By Kelly Daize, Executive Director, KNBA, Canada’s Largest Technology Park
Canada’s decision to commercialize the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC)—the only end-to-end, pure-play compound semiconductor facility in North America—recently announced by The Honourable Minister Mélanie Joly, represents one of the most important technology and industrial policy opportunities the country has seen in decades.
As global supply chains are reshaped by geopolitical uncertainty, technological competition, and the race for economic sovereignty, Canada can no longer rely on other nations to manufacture the technologies our innovators design and our researchers invent. The countries that lead the next global economy will be those that control critical technologies, secure supply chains, and sovereign manufacturing capabilities.
Canada must lead in the areas where we already possess real competitive advantages: compound semiconductors, integrated photonics, AI, quantum technologies, secure communications, and advanced sensing. Few regions in the world possess this level of expertise.
These are not commodity industries—they are strategic technologies that will define economic prosperity, productivity, and national security for decades to come.
Ottawa is uniquely positioned to lead that effort.
As Canada’s Largest Technology Park and home to one of North America’s most concentrated clusters of telecommunications, semiconductor, and photonics companies, we strongly support this initiative because we understand what is at stake—not only for Ottawa, but for Canada’s future competitiveness.
For decades, Ottawa has been a global leader in semiconductors, integrated photonics, optical networking, and advanced communications systems. The region accounts for 90% of Canada’s industrial telecommunications R&D and has built world-class expertise in compound semiconductors, photonics, AI hardware, defence technologies, and quantum systems.
Yet despite this leadership, Canada has lacked a critical capability: a commercial-scale compound semiconductor fabrication facility.
I want to address an important misunderstanding that has emerged in some of the public discussion surrounding the CPFC expansion.
This is not about building a commodity semiconductor fab designed to compete with massive low-cost silicon manufacturing facilities in Asia.
Canada is not attempting to replicate high-volume silicon manufacturers. This is about building a world-leading capability in compound semiconductors—a highly specialized, high-value segment where Canada already possesses globally recognized expertise.
Semiconductors are the foundation of every modern economy, powering communications systems, defence technologies, AI infrastructure, medical devices, satellites, vehicles, and energy systems.
But not all semiconductors are the same.
Traditional silicon chips—built around electrical signals moving through copper interconnects—power smartphones, laptops, and everyday electronics. But the next generation of computing, communications, sensing, and AI infrastructure increasingly depends on integrated photonics and the ability to move data using light instead of electricity.
That is where compound semiconductors become critical.
Built from advanced materials such as indium phosphide (InP), gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), and silicon carbide (SiC), compound semiconductors enable technologies that use light, high-frequency signals, and advanced materials to achieve levels of speed, efficiency, sensing, bandwidth, and power that traditional silicon alone cannot deliver.
These technologies are essential for fibre-optic communications, AI data centres, radar systems, LiDAR, satellite communications, quantum sensing, autonomous systems, advanced defence technologies, and next-generation power electronics.
In practical terms, silicon powers many of today’s consumer electronics, while compound semiconductors and integrated photonics will power the next generation of high-performance communications, aerospace, defence, AI, and quantum technologies that modern economies increasingly depend upon.
The technologies enabled by compound semiconductors are foundational to both the future global economy and national security. These are strategic capabilities that only a small number of countries can design, manufacture, and scale domestically.
The opportunity here is not to become the cheapest manufacturer in the world. The opportunity is to be the world’s most advanced, trusted, and strategically important hub for compound semiconductors and integrated photonics.
This is Canada’s niche—and Ottawa is where that niche has already achieved global leadership.
Known as “Silicon Valley North,” Ottawa’s ecosystem includes world-leading firms in optical networking, RF systems, AI hardware, aerospace, quantum technologies, and defence communications. Over decades, the region has built globally recognized expertise in photonics, optical networking, compound semiconductors, telecommunications, defence technologies, and quantum systems.
Many of these companies already rely on the CPFC for prototyping and low-volume fabrication and will directly benefit from access to a commercial-scale Canadian facility—allowing them to scale production domestically, accelerate commercialization, protect intellectual property, and strengthen Canada’s sovereign supply chain for strategically important technologies.
Today, however, Canadian companies must rely on foreign facilities for commercial-scale manufacturing, primarily in the United States and Asia, creating significant risks around supply chains, intellectual property, costs, and long-term economic sovereignty.
This challenge is particularly critical for defence and security technologies, including controlled goods such as infrared imaging systems, advanced sensors, secure communications equipment, radar technologies, and aerospace systems, where trusted domestic manufacturing capabilities are increasingly essential for both national security and allied supply chain resilience.
It has also meant that too much of the economic value created by Canadian innovation has been captured elsewhere.
The commercialization of the CPFC changes that trajectory.
Importantly, Canada possesses many of the critical minerals, technical expertise, and industrial capabilities required to build a complete sovereign supply chain—from the ground to the finished product. Few countries have the opportunity to integrate critical minerals, semiconductor fabrication, photonics, packaging, and final system integration within a single trusted ecosystem. Canada can—and should—lead the world in this strategic sector.
This matters not only for innovation, but also for productivity.
Canada has struggled with lagging productivity growth. One of the biggest drivers of productivity is the ability to commercialize advanced technologies domestically, scale manufacturing capacity, and create high-value exports. A commercial CPFC will strengthen Canada’s advanced manufacturing base, accelerate commercialization, anchor critical intellectual property domestically, and create highly skilled jobs across engineering, manufacturing, AI, defence, and quantum technologies.
At a time when semiconductors have become central to national security and economic resilience, Canada cannot afford to remain solely a research and design nation while production capabilities move offshore.
Building on the expertise and foundation of the CPFC gives Canada a rare opportunity to establish itself as the North American hub for integrated photonics and compound semiconductor manufacturing.
This is also a far rarer capability than many people realize.
There are only a handful of regions in the world with the expertise, infrastructure, talent, and industrial ecosystem required to design and manufacture advanced compound semiconductors at scale. Canada already possesses one of the world’s leading ecosystems in these technologies, anchored within the eastern Canadian innovation corridor, with Ottawa at its centre.
The CPFC is a critical pillar of that ecosystem and a strategic asset for Canada’s future leadership in advanced technologies.
This is why the commercialization of the CPFC matters so much. It is not simply about expanding manufacturing capacity—it is about securing and scaling one of Canada’s rare globally competitive technology advantages at a time when trusted supply chains and sovereign capabilities are becoming increasingly important.
This is the new Canada: ambitious, sovereign, innovative, and confident in its ability to lead. A Canada that moves beyond exporting intellectual property, designs, and raw materials, and instead builds complete value chains—from critical minerals in the ground to finished advanced technologies manufactured here at home.
Canada has the expertise. Ottawa has the ecosystem. Now is the time to lead.
By Kelly Daize, Executive Director, KNBA, Canada’s Largest Technology Park
