Years ago, in a Saskatchewan gas station, a snack war broke out.
Terry Rock remembers the moment clearly. His family ran the gas station in question, and a delivery man from Hostess spotted a towering display of rival Old Dutch chips in the store.
“The Hostess guy walked in, elbowed it, knocked it over, stomped on all the boxes, went up and gave my dad 50 bucks or whatever, and said, ‘Sorry about that,’” said Rock, now CEO of Platform Calgary.
It was a bold move in the snack aisle turf war. But for Rock, it also captured something else. He shared the story at the Canada’s Innovation Mosaic panel at the mesh conference, using it to make a point: ecosystem building still too often looks like this — gleeful one-upmanship between cities.
“I’ve seen that same look in the eye of people who work in economic development when their city wins over their closest rival,” said Rock. “They know they can’t be like that. But…”
What followed was a candid, cross-country conversation between leaders from Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and Moncton. Moderated by Paisley Churchill of the Calgary Innovation Coalition, they tackled the tension between collaboration and competition, and what it will take to build a truly connected Canadian innovation ecosystem.
A window of opportunity, if Canada is ready
The backdrop to this panel was more than regional dynamics. A trade rift with the United States has thrown Canadian interprovincial collaboration into the spotlight as cries of “elbows up” are heard coast to coast.
Political tensions and protectionist shifts south of the border have created what panelists described as a rare moment of alignment and urgency in Canada.
“I think we’re on the verge of maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something special in Canada,” said Doug Robertson, CEO of Venn Innovation in Moncton.
For Daniel Hengeveld of Toronto Global, the warning was clear: this moment didn’t arise organically.
“We are being forced in that position because of what’s happening down south,” he said. “Coming to this place from a place of need is probably not the best way to do it. So let’s not let that momentum slide.”
That same pressure was behind new interprovincial agreements, such as those between Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, designed to reduce regulatory friction. But the panelists made the point that regulation alone won’t drive the kind of systemic shift Canada needs.
“If everything relies on the province of Alberta, City of Calgary, federal government to fund everything we do, that would be a shame,” said Rock.
Instead, the panel argued, collaboration has to be built on long-term trust (and funded accordingly). Canada can’t wait for a national directive from Ottawa. It needs grassroots action and local champions willing to build the connective tissue themselves.
Collaboration takes more than good intentions
But no one on stage romanticized collaboration. In fact, they made a point of calling out how difficult it is.
In Alberta, two of the province’s largest innovation organizations — Platform Calgary and Edmonton Unlimited — set aside local loyalties to jointly build Alberta Catalyzer, a province-wide program supporting early-stage entrepreneurs.
It was a rare move in a sector often defined by regional silos and competing mandates. And it wasn’t easy.
“It was really tough to get the two organizations lined up and to trust each other through every element of it,” said Rock. “A lot of donuts in Red Deer were eaten to make it happen.”
The project ultimately launched and continues to run today, offering a model for what’s possible when cities put shared goals ahead of regional rivalry. Still, the experience underscored a key lesson for Rock.
“There were not enough resources put into the hard work of aligning ourselves,” he said.
Real collaboration, he said, takes more time and effort than most people expect. “It’s a way more inefficient way to get something done that, if it’s done right, gets way more out of it — but you have to find a way to get through the dip.”
Robertson echoed that reality from the Atlantic Canada context.
Despite years of working together through Startup Atlantic, a regional network of incubators and accelerators, they still struggle to secure sustained funding for shared infrastructure.
“We can’t do it off the side of our desk,” he said.
Even government funding itself can create competition rather than cooperation.
“Too often we’re all applying for the same pocket of money,” Robertson added. “That’s an impediment to the kind of collaboration that Terry (Rock) is referring to.”
Redefining national success, together
So if no one is paid to deliver national outcomes, and collaboration is hard, who’s responsible for building Canada’s innovation future?
“No one,” said Kassandra Linklater of Tenacious Ventures, who joined mesh from Vancouver. “It took a bunch of leaders to come together to build Platform Calgary. There wasn’t this direct body that came in and said, we need this. It was the power of the individual.”
Linklater’s message was that the real work of building a national innovation economy rests with citizens, not bureaucracies.
“Our government isn’t necessarily going to be the ones who are going to save us,” she said. “It’s the role of the citizen now to lead, to build the infrastructure, to build the community, to come together.”
That urgency is backed by sobering numbers.
“Canada is being frank, we are on track to be one of the worst performing economies in the OECD by 2030,” Linklater warned, framing national collaboration as a long-term turnaround strategy — not just a nice-to-have.
“Competition leads to quick wins,” she said. “Collaboration leads to long-term wins.”
Robertson echoed the need for more sustainable thinking, pointing out that many regional programs — even successful ones — are cobbled together through short-term grants with little long-term vision.
“It’s administratively inefficient, and it’s not the right approach from our government partners,” he said. “We need to change how they think about that.”
Unless bold steps are taken to address structural issues (especially in innovation and economic resilience) those forecasts may prove accurate.
Hengeveld urged leaders in Canada to define a new success metric.
“Do we know what success even means?” he asked.
Without a shared vision, he argued, it’s hard to rally collective effort. “Unless we’re thinking along those lines and aligned to a cohesive strategy, I’m not sure where we’re going to get to,” he said.
From local pride to a ‘Team Canada’ approach
All four panellists expressed deep pride in their regions. But they also wrestled with the tension between celebrating local wins and rooting for national progress.
That pride can quickly turn into pressure — especially when regions are chasing the same talent, government funding, and visibility.
Rock shared a candid observation about the emotion baked into city rivalries. “I’ve seen senior executives be frustrated with each other because of talent poaching,” he said. “There’s only so many places to go.”
But he also praised efforts like Ottawa’s shared talent pool, where companies submit top hiring needs and recruit from a centralized pipeline.
“They collaborated to build the pool, and then they competed inside the pool. I love that as a solution to this problem,” said Rock.
Linklater echoed that sentiment with a story from Vancouver’s recent bid to host Web Summit, the international tech conference. At first, she said, there was a strong desire to “win” the event away from Toronto and position Vancouver as Canada’s next tech capital. But that approach didn’t last long.
“There was a really quick moment where we said that out loud and went — wait, that’s not Team Canada,” she recalled. “We said, we’re not going to play that game. We’re going to play: all of us are better than any one of us.”
She added that embracing a national mindset means confronting some deep-seated cultural habits. “No more tall poppying,” she said. “We have to look at things a little bit differently right now.”
That shift in thinking—away from regional wins and toward a united front—was a recurring theme throughout the panel. For Hengeveld, it’s not just about collaboration for its own sake, but about positioning Canada to compete on the world stage.
“The viewpoint that we should be having is that we should be competing internationally and collaborating locally,” he said, warning that the global investor doesn’t care much for provincial boundaries, and that clinging to regional turf can weaken Canada’s position on the world stage.
The idea of “Team Canada” approach surfaced again and again. Whether it was remote work trends, the challenge of building local vibrancy, or how to keep newcomers in smaller centres, each conversation came back to the same theme: we rise or fall together.
As Rock put it: “The mission is not for our organization to be great and grow. The mission is for our community to be great and grow.”
That may not fit on a billboard. But in a country as big as Canada, it might just be the message that sticks.
