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A supercomputer at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Bologna, Italy.ALI WITHERS/Reuters
Ryan Grant is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University. He directs the Computing at Extreme Scale Advanced Research (CAESAR) Lab, one of the world’s leading supercomputing architecture labs.
When I helped design the systems that power some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers, one fact became clear: countries that control their own computing infrastructure control their future. Canada does not.
Supercomputers are no longer niche tools. They are the engines behind artificial intelligence, climate modelling, drug discovery, aerospace design and national security. Countries that own and operate them shape global technological progress. Countries that do not, become dependent tenants in someone else’s digital empire.
Canada is blessed with world-class AI researchers, including pioneers such as Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Richard Sutton. But too often the fruits of that research are commercialized elsewhere. By some estimates, three-quarters of the intellectual property generated here is owned or monetized by foreign firms. The reason is simple: Canada has not invested in the infrastructure needed to keep its talent and ideas at home.
Today, Canadian innovators depend on foreign cloud services. That means the data that fuels AI, our hospitals’ genetic databases, our banks’ confidential information, our manufacturers’ supply chains, even our military’s security files, are trained and stored on infrastructure controlled by U.S. technology giants, which ultimately answer to the U.S. government. That is not sovereignty.
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Other countries understand this. Europe has committed more than €8-billion to its EuroHPC initiative. Japan invested billions of yen to build Fugaku, the world’s most powerful computer when it launched. The United States has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into each of its exascale computing systems. These governments recognize that supercomputing is the electricity of the 21st century, a foundation upon which every industry and every innovation depends. Other nations have been building world-class supercomputers for decades. Canada is behind, but our recent brain gain gives us a unique chance to catch up quickly, if we scale fast with the right resources.
Canada is just beginning to take steps in this area. When Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the new Major Projects Office, he nodded to Canada’s intention to explore domestic supercomputing – an encouraging start. Exploration is important, but now is the time to build on that momentum with concrete action. Several projects are ready to move from design to deployment and, with the right support, Canada could make meaningful progress within months rather than years.
The stakes are not abstract. Without sovereign computing power, Canadian companies will be forced to train their models on foreign systems that can dictate costs, terms and even access. That dependence will push our brightest researchers and entrepreneurs abroad in search of the tools they need. Once they leave, they rarely come back. The global competition for talent is unforgiving and countries from the U.S. to Singapore are offering not only higher salaries but also the infrastructure and partnerships to accelerate breakthroughs. If Canada cannot match that, we will lose not just ideas but the industries and jobs they create.
I know this because I have seen what happens when nations do act. For nearly a decade, I worked at Sandia National Laboratories in the United States, where I chaired the group that developed networking specifications now embedded in every major supercomputer worldwide. That work earned global recognition and reinforced America’s leadership. I returned to Canada because I believe we can build that same capability here, and because I believe our country’s independence depends on it.
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Investing in sovereign supercomputing will not only keep our data secure. It will allow Canadian AI innovators to scale their work more rapidly, open opportunities to test technology safely and drive productivity across every sector, from medicine to energy to manufacturing. It will create high-quality jobs far beyond the construction of computing centres, just as electrification once powered an entire century of industrial growth. It will leverage Canadian expertise in green computing. And it will ensure that Canada’s values of fairness, openness, sustainability and responsibility are embedded in the next generation of technologies.
The choice before us is simple. Canada can remain dependent on foreign platforms and watch its best talent and ideas slip away, or it can build the infrastructure of the future and lead. We can become producers of AI or merely consumers of it. We have the research base, the innovation culture and the early brain gain. What we need now is the organization and the computing power to back it up.
Supercomputing is no longer optional. It is the foundation of sovereignty, security and prosperity in the 21st century. Canada must generate its own power.
