With elections looming, a group of Canadian technology leaders has teamed up to launch a new platform for entrepreneurs to share policy ideas with the help of experts and artificial intelligence (AI).
Build Canada bills itself as “a platform of bold ideas for growth, innovation, and prosperity” proposed by successful Canadian entrepreneurs with deep knowledge in relevant areas.
The initiative is led by a collection of Canadian tech workers, including Ben Parry, Daniel Debow, Lucy Hargreaves, and Melody Kuo. Parry, who writes the Skillful Notes newsletter, is a former Ritual employee and Restaurant Brands International director; Debow is the co-founder of Rypple and an ex-Shopify VP; Hargreaves is former chief of staff to the associate finance minister and current VP at Patch; Kuo worked product roles at Uber and CloudKitchens.
28 Canadian tech entrepreneurs are listed as supporters, including Wealthsimple’s Michael Katchen, Shopify’s Tobi Lütke, and SRTX’s Katherine Homuth.
The policy platform lists 28 Canadian tech entrepreneurs as supporters on its website. This group includes Wind Mobile founder and Globalive founder and chair Anthony Lacavera, Koho founder and CEO Daniel Eberhard, Cohere co-founder and CTO Ivan Zhang, SRTX founder and CEO Katherine Homuth, Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen, Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, and Jet Cooper co-founder and BetaKit chair Satish Kanwar.
In an interview with BetaKit, Debow said the supporters named on Build Canada’s site include Canadian tech entrepreneurs that either already have or intend to introduce policy memos in the coming weeks, and he expects this group’s ranks to expand over time. Policy recommendations will focus on priorities like boosting Canadian exports, increasing productivity, and tax reforms.
Build Canada’s team intends to take big policy ideas suggested by Canadian tech entrepreneurs, using a combination of humans and AI tools—including a custom large language model workflow—to research and draft memos, with final review from policy experts before publication. “It’s an experiment in how we could be doing things,” Debow said.
Debow declined to name the policy experts overseeing this work, noting only that they are a group of people with experience in government for multiple political parties who “know how the policy machine works.”
The first four policy pieces Build Canada has published include memos by League founder and CEO Michael Serbinis on expanding health record access and Passage founder and CEO—and ApplyBoard co-founder—Martin Basiri on immigration reform. Build Canada plans to share more memos on a weekly basis.
The Logic first reported on the efforts behind Build Canada earlier this month while charting the many Canadian tech leaders who have begun courting a potential future Conservative federal government after souring on the Liberals and their failed innovation strategy. This group includes Debow’s former boss, Lütke, who has recently shared Conservative videos on X and criticized Canada’s tariff response. For his part, Conservative leader Pierre Polievre has publicly praised Lütke and Shopify.
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As the threat of United States (US) tariffs looms, Canadian tech leaders frustrated by the Liberal government and the country’s longstanding productivity woes are eager for new avenues to organize and address these issues. Debow said that the group behind Build Canada wanted to do “something beyond yelling at each other in chat rooms and tweeting.”
South of the border, tech leaders like Elon Musk have cozied up to Republicans and US President Donald Trump in the hopes of gaining access to power and policy levers. Since Trump took office, Musk has rapidly consolidated control over large swaths of the US government as Democrats have raised alarms about conflicts of interest and a lack of congressional approval.
Debow claimed that Build Canada was not inspired by its Silicon Valley peers, and argued that many involved with Build Canada have a long history of engaging with Canadian policy ideas.
He noted that it is difficult for politicians to take high-level ideas and turn them into policies that can be implemented, so Build Canada set out to introduce them “in a way that [they] can be consumed by the policy process.”
Build Canada’s launch comes weeks after the Council of Canadian Innovators announced a new think tank focused on advancing innovation policy and promoting economic nationalism. Several of the listed Build Canada supporters are also leaders of CCI member companies.
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Debow does not see Build Canada as competitive with CCI’s new policy institute as it has shorter-term goals. “This is about a particular election cycle,” Debow said. “This is about rapidly getting ideas out there so that people can debate and discuss them.”
“We welcome constructive engagement by our members and wider industry with public policy issues, especially on topics related to Canada’s prosperity,” CCI president Benjamin Bergen told BetaKit.
At the moment, Build Canada’s work is geared largely towards the parties writing policies ahead of the federal election later this year, but Debow also sees potential for the platform to play a role in sharing policy ideas at the provincial level (Ontario has an election slated for the end of this month).
The Build Canada site states that it is not a lobbying group, and does not represent “any special interest groups.” The organization claims to be non-partisan, noting that its builders and volunteers support various parties, and its proposals are available to all.
Following the publication of this story, Build Canada has added Shopify president Harley Finkelstein to its supporter list and Ana Curic as a team member. Curic is a senior consultant and registered lobbyist at Ottawa-based government relations firm Maple Leaf Strategies.
Feature image courtesy of the Build Canada website.
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Supporters include leaders from Shopify, Wealthsimple, and Cohere.
The post Canadian tech leaders launch Build Canada for AI-refined policy ideas from entrepreneurs first appeared on BetaKit.
