Good morning. In focus today, we look at why a bruising domestic economy is being met with oceans of optimism in British Columbia.

Procurement: Canada is in talks to buy about 30 Italian M-346 trainer jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Economy: Overinvestment in U.S. and global imbalances creating financial risks, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says.

Separatism: Carney has appointed a new adviser to lead the response to the Alberta separatist movement.

Canada has never lacked the imagination to invent the future: insulin, the electron microscope and the foundations of modern artificial intelligence. Depending on whom you ask, we can even lay claim to the light bulb. The challenge today might be bringing a swagger back to business’ step – encouraging moonshots and building companies that stay, grow and remain rooted in Canada.

Speaking at The Globe and Mail’s Intersect event in Vancouver, leaders from British Columbia’s mining, pharmaceutical and public sectors called for big swings, big ideas and more Canadian companies becoming acquirers rather than acquisition targets.

The country is struggling with slow growth, stagnant productivity and six consecutive quarters of business closings outnumbering startups, said Judith Bosire, chief economist at Vancity. But the federal government’s push to accelerate massive industrial scale through mechanisms such as its new defence targets represents an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen Canada’s economic armour in a fracturing world, executives told an audience at the Pan Pacific hotel, which sits perched above the Vancouver Harbour.

“If we have big companies, we are an acquirer of technology,” said Carl Hansen, chief executive of Vancouver-based biotech firm AbCellera. “If we don’t, we are a cheap branch plant for large multinationals in other jurisdictions.”

But bridging the gap between raw Canadian innovation and global corporate scale requires a shift in how the country thinks about itself and its ideas. Hansen, who grew his $1-billion-plus company out of his research lab at the University of British Columbia, said Canada remains locked in a “psychological trap” that is paralyzing national productivity because the domestic tech ecosystem largely refuses to scale instead of sell.

“We’ve had many breakthroughs, many foundational discoveries that have made a giant impact in the world,” he said. ”And it’s not because we haven’t had successes – it’s because every time that a success starts to look like it’s gonna work, we sell it, and there’s a lot of fanfare, and we see that as a great success.“

‘A happy lotus land’

Former premier of B.C. Christy Clark said Canada has wrongly believed global markets would never change while ignoring an uncompetitive regulatory environment that has left the country “uninvestable for a long time.”

“And we just sort of live in this happy lotus land where we have so much, and we don’t have to worry about it,” she said. “And I think we got way, way, way too complacent. We just thought it would be easy. And we were wrong. But the good news is, we have an opportunity.”

Accelerating this shift is the looming review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. The threat of aggressive U.S. tariffs and protectionist trade measures is forcing a rewriting of Canadian industrial policy, shifting the country’s economic strategy toward survival and self-reliance.

Alison Nankivell, CEO of Export Development Canada, said federal policy is backing a playbook focused on heavy corporate growth, long-term market success, and building major domestic anchors to insulate the country from trade pressures.

“We get complacent here, because maybe it is just too nice looking over at English Bay instead of thinking about who’s actually gonna eat my lunch,” Nankivell said, calling for a “healthy paranoia” among Canada’s business sector.

Look down, too

There are big ideas, and there are also the vast riches beneath the region’s surface.

A critical mineral boom has injected momentum into B.C.’s resource sector, unearthing 33 major mining projects representing an estimated $80-billion in immediate construction output.

To capitalize on global demand for copper, lithium and nickel, leaders said Canada must move quickly to process these materials domestically rather than repeating historic patterns of exporting raw commodities. (They are critical minerals, after all. It’s odd to me that we’d send them to other countries so we can buy them back.)

This industrial expansion hinges on a parallel surge in clean electricity infrastructure. Mining operators require significantly more power to operate clean, electrified mines, B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix said on a panel.

The province is expected to enter a period of dramatic growth in power consumption, with electricity demand projected to surge 50 per cent by 2050. “So, it’s a significant plan, the largest capital plan we’ve seen, for the largest increase in demand that BC Hydro has ever faced,” Dix said.

On First Nations partnerships

“Get more comfortable with the idea that nations are just going to be your partners. If you don’t get on with that, things are, you’re gonna struggle. Just get comfortable with that concept.”

- Mokwateh Principal J.P. Gladu