OTTAWA — When Hamoon Ekhtiari read Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to protect Canadian industries from the trade war, it appeared Ottawa had passed over his homegrown tech company for an American alternative. While he wasn’t entirely surprised, by the time he read to the end of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement, his jaw was on the floor.

“I just literally stopped in my tracks for a couple of minutes, and had to gather myself,” said Ekhtiari, co-founder and CEO of FutureFit AI, a Toronto-based firm that uses AI to connect job seekers with in-demand careers. 

Carney gave a press conference in Mississauga, Ont., on Sept. 5, promising support for workers and businesses to help them weather U.S. tariffs and adapt to a new economic reality. His pitch included a five-year, $50-million plan to integrate AI into the government’s job tools and launch a new platform to offer job seekers short-term training. 

He said the government would partner with Texas-based Indeed and California-based ZipRecruiter on the project, two large online job boards that use AI to match job seekers with opportunities.

The announcement also mentioned partnerships with firms in Quebec and New Brunswick, but the appearance of two large U.S. companies on the list was hard for Ekhtiari to swallow. Less than three minutes later, after all, Carney announced a new “comprehensive buy-Canadian policy.”

“We need to use government procurement, using Canadian taxpayer dollars, to spur Canadian businesses for longer-term prosperity, to support Canadian industries,” Carney said at the press conference.

The tech community called out the contradiction immediately, highlighting Canadian alternatives to American brand-name services. In a statement after Carney’s speech, Council of Canadian Innovators president Benjamin Bergen said that software firms and digital platforms are central to capturing economic value, and that the group is encouraged by the government’s talk of digital sovereignty. “However, we were disappointed to see the government defaulting to American software platforms like Indeed and ZipRecruiter for job support services, when Canadian companies like FutureFit AI, We Know Training, Bluedrop, Talent.com and Plum are equipped to offer similar services.”

FutureFit AI offers the same services the government appears to be pitching with its new jobs platform, Ekhtiari said. It’s been adopted by governments in the U.S., including Michigan, South Carolina and Connecticut. “This is Canadian technology that other governments, despite having things like buy-American legislation, are choosing versus American vendors,” he said. 

Ekhtiari said he wants to believe in the government’s intention to give Canadian companies a chance at federal contracts, but said the prime minister’s message was inconsistent. “I think this example needs to be held up as what cannot happen again,” he said.

As it turns out, Indeed and ZipRecruiter’s involvement in the government’s plan for a modernized, AI-integrated job board may be smaller than the prime minister made it out to be. The two are among 14 private-sector partners that contribute job postings to the government’s job board, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) spokesperson Liana Brault said in a statement after The Logic requested details. The agreements let the government hyperlink to external postings. The companies aren’t paid, and there’s an open call for others to join. “The best way to connect Canadians to jobs faster is to have as wide of a job board as possible,” she said. 

It’s not clear why the prime minister highlighted Indeed and ZipRecruiter’s involvement. In a follow-up exchange about whether the companies will have anything to do with the modernization effort, ESDC spokesperson Mila Roy said they will have to “adhere to the new enhancements,” but didn’t specify what that will entail. Canadian firms don’t know if there will be opportunities to contribute to the project, but say they weren’t consulted before the prime minister name-checked the American companies.

“If it went straight into the hands of a predetermined partner, and if there’s an American in the loop, I’d be disappointed,” said Chris LaBossiere, co-founder and CEO of We Know Training. 

The Edmonton-based firm helps workers in regulated professions assess their skills and create customized training programs for roles they’re pursuing. The company keeps an eye out for government procurement opportunities, and didn’t see anything resembling the job platform Carney spoke of. 

Carney’s promise to prioritize Canadian suppliers and their products in all federal government spending by November would be a shift from the status quo, said LeBossiere. Right now, Canadian companies are often “out-hustled” by big American firms’ lobby arms. “I think that’s probably what the government’s hoping to solve but, in this case, it sounds like it wasn’t there yet,” he said. 

For Plum CEO Caitlin MacGregor, feeling left out of the conversation about the federal government’s new AI-driven approach to jobs and training was a “kick in the teeth”—especially when American government bodies, including the U.S. Department of Labor, have looked to Plum for solutions to similar problems. 

Her company’s platform measures a worker’s transferable skills based on a 25-minute assessment and claims to predict an employee’s job success four times more accurately than a resume alone. It previously ran a pilot program with the Canadian defence department, but MacGregor generally finds the amount of red tape involved in working with the government prohibitive. 

That could change if the government starts consulting with companies about the kind of home-grown solutions that are available in the Canadian marketplace before putting out prescriptive tenders. “With the initiative that the government is doing, I think we have a very valid contribution,” she said.

First, though, the government needs to know who it could work with, and that means taking the time to seek out Canadian vendors before partnering with American name brands, MacGregor said. 

“It starts with understanding who are your best-in-breed companies already here in Canada,” she said. “I don’t even think that they have the awareness of who they could be selecting from, and the track record of success that we have.”