Canada’s major political parties have laid out their platforms ahead of the 2025 federal election on April 28.
While there are common threads in their technology-related policies, particularly the attempt to reduce dependency on the United States (US) in light of the ongoing trade war, there are also stark differences between the Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democratic Party (NDP).
If tech matters to your vote, here’s what you need to consider when you go to the polls.
Liberal Party of Canada
As the governing party, the Liberal Party of Canada under Prime Minister Mark Carney have already made changes that contrast with Justin Trudeau’s leadership. They’ve killed a planned capital gains tax hike and maintained plans to set the lifetime exemption limit at $1.25 million.
Now that the official platform is available, though, it’s evident that the incumbents plan more specific efforts to aid the tech sector. Carney has said he wants to reduce the government’s reliance on American companies. Accordingly, the Liberals want to secure advantages in “strategic industries” like agtech, biomanufacturing, and quantum computing. It also hopes to steer more federal cloud computing contracts to Canadian firms after criticism of a US-focused list.
Additional financing would play a key role in reaching these targets. The party plans to introduce flow-through shares, which have been mostly used by early-stage mining companies, to tech startups. Companies in capital-intensive sectors, like quantum and manufacturing, could issue these fully tax-deductible common shares to investors to fund R&D expenses more quickly. Critics have pointed out that a similar program from Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Liberals in the 1980s led to higher-than-expected government spending.
The agenda includes another $1 billion for the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI), a promise made as part of the Liberals’ 2024 Fall Economic Statement (FES).
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Carney goes further on research and development incentives than Trudeau’s Liberals, upping the claimable amount for Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credits to $6 million instead of $4.5 million.
The platform also promises an intellectual property (IP) “Canada Patent Box” that would give preferential tax rates to profits generated from domestic IP. Tech lobby group the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) has consistently advocated for this reform, arguing it would reward at-home innovation and reduce the flow of IP out of the country.
The Liberals are bullish about AI. Their platform promises $2.5 billion over two fiscal years for broadband and data centres. This is on top of existing initiatives that include the $2-billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. The sovereign AI fund has already made major investments, such as $240 million for Cohere’s AI training data centre.
The party isn’t backing down on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives despite widespread rollback in the private sector and anti-DEI legislation in the US. It expects to make the Black Entrepreneurship Program permanent and invest more in the Women’s Economic and Leadership Opportunities Fund, which provides access to mentors and networking.
There’s no mention of open banking in the Liberal platform, despite party promises to roll out a formal framework as far back as 2021. In the 2024 Fall Economic Statement, the party elaborated on a proposed open banking system (the Consumer-Driven Banking Framework) but delayed its rollout yet again, from 2025 to 2026. Canada is the only G7 country without official open banking and real-time rail frameworks in place.
The Liberals plan to introduce legislation that would make it easier for both doctors and patients to access health data, including medical records.
The party has projected that its policies would increase this fiscal year’s deficit to $62.3 billion (up from $46.8 billion). Scotiabank economists Derek Holt and Rebekah Young have blasted this move away from “fiscal austerity.” The two also criticized the Liberals for allegedly unrealistic assumptions about tariff revenue and government efficiency savings.
Conservative Party of Canada
The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre are focused on cutting taxes and spending. To start, the party has proposed capital gains tax deferrals for profits reinvested in Canada.
The party plans to eliminate all carbon taxes and introduce unspecified reforms to Clean Economy Investment Tax Credits to spur clean domestic manufacturing. However, the party has pledged to repeal Bill C-69, under which the clean hydrogen and clean manufacturing tax credits were introduced. The platform makes no mention of SR&ED, either in funding or reforms to the program.
The party also believes it can foster more competition across the country, with the Conservative platform explicitly promising to implement open banking. The party is also planning an “oligopoly review” that would look for possible anti-competitive practices in federally regulated sectors. The party aims to foster interprovincial trade by reducing exceptions in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, which governs trade among the provinces, and offering a bonus for provinces that lower their labour mobility and trade barriers.
While the Liberals would spend more on AI, the Conservatives would scale back. Their platform seeks to promote data centre construction, but would slash $2.28 billion from AI initiatives. Although the platform doesn’t detail what those cuts would entail, the amount is approximately what the Liberals proposed in their 2024 budget for the Sovereign AI Compute Strategy.
