OTTAWA — Industry associations are joining together to form a new semiconductor supergroup, called SILICAN, with the aim of influencing Ottawa’s efforts in developing the country’s chip industry. The collective of lobbies representing accelerators, multinational firms, scale-ups and universities is convening as governments around the world look to re-lay the sector’s supply chains amid simmering geopolitical tensions. Here’s what you need to know:

The spark: SILICAN—officially the Semiconductor Industry Leadership and Innovation Canada Action Network—will try to speak with one voice. 

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) brought the coalition together over the last few months. There are “a lot of different voices and opinions [in] the semiconductor space,” said Benjamin Bergen, the scale-up lobby group’s president. “Government had really communicated that it was challenging to know how to engage.” 

Policymakers around the world are putting up huge sums of money and rewriting rules to foster domestic chip production and development, while seeking to curb the export of advanced components to non-aligned nations. Canada wants in. The federal government has said it’s offering $250 million in funding for semiconductor projects and pitching a cross-border chip corridor to the U.S. 

SILICAN’s members want “a proper national strategy that builds successful semiconductor companies,” said Bergen. That requires creating immediate opportunities for companies to join nearshoring global supply chains, as well as backing nascent firms developing new technology for both short-term and “moonshot” applications.

“There’s got to be a way for us as a country and an industry to take advantage of [our] proximity to where staggering amounts of capital are going to be deployed,” said Paul Slaby, managing director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council (CSC), a SILICAN member, citing projects prompted by the US$52.7-billion U.S. CHIPS and Science Act.

The activity: SILICAN is aiming to have regular meetings with officials in the finance, industry, natural resources, trade and other departments responsible for the semiconductor supply chain. Bergen said the collective doesn’t plan to publish a report or proposal outlining asks.

But the CSC has. In November 2021, it laid out a 2050 action plan for policymakers, calling for financial incentives for domestic fabrication, as well as funding for startups, R&D and training. The document forms “a strong underlying foundation” for the sector, said Slaby, although he noted SILICAN hasn’t officially adopted it.

Who else is in: Other SILICAN members include the U15, a lobby group for major Canadian universities; Montreal-headquartered CMC Microsystems, a chip-startup incubator; and Quebec City-based Optonique and Bromont, Que.-based ISEQ, the provincial clusters for photonics and electronics, respectively.