Source Canada backers include OMERS Ventures and RBCx.
Efforts to promote made-in-Canada technology are gaining momentum as a coalition of companies and organizations are launching a summit to promote enterprise procurement of Canadian offerings.
The inaugural Source Canada conference will take place in Toronto on Oct. 22 with 150 CEOs and 50 enterprise buyers holding meetings and workshops.
“This conference is about accelerating the flywheel: when private companies buy Canadian tech, they create an impact that goes far beyond the contract.”
Raymond Luk, founder
Source Canada
The chief sponsors include OMERS Ventures, RBCx, and Deloitte. Additional support comes from the Toronto Stock Exchange operator TMX, the lobbying group Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), the manufacturing innovation cluster NGen, York University’s Schulich School of Business, cloud provider Aptum, venture studio Highline Beta, and Luge Capital.
Source Canada founder Raymond Luk, a senior advisor and “founder in residence” at Deloitte, claimed in a statement that Canada’s private sector is an “untapped driver of growth.”
He added that the country spends 1.9 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development, or less than the average of countries tracked by the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“This conference is about accelerating the flywheel: when private companies buy Canadian tech, they create an impact that goes far beyond the contract,” Luk said.
Before Deloitte, Luk was best known for founding Flow. The consulting company focused on raising non-dilutive funding for the Canadian tech industry and billed itself as having the largest collection of high-growth startups. Deloitte acquired Flow in January 2024 and integrated the 15-person team into its Global Innovation and Investment Incentives practice. Luk nurtures startups as part of his Deloitte role.
The Source Canada advisory committee includes OMERS Ventures managing director Laura Lenz, CCI director Skaidra Puodziunas, RBCx senior director Shikha Bhuchar, and Luge Capital co-founder David Nault, among others.
Plans for the summit come as pressure mounts to reduce reliance on American technologies amid an ongoing tariff-driven trade war with the United States (US). There are already industry initiatives with the stated purpose of fostering homegrown tech, including the policy platform Build Canada. Telecom giants Bell and Telus have pushed for more sovereign data centres, although their facilities still rely heavily on American products.
It also follows increased government procurement of Canada-made technologies. Earlier this month, federal officials signed an agreement with Toronto-based scaleup Cohere to explore the use of its artificial intelligence (AI) systems within the public sector. The procurement platform Sovra also sold what it calls its non-essential businesses to focus on government tech.
Feature image courtesy Marcin Skalij on Unsplash.