The Conservative platform aims to boost domestic procurement. The Conservatives would institute a Buy Canada procurement policy for defence and infrastructure, including the revival of a cabinet committee on military procurements and a secretariat to make sure those procurement issues are “central” to the government. According to the party, the country would meet its NATO defence spending target by 2030.
In dealing with the US tariff uncertainty, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said he would support retaliatory tariffs targeting US products that Canada can produce or buy elsewhere. He said he would institute a temporary loan program for businesses impacted by tariffs.
The Conservative platform does not mention diversity, equity, or inclusion when it comes to entrepreneurship in Canada. Instead, the Conservatives plan to fight what they claim is “woke ideology” in the public service and undefined elements of university research funding.
Under the Liberals, universities have received hundreds of millions in funding for scientific research through initiatives like the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Though the Conservative platform does not include specifics on how it would cut research funding, it says it would cut funding for Crown corporations such as the CBC.
The Conservative platform also claims it would rake in more than $5 billion in revenue by eliminating the electric vehicle sales mandate introduced by the Liberals, which would require all car sales to be zero-emission by 2035.
The Conservative platform has faced shared criticisms with the Liberals. The Conservatives anticipate that lower taxes and deregulation will help lower the annual deficit to $31.4 billion for this fiscal year, and to nearly $14.2 billion by fiscal 2028. However, Scotiabank analysts say the party is banking heavily on assumptions that a combination of cuts and tariff revenue will foster strong economic growth and investments equivalent to 4 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth per year versus the 1.7 percent that analysts recently predicted for Bloomberg. The Liberals’ costed platform didn’t factor in these assumptions.
New Democratic Party of Canada
The NDP isn’t as heavily invested in tech policy as its two rivals, but does have policies that could affect the industry. It would hold on to the capital gains inclusion rate the Liberals allegedly “flip-flopped on,” and would “rebalance” taxes to make sure that stock flipping is taxed at the same rate as income. There would be a two-percent surtax on taxable income from companies generating over $500 million in profits, and a 15-percent “minimum tax” on corporate book profits.
Like the Liberals and Conservatives, the NDP would promote Canadian procurement. Its “Build Canadian Buy Canadian” plan would ban US companies from contracts when Canadian ones are an option. The party seeks to “eliminate” interprovincial trade barriers, although it doesn’t explain how.
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While the platform doesn’t touch on AI, the NDP has denounced the possible use of the technology to make housing less affordable. In November, it called on corporate landlords to testify to Parliament on the possibility that AI-based price fixing was driving rent increases.
The NDP’s platform doesn’t mention health data, but the party has said that it supports the Liberals’ Bill C-72. The measure, which effectively died when Parliament was prorogued in January, would ensure interoperability between medical record systems.
The party has already anticipated some criticism in its platform. It claims its policies will grow the deficit “in the short term,” but keep the debt-to-GDP ratio at a “sustainable level” through revenue-generation efforts like the surtax and a new tax on the wealthiest Canadians. It maintains that the efforts will leave tax rates “competitive,” and that these efforts won’t lead to permanent deficits.
Bloc Québécois
The Bloc Québécois platform seeks to defend the interests of Québec-based businesses and foster tech innovation in the province.
In the face of US threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the Bloc is pledging to stop businesses from moving their headquarters out of Québec to the US. It wants to reemphasize the Investment Canada Act, which reviews significant foreign investment into Canadian companies, and to push for Ottawa to work with Québec to prevent hostile takeovers of domestic businesses. The party also says it would look to preserve business headquarters in Montréal that are “threatened” by Toronto.
The party also wants to take advantage of federal funding crackdowns in the US and scoop up talented researchers for Québec. It proposes a funding effort to recruit American researchers in AI, biomedicine, and deep tech more broadly.
The Bloc has an ambitious, investment-heavy vision for scientific research in the province. It would support large-scale R&D efforts to boost productivity and funding for university research, particularly for francophones and rural institutions.
Though the Bloc’s platform did not mention AI funding, the party said it would relaunch discussions on AI regulation, which have largely been abandoned following Parliament’s prorogation and the Liberals’ failure to pass Bill C-27.
The Québec interest party wants Canada to study how quantum leaders such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are approaching quantum development and regulation. The party says it will push for Québec’s local expertise as Canada’s de facto quantum province to be recognized in any federal quantum research initiatives.
With files from Madison McLauchlan. Feature image courtesy JP Valery via Unsplash.