There has been a Canadian consensus on the merits of foreign direct investment (FDI) for decades that cuts across sectors and partisan lines. In our traditional industries, it makes perfect sense. When foreign investors put up a hotel or finance resource development, there are obvious positive economic spillovers to the benefit of Canadians.
However, as the driver of wealth creation in the global economy shifts from tangible assets such as infrastructure to intangible assets such as algorithms, data sets and software-as-services, the national benefits of FDI into the domestic tech sector become opaque.
