Carney can change Canada’s policies, but who will change Canadians?

Brendan Frey is founder and chief innovation officer of Deep Genomics, and a professor at the University of Toronto.

Mark Carney has been telling Canadians that the world has changed – and that Canada must change with it.

At Davos, he rejected the old instinct to “go along to get along.” At home, his government has urged Canada to “build big, build now.” And its new AI strategy goes further still, explicitly calling for the creation of globally competitive Canadian champions.

Last week, at the Canada Investment Summit, Mr. Carney announced a tax-policy overhaul and billions in new investment. Then he pushed for closer ties with the European Union while in Strasbourg, France.

He is doing the right things.

However, while changing government policy is necessary – and there’s a lot to do on that front – it’s the easier part. The harder part is deciding what each of us is prepared to do differently.

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My own experience – from early rejection to later success – helps explain what needs to change.

In 2013, a colleague and I submitted a proposal to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for what was then a highly speculative idea: Build AI that understands how our genome controls molecular and cellular biology, use it to generate biological insights humans could not otherwise find and, ultimately, create medicines.

This was before the current AI boom. Before AlphaFold. Before ChatGPT. The idea sounded audacious.

The proposal was rejected.

So, two years later, I founded Deep Genomics using private capital.

The Canadian venture investors I encountered were also averse to big bets and focused on small investments and near-term milestones: Build modestly, generate revenue, demonstrate traction, then raise more.

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So I sought funding in the United States.

There, investors were willing to put tens of millions behind a far riskier bet: That AI could transform biology and medicine.

Deep Genomics, still based in Canada, has since raised $238-million.

The broader technological bet no longer looks crazy. Anthropic, DeepMind and Moderna have shown what can happen when extraordinary talent and capital are concentrated behind bets that once seemed unlikely to succeed. At Deep Genomics, our AI has cracked previously unsolvable challenges in biology and medicine.

The lesson for me is that producing world-changing companies requires Canadians to embrace different attitudes and behaviours. This is not simply another call to “work harder” or “increase productivity.” The changes are more specific – and more uncomfortable.

First, we need to move from Canadian-style politeness and consensus toward vigorous disagreement. Elbows up.

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Canadians value being nice and organized. But frontier companies are messy. Smart people disagree. They argue. Assumptions must be attacked, and leaders must make consequential decisions before everyone is comfortable. We should challenge ideas relentlessly while respecting people completely.

Second, we need to stop worrying so much about being well thought of and become scrappier about winning globally.

Canadians should aspire to crush their global competition – not through protectionism, but through winning technologies, products and business strategy.

We should ask less often how many jobs a program “supports.” We should ask: Did we move closer to becoming No. 1 in the world?

Third, we need to move away from treating every opportunity equally, to concentrating on excellence.

Canadian institutions tend to spread resources widely, but the truth is that a handful of properly supported bets create disproportionate value. While fairness should govern access to opportunity, when something extraordinary emerges, we and our leaders should rally behind it.

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Finally, we need to become comfortable taking enormous risks and being okay with one huge win out of 10 big bets.

Canada is changing. Shopify showed that a Canadian company can become a global technology leader. Cohere is building a global AI champion from Toronto. Waabi is swinging for the fences in autonomous transportation. Royal Bank of Canada and Radical Ventures recently announced $1.4-billion and $1-billion, respectively, to back Canadian global technology companies.

What can we do next Monday morning? A parent can encourage a child to think independently, take risks and question established paths. A teacher can reward the student who asks disruptive questions, not just the one who executes the assignment perfectly. A professor can back the strange idea that might be “wrong” instead of another safe extension of existing work. An investor can write the cheque a company needs to win globally, rather than the smallest cheque that gets it to the next milestone. And founders and board members can ask: What would it take for this company to become No. 1 in the world?

Are Canadians prepared to do what it takes?