Disruptors

Canada’s national AI strategy puts healthcare on centre stage – and for good reason. If you ask Canadians about the healthcare system, many will say they value it deeply, but that they are frustrated by wait times. In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse looks at what we need to do to make artificial intelligence move the needle for wait times and quality of care. Mara Lederman, co-founder and COO of Signal 1, explains the pressure inside hospitals: rising demand, constrained supply, long waits, and digital systems that often record care without helping the system move faster. She points to practical AI uses already emerging, including AI agents that call patients before procedures, reduce cancelled appointments and protect scarce clinical capacity. Dr. Amol Verma and Dr. Fahad Razak of Unity Health Toronto take the conversation to the national level. Their work on VITAL – a health data platform – is aimed at connecting more than 160 hospitals across Canada. The promise is larger than one AI tool: better clinical trials, safer AI validation, more Canadian data, stronger governance and a healthcare system that can learn in near-real time. Canada’s healthcare system generates enormous amounts of data every day. Every hospital admission can produce hundreds of thousands – even millions – of data points, from lab tests and imaging to digital vital signs and outcomes. But too much of that data remains trapped inside hospitals, provinces and systems that were not built to learn from one another. The episode asks: if Canada has a public healthcare system, world-class research talent and hospitals generating hundreds of thousands of data points for every admitted patient, can AI finally help make the system work better for patients?

Energy planners used to talk about a “trilemma”: reliability, affordability and sustainability. As AI reshapes the global economy and data centres demand thousands of megawatts of new load, Alberta is adding a fourth leg to the stool — velocity — turning it into an energy quadlema. At the edge of Wabamun Lake west of Edmonton, the Keephills and Sundance power sites are being reimagined from coal-era workhorses into “AI-ready” power hubs. TransAlta is converting units to natural gas, opening up land for data centres and using existing transmission and cooling infrastructure to shorten the path from project to power. In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse speaks with Premier Danielle Smith and John Kousinioris, President & CEO of TransAlta, about how Alberta is experimenting with a new “bring your own power” model for hyperscalers — and how the recent Canada–Alberta energy MOU aims to unlock thousands of megawatts of AI computing capacity. Alberta is positioning itself as a testing ground for how countries can build domestic compute on their own grids — instead of just exporting raw energy — while navigating an energy quadlema of reliability, affordability, sustainability and speed to power.

As the world electrifies—from cars and buses to datacentres and defence—demand for battery materials is exploding. Today, China refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into the material used in virtually all EV battery anodes—that level of concentration is a strategic vulnerability Canada, and its allies, can’t ignore. But Canada is starting to respond. The federal Major Projects Office has just referred Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Phase-2 Matawinie Mine as a “Major Project of National Interest”—a move aimed at helping Quebec and Canada shift from exporting ore to building a full mine-to-refine graphite value chain at home, and with it, an entirely new strand of economic and industrial capacity. In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, host John Stackhouse takes listeners into that story. With former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Eric Desaulniers, founder & CEO of NMG, he lifts the hood on what it means for a critical-minerals project to be treated as a “major project” in Canada—and what this could mean for Canada’s role as a trusted critical-minerals supplier to its G7 allies.

Saskatchewan, long known for feeding the world, is now leading a revolution in ag-tech. With automation, machine learning, and AI-powered quality control, the province is redefining how food moves from field to port. Agriculture is more than Canada’s heritage - it’s our future advantage. In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse speaks with Kyle Folk, founder and CEO of Ground Truth Ag, whose technology automates grain grading — a process that once took hours, now done in minutes. He’s joined by Murad Al-Katib, CEO of AGT Food and Ingredients. It’s a story about turning information into prosperity, and about how Saskatchewan’s innovators are helping Canada feed a growing world while building a more resilient, sovereign economy.

Canada’s prosperity depends on how efficiently it can move goods to market — yet its largest ports have fallen behind the world’s best. With global trade accelerating and supply chains under pressure, Roberts Bank Terminal 2 represents a generational investment in Canada’s competitiveness. In this episode, Peter Xotta, CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, Devan Fitch, the project’s Program Director, and Tamara Vrooman, CEO of Vancouver International Airport, join John Stackhouse to discuss how this long-planned expansion will bring new automation, capacity, and environmental innovation to Canada’s Pacific Gateway. Together, they explore how smart infrastructure and strong partnerships can secure Canada’s trade future — sustainably and sovereignty.

Canada’s future security doesn’t just lie in the skies or across its borders — it lies beneath the waves. Newfoundland and Labrador, long defined by its connection to the North Atlantic, is emerging as the front line in Canada’s underwater defence and surveillance revolution. In this episode, Kraken Robotics’ David Shea reveals how cutting-edge sonar and subsea intelligence are giving Canada new eyes and ears in the ocean depths — technology once reserved for superpowers, now developed and deployed from St. John’s. And General Rick Hillier, former Chief of Defence Staff, joins host John Stackhouse to explore why control of our underwater domain is critical to national sovereignty, Arctic readiness, and alliance security in an age of rising global tension.