Canadian business news — Canada’s top FinTech leaders gathered at the University of Toronto’s Munk School this week with one blunt message for Ottawa: stop admiring the problem, stop forming committees, and finally build the open banking, payments modernization, and stablecoin infrastructure the rest of the world is already running on.
By Maplestime Business Desk | Toronto, Ontario | September 19, 2026
Sources: BetaKit, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy | Last updated: September 19, 2026
Key Takeaways
- Purpose Investments founder Som Seif kicked off the summit warning Canadians have “stopped building” and are coasting on past wins
- Canada lags its peers on open banking, payments modernization, and stablecoins — and industry progress is suffering for it
- Federal official Julien Brazeau admitted Canada’s post-2008 focus on “resilience and stability” became “an obstacle” to innovation
- Questrade’s Tanya Woods set a hard deadline: “November 4 is a big day” — deliver in the budget, or face industry pressure
- Industry leaders expressed cautious optimism that Prime Minister Mark Carney is the right leader to land these priorities
“Canada Builds” — Seif’s Call to End the Coasting Era
Som Seif, founder and CEO of Purpose Investments, didn’t come to the Munk School’s third annual “The Future” event to make small talk. His opening shot was aimed squarely at the national psyche: Canadians have stopped building.
“Somehow and somewhere along the way, we started coasting, we started assuming that what was built would maintain itself,” Seif told the room. He argued Canadian graduates and entrepreneurs are living through a “confidence crisis” as they increasingly take their talent and their companies elsewhere.
But Seif wasn’t there to eulogize the country — he was there to sell a plan. He said the geopolitical uncertainty created by the United States, combined with recent technological advances, has opened a rare window of opportunity for Canada. The ingredients are already here: the land, the energy, the talent, the expertise, the enthusiasm.
“We need to organize ourselves around a single driving belief that Canada wins and Canada can build,” Seif said. “Not Canada studies, not Canada considers, not Canada forms a committee, but Canada builds. The window is open right now.”
His prescription: choose bold bets over safety, use this moment to lure more skilled talent to Canada, launch a sovereign wealth fund, and get better at celebrating entrepreneurial success.
Interac: “We Like to Admire the Problem”
Debbie Gamble, group head and chief strategy and marketing officer at Interac, backed Seif’s diagnosis with one of the day’s most quoted lines. “We like to admire the problem,” she said — and with the global economy in “crisis,” now is the time to focus on execution instead of observation.
The specific problems Canada is admiring instead of solving: open banking, payments modernization, and more recently stablecoins. On all three, Canada trails its international peers, and that lag is constraining the entire industry’s progress. Every year of delay is a year Canadian startups build slower and Canadian consumers wait longer for modern financial tools.
The Finance Department’s Mea Culpa
One of the more remarkable moments came from inside government itself. Julien Brazeau, assistant deputy minister of financial sector policy at Canada’s Department of Finance, explained how Canada ended up here: the country is still congratulating itself for emerging relatively unscathed from the 2008 global financial crisis.
Brazeau said that while the longstanding focus on “resilience and stability” has “paid dividends,” it has also been “an obstacle in terms of our ability to move on innovation and competitiveness.” He added that three consecutive Liberal governments have made it difficult to secure the political willpower to introduce more innovation — and more risk — into the financial system.
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Portage’s Warning: Waiting Is Its Own Risk
Devon Kirk, general partner at Portage Capital Solutions and a fellow panellist, pushed back on the instinct that caution is the safe play. “This idea that if you wait to see what the winning model is going to be, you can sidestep some risks is seductive,” Kirk said.
In practice, she argued, innovation comes from iteration and builds up over time. Moving too slowly creates “bigger, longer-term risks” for national economies and financial systems. “I think we’re seeing that play out currently in Canada,” she said.
Translation: the cautious path Ottawa keeps choosing isn’t risk-free. It’s just a slower, quieter way to fall behind.
The Carney Factor — and the November 4 Ultimatum
There was genuine optimism in the room that the political weather is finally shifting. FinTech leaders told BetaKit earlier this year they believe Prime Minister Mark Carney is the right leader to push through key priorities like open banking and payments modernization. Brazeau noted on stage that Carney “knows these issues through and through,” and said there is a strong desire across the board right now to ensure Canadian competitiveness.
“I see the next few months … as an exciting time to potentially land a lot of these planes that have been circling now for a while, whether it be open banking, payments modernization, or accelerate our work on stablecoins as well, so that we can ensure that we are competitive going forward,” Brazeau said. “We’re cognizant that it’s been a slow ride, but we’re committed to action.”
Tanya Woods, head of government and regulatory affairs and policy counsel at Questrade, argued the industry should meet that commitment halfway — by bringing Ottawa a single consensus position rather than a pile of competing asks. “If we bring [the feds] consensus, it’s a much easier sell because our customers are voters,” she said.
Then came the warning shot. Woods quipped to Brazeau that if the feds fail to deliver on key industry priorities once again in the upcoming budget, the industry’s patience is over.
“November 4 is a big day,” Woods said. “If you don’t do what you said you’re going to do, we’re going to complain.”
Why This Matters for Canada’s FinTech Future
The Munk School summit captured something rare: agreement. Entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and even the finance department all said the same thing — Canada knows what to do on open banking, payments modernization, and stablecoins, and the only thing missing is the will to do it.
Seif’s framing may be the one that sticks. A country that studies and considers and forms committees will keep watching its graduates build in California and Texas. A country that builds might just catch the window while it’s open.
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Will November 4 be the day Ottawa finally delivers on open banking and payments modernization — or just another budget where the “exciting times” quietly evaporate? Tell us in the comments. And share this with every Canadian tired of watching the country admire its problems instead of solving them.
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