From a breakthrough in nuclear fusion to whatever is going on with Twitter, it has been a headline-grabbing year in the tech sector. But there were also many less-hyped developments that will affect our world in 2023 and beyond.
Here are some of the Canadian tech news stories from the past 12 months you may have missed:
Autonomous vehicles kicked into high gear
Self-driving vehicles started to really hit the roads — but not quite in the way we expected. While the idea of an autonomous personal car has dominated discussions in the media (and, in fact, this year saw Tesla enabling its self-driving mode in downtown Toronto), self-driving technology is gaining ground fastest in freight vehicles. This year, supermarket giant Loblaws started moving grocery deliveries between facilities in the GTA using driverless trucks. Meanwhile, Toronto-based startup Waabi started road testing its self-driving tech for long-haul trucks in the U.S.
Canadian carbon-capture tech landed $1-million prize
In April, Canadian startup Planetary Technologies won $1 million from the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Challenge, a global competition backed by Elon Musk. Planetary takes mine waste and transforms it into a kind of antacid for the oceans. This helps slow down the acidification of the seas (which leads to environmental problems such as coral reef bleaching) and enhances their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The waste purification process also creates hydrogen and useful minerals.
The company was one of 15 to receive a Milestone Award part way through the four-year competition, which has received around 1,100 entries. Mike Kelland, Planetary’s CEO, says the recognition has helped the company make progress on developing and commercializing its technology. “We can now have higher-level conversations with officials from government and industry and be able to say credibly that this is a potential real climate solution.”
Canada got serious about its rare minerals industry
Canada produces around 60 minerals, but cobalt and lithium, which are crucial to making batteries, aren’t among them — a glaring gap as demand for electric vehicles soars.
This year, the federal government started working on a strategy to kick-start the industry in Canada.
Meanwhile, efforts were being made to make mining these minerals more sustainable — and some promising technologies are coming from unlikely places. A report from the Innovation Economy Council said that “new genomic-based technologies” could enable genetically engineered microbes that could be used to clean wastewater, remediate mine sites and monitor the environment (though it points out that these uses need to be validated).
More immediately, this year also saw growing interest in finding sources of lithium without digging into the ground. Summit Nanotech, a Calgary-based company developing nanotechnology that extracts lithium from brine, raised U.S.$14 million.
Hydrogen fuel began to take off
Although hydrogen has been touted as a source of clean fuel since the 1990s, its uptake has largely been limited to some industrial applications. But as growth in electric vehicles causes prices for lithium-based batteries to soar, attention turned once again to hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Nine governments created hydrogen energy strategies this year, raising the total to 26, including Canada. Proponents see it as an ideal fuel for larger vehicles such as trains, buses, mining machinery and trucks, especially in cases where lithium batteries would be impractical or too expensive. Jon Dogterom, an executive-in-residence at MaRS Discovery District, says one of the advantages of hydrogen is that it is available everywhere, unlike lithium, which is controlled by a handful of countries. “Hydrogen is not bound by the same geographic constraints as fossil fuels or resource extraction for batteries. It is a massive opportunity for global equity and stability.”
There were bright spots in the tech slowdown
After massive growth during the pandemic, 2022 saw a slowdown in the tech sector across major economies. Although for many companies, the retrenchment was a return to their pre-pandemic trajectories, news of cuts at corporate juggernauts, such as Amazon and Meta (Facebook), was startling. While high-profile Canadian companies like Shopify have also downsized, there are bright spots to the economic reset: Kitchener-based tech hub Communitech has said that the Toronto-Waterloo corridor will likely be home to more tech workers than Silicon Valley next year as Canada continues to attract highly skilled immigrants.
And, although 2023 is also shaping up to be tricky, Abdullah Snobar, executive director of the DMZ, a startup incubator at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), says Canada has several advantages that may help it through. Snobar points to Canada’s strong financial system, robust social safety nets, deep talent pool and a thriving innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem: “2023 will be the ultimate test for tech companies, large and small,” he says. Companies will need to learn from 2022 and “understand how to deal with difficult times, and come out of it better, stronger, more effective, more calculated and more efficient.”
The real metaverse started taking shape
While Mark Zuckerberg continued to throw money at building an alternate universe this year — Meta may have spent $36 billion on its metaverse projects so far — Canadian startups have been focused on more tangible uses for virtual reality. Marion Surgical, which creates a VR (virtual reality) device that simulates surgery and provides haptic feedback to train surgeons, has found success in its niche. Its technology can be used to improve help surgeons practice their skills and train students and residents. The company is now developing a tool that will allow a doctor in another room (or maybe even another country) to annotate the augmented view and instruct the operating surgeon in real time. Another Canadian startup taking advantage of metaverse tech is Virtro, which creates immersive scenarios to train users for stressful situations, such as job interviews, and to enable them to practise their language skills.
Disclaimer This content was produced as part of a partnership and therefore it may not meet the standards of impartial or independent journalism.
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