Murray Wood: When people show you who they are, act accordingly
When it comes to repeat offenders and newcomers who commit crimes, Murray Wood thinks most Canadians would agree that pu...
TORONTO — Members of Canada’s business community gathered for an technology conference Wednesday called on institutional investors to take their patriotism even further than they currently do when it comes to their portfolios.
As the country’s trade war with the U.S. rages on and sparks interest in homegrown enterprises, speakers at the Nrth conference urged pension funds, investors, banks, the government and regulators 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 that promotes sovereignty-based policy solutions.
She took aim at the country’s pension funds, pointing out they have invested less domestically despite their coffers growing.
When they do in invest in Canada, Bednar said they tend to “play it safe” and take the “pretty lazy” route of putting money into government bonds and infrastructure. Bednar argued the pension funds should be bolder and perhaps ascribe to a mantra from an American drag queen.
“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, wanted to see changes from policymakers and investors.
He said the country needs to 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.”
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.”
On other panels, speakers delved into how Canada’s financial systems could 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 that they are exploring the development of Canadian dollar-based digital money, starting with a tokenized deposits initiative.
Ali Abou Daya, chief executive of financial infrastructure company Transactix Financial Inc., said whatever comes of the 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 annually from Canadian systems into other jurisdictions because Canadian companies use foreign payment operators and partners.
Meanwhile, Hannah Zaidi, chief compliance officer at financial services company Wealthsimple, positioned a Canadian dollar stablecoin as crucial for sovereignty.
Stablecoins are crypto-based assets with values pegged to real-world currencies, thus making them a more reliable way to transfer money than traditional cryptocurrencies.
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 has since 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 if the country wants to make payments more instant 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.”
Zaidi’s remarks came at Nrth, which rebranded this week from its past name Elevate.
Organizers decided to change the name because they said the tech industry has transformed since Elevate’s conception in 2017, and they want the event to evolve as well.
In addition to rebranding the three-day conference, organizers said they also have plans to host more frequent events starting in 2027.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23, 2026.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
