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Only 67% of Canadian cybersecurity decision-makers say their cybersecurity budget is enough to protect their organization against attacks, down from 74% in 2025. 

This is despite 76% of the organizations surveyed reporting increased spending on IT systems management and cybersecurity.

That comes from a new Canadian Internet Registration Authority survey, reported by Jennifer Kervin. CIRA polled 503 cybersecurity decision-makers across the country in June and July, from private businesses and from public institutions including municipalities, schools and hospitals.

Nearly a quarter of them run on an annual IT budget under $50,000. That share more than doubled from 11% last year, in the same twelve months when 76% reported spending more.

For more, including how many organizations have moved security in-house and what happened to the ones hit by ransomware:

→ Read: Cybersecurity spending is up but confidence is down

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Ryan Clements, who leads advanced research and knowledge management at the Alberta Securities Commission, wants to hear where a rule slowed you down, where guidance left you guessing, and what you would test if the path were clear.

He makes the case that Canada can become more efficient without losing the investor trust it already has. 

Clements also chairs the Canadian Securities Administrators’ Financial Innovation Hub. He wrote this for us ahead of ASC Connect in Calgary on Oct. 27, where he moderates a panel.

“Speed without trust is not a good market,” he writes.

If your product doesn’t fit the rules as written, you can ask regulators for permission to test it under temporary conditions. That’s a regulatory sandbox. Clements’s worry is that negotiating those conditions takes months while a competitor skips the process and launches anyway, so the company that asked first loses the time.

→ Read: How Canada can keep investors’ trust and become more efficient

Ottawa is putting $50 million into bringing automation and AI to food processing lines, with small and medium-sized businesses as the focus.

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly announced the funding on Oct. 15, as Jennifer Friesen reports. It goes to the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN), an industry-led not-for-profit, through the Strategic Response Fund. 

Ottawa expects it to reach more than 200 businesses and draw up to $200 million in further investment.

CFIN chief executive Dana McCauley says many Canadian processors run equipment and systems that “haven’t kept pace with their global competitors.”

The announcement doesn’t say how much any one business could receive, what costs it would cover, or when applications open.

→ Read: Ottawa funds a push to get food tech into processing plants

That subhead might look familiar from last week. The copy underneath it was about Mark Carney’s AI council, which you may have read the week before. 

I loaded it into the newsletter tool myself, so my bad.

Here is what was supposed to be there, updated to reflect the date.

Albertans voted on 10 ballot questions on Oct. 19. One asked whether the province should hold a binding referendum on separating from Canada, and 75% said no.

The question hung over Calgary Economic Development’s 2027 Economic Outlook, covered by Chris Hogg. Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said trading partners are already delaying decisions over it, before anyone had voted. Business confidence has been low for eight consecutive quarters, she said, and more of the capital companies deploy will replace what they already own.

ATB chief economist Mark Parsons said inflation is too high for the Bank of Canada to cut rates, so anyone holding a project until borrowing gets cheaper should stop waiting. ATB still has Alberta growing 2.3% in 2027 against 1.5% nationally.

Hogg has what that means for anyone pitching AI next year, plus Brad Parry’s line about bringing a data knife to an emotional gunfight:

→ Read: What Calgary’s outlook means for tech leaders pitching AI

Some light reading for when you’re waiting for the votes on the other nine questions to be counted. 

Scientists want tighter controls after AI containment failures More than 400 scientists want models capable of hacking cut off from the internet by default. The open letter went out Oct. 13 and had 489 signatories as of Oct. 16, including Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton. They also want an international body collecting reports of containment failures.

Canadians embrace AI for banking questions, but human advice still wins on the decisions that matter The 2026 TD AI Insights Report, conducted by Ipsos among more than 2,500 Canadian adults, found 71% have more confidence in human intelligence than AI on financial matters. On smaller jobs the preference reverses, with 52% choosing AI for password resets and account-access problems.

Can teams of AI agents make quantum research more reliable? Quantum software company Haiqu says its new AgenticOS cut quantum circuit depth 75% on a Hubbard model problem run on an IBM machine. The system splits scientific work across specialized agents and checks the output at each stage, with researchers still deciding what counts as a valid result.

AI, automation and delivery apps: What food-tech layoffs mean for Canada Food and grocery delivery companies cut 3,921 jobs across seven businesses this year, according to analysis supplied by TradingPlatforms. Their analyst points at weak demand and the pressure to turn a profit, with automation one part of a wider effort to cut costs.

76% of the organizations CIRA surveyed increased their IT and security spending over the past year, yet the number who felt it was enough declined.

Alberta put 10 questions on a ballot, or rather 10 separate ballots, at a cost in the millions. 75% said no to the separation question, but trading partners were already delaying decisions before anyone answered.

In both cases, spending more came with less confidence than before.

— David

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