You have a problem Mark Carney. And Canadian startups have the solution.

This week you and Pierre Poilievre returned to the House of Commons. Poilievre, as I predicted, is legitimately attacking you Mark Carney as "Do Nothing Carney". Your five "nation building" initiatives turned out to be projects already underway. Canadians are numb to Trump's chaos, and understand that some combination of courts, markets, and mid-terms will soon nullify him. The adversary that you promised that only you could overcome is now South Park farce, making you a joke for presenting him as dangerous.

Your mistake was only pursuing large "nation-building" projects. Large projects require capacities of large corporations. And large Canadian corporations are the most stodgy, entitled, risk averse beasts that ever roamed the planet. And with hint of recession in the air Canadian corporate priority is layoffs, not launching bold and expensive projects.

You turned over all your cards; by only pursuing only large projects, you positioned yourself where you desperately need what only large corporations can provide and they will now delay you, and Canada, for years, extracting ever more concessions, ever more subsidies, ever more guarantees, because the longer they delay the more desperate you will become to grant them anything they want to get them to do something, anything.

The fundamental problem is you cannot invoke the fear necessary to efficiently and affordably motivate anyone, but in particular a Canadian corporation, into action. But I know who can.

Big and complacent, or little and ambitious.

Canada has thousands of pre-revenue startups ready to support you tomorrow putting Canadians, and in particular young Canadians, to work, delivering innovative new Canadian products into global markets, tackling head on Canada's lagging productivity, and delivering Canadian Digital Sovereignty. Canadian startups are eager to launch Canada's greatest "nation-building" project tomorrow, not delay you for years trying to extract more for less.

But more importantly, scolding from yourself Mark Carney, your cabinet ministers, or a thousand opinion writers will never provide the slightest incentive to get a Canadian corporation to mobilize and innovate to improve their productivity. The only thing that can incite the fear necessary to motivate a corporation to innovate is a lean and hungry startup applying innovation to offer a better value proposition and taking away customers.

I offer you Canada's greatest $2.5B "nation-building" project Mark Carney . And Canada's startups would have shovels in ground in two weeks, not two years.

The pitch

Provide each of your 250 Industrial Technology Advisors (ITA) with $10M. They each provide $1M funding to launch 10 pre-revenue Canadian startups.

Two weeks and 2,500 Canadian startups launched. Two weeks and 25,000 Canadians put to work. A year and thousands of entrenched Canadian providers frightened out of complacency. Two weeks and the huge hole in the Canadian innovation ecosystem preventing progress resolving Canada's lagging productivity finally filled in, letting progress get under way.

No equity, no lawyers, no overhead, no matching funds impossible to find, no new institutions or administrators and no pitch competitions; only cash rapidly and efficiently placed in the hands of Canadian entrepreneurs. No call for proposals; complex application processes just gives con artists the time and venue they require to present things that sound great on paper but have no intention of building. No complex paper work or evaluations; just proof a founder has enough skin in the game that they will deliver.

Innovation funds finally expended where entrepreneurs can prove a need and are ready to act, rather than where an academic or bureaucrat holds curiosity and maybe someday somehow somewhere there might be a viable commercial opportunity.

Simple criteria:

• incorporated prior to 2024-12-31
• active participation in a Canadian incubation program since 2023-01-01
• $200k raised prior to 2024-12-31
• pre-revenue
• can demonstrate a prototype
• business plan requiring no more than $1.5M to get to revenue
• first priority to those who can demonstrate in-field validation
• second priority to companies delivering a digital service competitive to a non-Canadian offering

Your ITA's know which clients meet these criteria and could make best use of the funds; I am confident mine, Alicia Cafferata-Arnett does. If they need help, organizations like DiscoveryLabs and Startup TNT know, or can find, worthwhile companies.

Most of these startups will fail. That is what startups are for, to rapidly test ideas in the market, the only decision maker that matters. But the reason startups fail is an entrenched product or service provider pivoted, and innovated, to address the new competitor, improving productivity in the process. Every one of the 2,500 startups launched is guaranteed to return immense value to Canada, many contributing more in failure than they would have in success. The one or two Unicorns that would emerge are side benefit.

Your choice Mark Carney.

You can still be waiting, and being harassed by Pierre Poilievre , a year from now, probably longer, struggling to get Canada's corporations to act, something you lack the leverage to do, and something Canada already has waited a decade for.

Or Flokk Systems Inc. and 2,499 other Canadian startups could be frightening them into action in a few weeks.