Brampton construction technology company is asking federal, provincial and municipal governments for three changes, and is calling on other Canadian construction technology firms to join
BRAMPTON, Ontario, Sept. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SMARTBUILD Construction Solutions Inc. today launched the BUY CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY Initiative, a nationwide campaign calling on governments to extend Buy Canadian and Buy Ontario procurement policy to software and digital platforms.
The campaign is directed at federal, provincial and municipal officials, and asks governments to take three steps:
1. Name construction and infrastructure software as a strategic category
2. Set procurement thresholds that reflect what software contracts actually cost rather than what buildings cost
3. Apply a Canadian-content test to the platform layer of every publicly funded project
SMARTBUILD is also inviting other Canadian construction technology companies to join the Initiative and put forward a common industry position. Company leadership has spent the past year meeting with industry and government to build the case.
“Canadians are fighting back, and this is our contribution,” said Zulq Malik, Chief Executive Officer of SMARTBUILD. “The Canada-US tariff fight is being fought over goods. The wider imbalance is in technology, and it is not moving. It’s time Canada recognized the value of Canadian-designed and developed software in its buying policies.”
SMARTBUILD CEO Zulq Malik and Chief Customer Experience Officer Vinay Nair (centre) spoke with Evan Solomon MP, Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation (left), at a Toronto reception in December 2025. Also pictured is Ehsan Youseff, Microsoft’s Head of Canada.
SMARTBUILD CEO Zulq Malik (second from right) and Vice-President of Strategic Partnerships Evan Lewis spoke with Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade Vic Fedeli MPP (centre) at a Canadian Club of Toronto event on May 4, 2026. Also pictured is landscape architect Tim Dobson.
Why the company is acting now
Canada’s technology workforce now stands at more than 1.5 million jobs, nearly half of them in Ontario. SMARTBUILD says those jobs are exposed, because Canadian public infrastructure is increasingly managed on American platforms while the trade relationship deteriorates.
In 2024, Canada imported roughly three times what it exported in information and communications technology, US$38.6 billion against US$12 billion. The US Department of Commerce lists ICT as a leading sector for American exports to Canada, names the Government of Canada as the largest single purchaser of ICT goods and services at roughly C$5 billion a year, and advises American firms that Canadian government procurement is expected to open new opportunities for US companies.
“The US government publishes a guide telling American software companies how to sell into Canadian government procurement,” said Malik. “We are their best customer, and now they have decided we are not a trading partner. Nobody is putting a tariff on software. Canada does not need to tariff software, it needs a procurement policy that will create certainty for jobs in the sector and allow for billions in revenue to stay in Canada, not flow south to US companies.”
The gap the campaign is targeting
Ottawa already agrees in principle. Under a federal policy in force since December 16, 2025, technology is one of five sectors where Canadian suppliers get a leg up. Their bid gets scored as if it were 10% cheaper than it is, and up to 25% of the evaluation can rest on the Canadian content. The catch is the price tag. The rules only kick in on contracts worth $5 million or more, a threshold Ottawa already lowered once, from $25 million, on June 15, 2026.
Consider who that leaves out. When a city builds a water treatment plant, the construction contract clears $5 million easily. The software that runs the project costs a fraction of that, so it gets bought under rules that ignore where it comes from. The building is Canadian. The system managing it does not have to be.
Ontario does the same thing from the other direction. Its Buy Ontario rules, in force since April 13, 2026, give Ontario suppliers a real advantage on major infrastructure work, but that part of the directive says plainly that it does not apply to technology purchases. The general preference left over for software covers service contracts under $139,000, well below what a city or a provincial agency pays for the platform that runs a project.
“Every cost code, schedule revision and site photograph on a Canadian public project passes through these platforms,” said Malik. “Canada has the companies, the developers and the track record. What we do not have is a buying rule that backs them. If we want a Canadian technology industry in this category five years from now, the rules have to reward buying from Canadian companies, not just penalize buying from someone else.”
A Canadian company solution
SMARTBUILD’s platform is hosted on servers in Toronto, keeping all project data in Canada.
Over the past four years, Ontario general contractors and subcontractors alone have used SMARTBUILD to deliver more than $250 million in municipal infrastructure across 54 confirmed projects in 31 communities. The projects span water and wastewater treatment plants, recreation and community facilities, roads and bridges. Customers report up to 50% improvements in administrative productivity on tasks such as Change Orders and Requests for Information, and more than 90% of projects delivered through the platform finish on schedule.
One of those customers is GEN-PRO, a Burlington-based general contractor that has delivered SMARTBUILD-managed projects for the City of Guelph, the City of Brampton, the Region of Waterloo, and Niagara Region. Company President Shaun Dawson sits on the board of the Ontario General Contractors Association.
“I did not expect a single piece of technology to make this much of a difference to how we run public projects, but SMARTBUILD has changed the math on our administrative overhead and how confidently we can stand behind our schedules and our books,” said Dawson. “For Ontario contractors competing for public work, that matters.”
About SMARTBUILD
SMARTBUILD Construction Solutions Inc. is a 100% Canadian-owned construction technology company headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, with an office in Regina, Saskatchewan. Founded in 2019, SMARTBUILD builds software for the industrial, commercial and institutional construction sector: smrtAE for architects and engineers, smrtGC for general contractors, smrtSUB for trade subcontractors, and smrt-E, an AI voice-first tool for field documentation. The company hosts all project data on Canadian servers. Learn more at: www.smrtbld.com
To join the BUY CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY Initiative contact: Evan Lewis, PhD | [email protected]
Media contact: Ava Gottlieb | [email protected]
Sources: CompTIA, State of the Tech Workforce Canada 2026. US Department of Commerce, Canada Country Commercial Guide, Information and Communications Technology, April 2026. Policy on Prioritizing Canadian Suppliers and Canadian Content in Strategic Federal Procurement. Buy Ontario Procurement Directive, sections 4.2 and 4.4.2.
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