Host: Okay. Given everything that's been happening south of the border and around the world, quote unquote, Buy Canadian policies have taken off, but not all of them deliver what they promise. Kaylee Thiessen is chief economist with the Canadian Shield Institute for Public Policy, and she joins me in studio. How are you doing?

I'm doing great today. How are you?

I'm doing well. All right. The institute came up with something called the Sovereignty Score. Help us understand what is it and what's the methodology behind it.

Yeah. Okay. So the sovereignty score is you know exactly what it says it is. In a nutshell, we're looking at government policy decisions based on whether or not it's actually delivering the sovereignty that our governments say they're trying to sort of advance at this particular moment. Sovereignty is not simple. When we first started out, we thought, oh yeah, this is so easy. Something is either sovereign, it's not or it's not. You either have control or you don't. But in fact, there's, you know, a constellation of factors that come with sovereignty. Our score is divided into two categories. There's sovereignty, which is about governance and control. And then there's economic prosperity, which is about delivering value add to Canada's economy, basically. And we look at these ten factors underneath these two categories and then score every policy for whether or not it's actually delivering. We think about things like jobs. So jobs is a really important piece of sovereignty. Absolutely an important piece. And it's an important piece of value add. But we found so far that it's basically one of the only things that governments focus on. And we should be focusing on more than just jobs, though jobs is incredibly important. So then we move on to talking about skills, whether or not we're utilizing the skills that Canadians are developing or improving the skills of Canadians as we're creating more jobs. Actually thinking about things like IP ownership and delivering profit to and building Canadian companies instead of delivering sort of government investment to foreign firms that then sort of leak that value to other countries and other economies, instead of building even more strength and prosperity in Canada. That's the economic prosperity side. We also think about things like diversifying the supply chain and capturing the value chain. Okay. Reducing reliance on foreign firms and another one on the on the shield score. I haven't listed them all, but another one is making sure we're not sort of entrenching monopolies, are we making sure we're building many companies instead of just one that could eventually have enough power to influence government in a way that makes us not sovereign much as we've seen the tech industry in the United States.

And when we talk about the methodology, we're talking about a score out of ten. Is it a checklist? If they've crossed off all of those, sort of some of the points that you mentioned?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's just a yes or no. We had talked about doing half points, and then we realized that every single one would get a half point all the time because there's like, oh, we did it. We got it a little bit of the way there. You know, two out of ten are like, you know, 10 or 20% out of the full 100. So just making sure we're going yes or no with every point is, is what we decided on in the end.

All right. Your institute assessed some sovereignty related policies that are encouraging growth in domestic companies. We'll start off with the defence industrial policy. This came out just this year in February 2026. Got eight out of ten. Yeah. What is it doing.

So the government has the federal government has the intention of growing Canadian companies, creating jobs in Canada, increasing skills of Canadians, and utilizing the skills that many of us have developed over time, but maybe aren't able to utilize in the current labour market. And so making sure that those things go are moving forward also has a focus on IP retention, and building Canadian companies is another piece of the puzzle. It's certainly going to increase security, the security of Canada, as well as avoiding entrenching monopolies, because the intention is to look more at smaller Canadian companies and start to grow them, instead of just delivering all of the money to American firms and the American military industrial complex. Unfortunately, what we've seen so far with the investments that have gone into the defence industrial strategy, is that they're not necessarily living up to their potential. So we analyzed a recent a recent announcement, which was money into creating ammunition, building ammunition in Canada. And that move underneath the Defence Industrial strategy only got a three out of ten. So the intention of the policy got an eight out of ten. And then the execution is getting a three because it did not increase did not decrease our reliance on foreign firms. There's $1 billion investment into an American company that will be building the shells and and creating the inputs into the ammunition is one example of what got missed.

Okay, let's look at another one that did quite well, the Online Streaming Act. This was introduced in late 2023 under the Trudeau government. Nine out of ten. This is where we're talking about Netflix, YouTube here. What's working with that policy?

Yeah. So the intention again of the policy is to make sure that the industrial activity that is occurring is occurring to produce all of the things that we stream is actually occurring in Canada. And so there's very, very in-depth and specific policies about how many jobs need to be created, what the skills are that are required. So it's, it's making sure that jobs across the whole skill level of the industry are created in, in Canada. And that is that activity is done here. In addition, we also see that there are requirements for IP to be retained in Canada by the writers. It's not something that just immediately Netflix, you know, owns the rights to your ideas anymore. But in fact, some of that stays in Canada. And that means that then as you know, there's spin offs and other things that also is going to be based in Canada. That's some of some of why the policy got such a high score.

Let's talk about the Buy Canadian policy. This was a federal policy given six out of ten. Some work to be done there. What's the weakness of this plan?

Yeah, the weakness there is, first of all, the Buy Canadian policy delivers. It assumes you're a Canadian company. As long as you have a Canadian address.

That's all you need. An address?

Yeah. And there are so many foreign subsidiaries that have a Canadian address, but actually are owned and controlled by an American company. And so right away we see, you know, there's this idea that, oh, yeah, we're delivering all of this value to Canadian companies, but in fact, they are American companies. So that's one of the big weaknesses.

Okay. What sovereignty policies has the Canadian Shield assessed that you look at, you know, whether it's red flags or needs improvement, that, you are kind of focusing on.

Yeah. Well, if we think about, you know, the AI strategy that we know is coming soon will be we'll be looking at the AI strategy, for indicators of whether or not this will be a sovereign policy. And it means that we need to see government, maintain the ability to actually govern. That's what they're supposed to do, the AI industry. So it's not just about whether or not a, you know, data center or computer center is built on Canadian soil, soil. It matters who owns it and who sets the rules and whether or not, the Canadian government can actually set those rules in a democratic way. And the companies that are operating those centers have to abide by them.

All right. In the budget, the 2026 Ontario budget, the province announced an initiative called the Protect Ontario Account Investment Fund. The Ford government says it will invest $4 billion into it. How should this plan work so that it can have its maximum effect? When we talk about a, you know, capital investment, but also from a sovereignty score, do well.

Yeah. So when we heard about this, this fund, we thought right away like, oh, this would be great for our sovereignty score. And then we read the budget more deeply and found that there aren't details yet. So we don't know how it's going to operate. We do know that the Protect Ontario account, there's sort of two pieces under that already, and they define an Ontario or Canadian company as a company that has 250 employees or more and has a head office or main office in Canada or in Ontario. And that means that as long as you have that foreign subsidiary with a main office in Canada, they can they can qualify to get money under this fund. We are saying that that isn't good enough. We should actually be focusing all of that money. It's billions of dollars focusing that money on growing Canadian companies that then can expand their reach in Canada, create jobs, higher skills, utilize the skills capacity of Canadians, reduce reliance on foreign firms, diversify the supply chain, focus on the supply chain in Canada, that would do a lot to actually increase the score that they could get, but we couldn't score it because we don't have any details yet.

Fair enough. All right. Well, we'll have to wait until we get more details and we'll look forward to your score. Kayla. We're going to have to leave it there. But thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. It's been great.