed ledger, such as a blockchain, and thus, make it faster to facilitate payments.

The country’s biggest banks announced Tuesday they are exploring Canadian dollar-based digital money, starting with a tokenized deposits initiative.

Ali Abou Daya, chief executive of financial infrastructure company Transactix Financial, said that effort needs to have domestic underpinnings.

“It’s important for it to be sovereign ... all the way down to bare metal servers, where do they live, where do they reside, because any leak in that sovereignty is not just a leak in control or a risk on resilience of our systems and networks, it’s also a leak of profit,” he said.

He said he’s seen studies claiming at least $16 billion leaches out of Canada annually through domestic companies using foreign payment techology.

Meanwhile, Hanna Zaidi, vice-president of payments strategy at financial services company Wealthsimple, suggested sovereignty could also take the form of a Canadian dollar stablecoin.

Stablecoins are crypto-based assets with values pegged to real-world currencies, making them a more reliable than traditional cryptocurrencies for money transfers.

Wealthsimple participated in a pilot last year with a U.S. denominated stablecoin, Zaidi said.

“It was expensive, we had to do a conversion, it was janky, and it really demonstrated to the industry that we needed Canadian dollar stablecoins,” he said.

Her company later invested, along with Shopify Inc., National Bank and others, in Tetra Trust, a firm exploring a Canadian dollar stablecoin.

She framed such efforts as necessary to making payments instantaneous and less cumbersome.

“I think of stablecoins the same way as I think of what WhatsApp did to long-distance calling,” she said of the communications service.

“Long-distance calling was super painful, it was expensive, there was a lot of friction, maybe you had to buy a calling card or it was really expensive on your phone plan, and then came video calling, WhatsApp, FaceTime, whatever. It became instant, it became borderless, and the cost is almost zero.”

Regardless of where Canada lands on tokenized payments or stablecoins, some said regulators need to ensure the country doesn’t fall behind because the U.S. and Europe are moving forward faster.

“Canada needs to stay current with the globe,” said Tracey Black, the former president of Payments Canada, an organization involved with settlement infrastructure. “We’re all much more aware of the importance of sovereignty, the importance of independence, and I think this technology can be very helpful with both of those things.”

Her remarks came on the second day of Nrth, which rebranded Tuesday from Elevate in hopes of better reflecting the tech industry.

In addition to rebranding the three-day conference, organizers also have plans to host more frequent events starting in 2027.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23, 2026.

This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly stated the date for Elevate’s origins.