Is Quebec falling behind as everyone else races ahead?

As a Quebec-based tech startup about to raise a significant funding round, we watched the release of the 2025-2026 provincial budget closely. We were looking for a clear signal that the government understands what it means to build for the future — to compete globally, to grow companies that start here and stay here, and to build an economy where innovation is more than just a buzzword.

What we got instead was a cautious rearrangement of existing tools. Useful? Maybe. Bold? Not even close.

The government’s flagship announcement on innovation this year is a new tax credit for research, innovation, and commercialization (CRIC) — a consolidation of eight previous measures, simplified for accessibility and better targeted at commercialization.

On paper, this sounds like a positive step. In practice, it's a structural reorganization, not an injection of fresh energy or funding into Quebec’s innovation ecosystem.

In fact, the net effect of this new tax regime is a reduction in support: $271.5 million less in fiscal incentives over the next five years. For startups like ours — early-stage, ambitious, and racing to stay competitive — that’s not just a missed opportunity. It’s a signal that we’re not the priority.

There’s no new direct support for early-stage ventures, no dedicated capital for commercialization beyond what's already baked into existing frameworks, and no real action to improve access to private funding, which remains a structural weakness in Quebec’s startup environment. Meanwhile, other provinces — and countries — are moving fast. Ontario continues to invest in AI and medtech. Alberta is ramping up its support for quantum and clean energy. France and the UK are pouring billions into innovation at all levels, from research to scale-up. Quebec, by contrast, is fine-tuning its toolkit without increasing what’s in the toolbox.

To be clear: we don’t expect governments to fund every big idea. But we do expect them to place strategic bets. The Quebec government already acknowledges that we’re falling behind on R&D investment compared to our peers, and that our innovation spending is overly concentrated in a few sectors. They know the regime has been too complex and too limited in its impact. This budget could have been a reset — a chance to align innovation policy with the actual velocity of the companies it claims to support.

Instead, it feels like a holding pattern.

And here’s the part that stings: because we’re raising a significant round of funding this year, we’ll most likely need to look outside of Quebec and outside of Canada. Not because we want to. But because that’s where the capital is, that’s where governments are matching private sector ambition, and that’s where the conditions to grow are being created intentionally — not passively.

We want to build in Quebec. We want to scale in Quebec. But building the future requires more than simplifying the past. It requires real vision, real investment, and real belief that companies born here are worth backing at every stage.

We’re not seeing that yet. And we’re running out of time.