Budget 2026 says “sovereign” 114 times. It never says what a Canadian company is

Budget 2026 has a lot of exciting ideas about how to grow Canada’s economy, and one serious flaw with all of it.

If Canada’s economic development dollars are going to support the growth of foreign companies that present themselves as Canadian, we will fail to support the real Canadian companies that will be the backbone of real economic resilience.

Budget 2026 uses the word “sovereign” a total of 114 times, and it’s not just empty rhetoric, either. The government is really saying that our plan for future sovereignty is about creating a resilient, thriving economy built on successful Canadian companies.

With all of this funding available, it’s not too surprising to see AI chip designer Tenstorrent lobbying Ottawa, as reported by The Logic this week. They think they should be deemed as a Canadian company, it seems.

Tenstorrent was founded in Toronto and still employs engineers here, and that deserves credit. But it was only a few years ago that the company was quietly shutting down its Canadian headquarters and moving to Silicon Valley.

At the Canadian Shield Institute, we recently published a proposed definition for what counts as a real Canadian company. It’s fairly simple:

A Canadian company is a Canadian-headquartered firm that is not majority-controlled by a foreign parent or foreign government.

There are two ways to fail this test: on headquarters, and on control. In the case of Tenstorrent, as far as we can tell they’re not majority owned by a foreign parent. So they pass on that count.

But really importantly, Tenstorrent is not headquartered in Canada. So they’re not a Canadian company.

We kept this definition deliberately simple and direct, as a starting point. If a company like Tenstorrent does count as a Canadian firm, that opens up a helluva Pandora’s box. If any company, headquartered anywhere on earth, can qualify for funding because its lobbyists point to some operations here or or some historic association with Canada, then economic development policy will become meaningless.

And in Budget 2026, there is a lot of money riding on this question.

The government’s $25 billion Canada Strong Fund will invest in “nation-building projects and high growth Canadian companies” which is exactly the right approach.

When we assessed the Canada Strong Fund earlier this year, part of the reason why it only scored a 6/10 is because it looked to be mostly focused on big infrastructure and nation-building projects. If the fund is also investing in high-growth Canadian companies, that will be huge for growing future national champions and strategically important, innovative firms.

Budget 2026 also reaffirms the government’s goal of steering 70 per cent of defence acquisitions toward Canadian firms. The government had already signposted this in the Defence Industrial Strategy published earlier this year.

There’s much more, though. The flagship Canada Growth Incentive is aimed at attracting investment to high-potential Canadian companies.

Our co-operation with the European Union is touted as a pathway to create more opportunities for Canadian companies in defence.

As a country, we are long overdue to embrace a clearer, and more rigorous definition of what counts as a Canadian country.

It matters a lot where corporate control ultimately sits. We routinely see the federal government giving money to foreign firms who are exploiting a loophole to claim that they are a “Canadian” company just because they have established a locally incorporated subsidiary.

Lockheed Martin Canada is not a real Canadian company. Walmart Canada is not a real Canadian company.

Recent comments from Prime Minister Carney’s point-man on defence investment seems to indicate that the government is perfectly happy to do business with these foreign companies that pretend to be Canadian.

True economic resilience cannot rely on companies whose decisions are made somewhere else. We saw how easy it is this fall, when Cleveland-Cliffs moved to idle Stelco’s finishing operations in Hamilton.

The risk is even more severe in the realm of defence, where critical software can create battlefield vulnerabilities, as Ukraine learned when Starlink coverage was reportedly shut off, interfering with drone operations.

We cannot disentangle Canada from the rest of the world, and we shouldn’t aspire to be a hermit kingdom. But when the government is specifically spending taxpayer dollars to help support Canadian companies in the name of Canadian sovereignty, can’t we at least expect them to be truly Canadian?

Without it, we’re just subsidizing a local jobs program for foreign multinationals, and calling it sovereignty.