Organization: Business Development Bank of Canada

The Short Report – March 17, 2021: Canadian government invests heavily to bolster biomanufacturing, D-Wave Systems gets funding for quantum tech, Canada’s largest study on aging gets a top-up, and more

The Government of Canada seeks to bolster Canada’s biomanufacturing capacity, D-Wave receives $40 million to accelerate Canada’s quantum technology development, the federal government invests in Canada’s longest-ever study on aging, Quebec’s Lion Electric gets ready to break ground on a new battery manufacturing plant, and more.

Canada’s first patent collective launched with defensive “war chest” to protect Canadian IP

Canada has launched its first patent collective to help data-driven clean tech companies understand, generate and strategically use intellectual property in scaling up. The Innovation Asset Collective, backed by $30 million in federal funding, includes a defensive “war chest” to help Canadian SMEs defend their patents in an often predatory global IP marketplace.

Canada’s next industrial strategy needs to focus on business innovation

By Bert van den Berg The New North Star II report should be lauded for suggesting the creation of a national, challenge-driven industrial strategy.  As others have noted, such a strategy would represent an important change for Canada. Past decades have seen a laissez-faire approach focused on ensuring favourable business conditions … an approach that…

The Short Report, November 27, 2019: African researchers denied entry; open science gets easier; Big Oil moves into the cloud

Canada refused visas to dozens of African researchers seeking to attend the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS) in Vancouver next month. The visas were commonly denied on suspicions that the participants would not leave Canada once the conference was over. The issue is recurring: last year, more than 100 attendees were denied visas to the…

The Short Report, October 30, 2019: Bad loans, rocket propulsion, population growth

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) is contending with defaulted loans worth $43.2 million dollars, comprising more than 10% of the federal agency’s $422.9-million portfolio. By comparison, only 3.3 per cent of the loans given out by the Business Development Bank of Canada were impaired as of March 31. – Financial Post University of Toronto’s seed-stage accelerator…

The Short Report, July 10, 2019: Nuclear power, future skills, health tech

A planned $100-million infusion for Alberta’s artificial intelligence sector — promised in February by then-governing NDP leader Rachel Notley — is on hold, as Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party scrutinizes the investment. Edmonton-based AI hub Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) was slated to to use some of the funds to open a Calgary office, but…

The Short Report, June 5, 2019 – McMaster endowment, AI, timber research, green jet fuel

BDC Capital has launched the $250-million Industrial Innovation Venture Fund to invest in early to late stage tech firms and entrepreneurs accelerating the transformation of core Canadian industries including ag-tech, advanced manufacturing, oil and gas and mining tech. Venture capital veteran Joe Regan joins as the fund’s managing partner. “Industrial sectors tend to be slow…