Jim Balsillie, FCPA, FCA on Frameworks, Fundamental Shifts and the Future of the CPA Profession

January 30, 2026

For decades, Jim Balsillie, FCPA, FCA has been one of the strongest voices calling for an updated paradigm for Canada’s economy. His argument is simple, yet provocative: Canada’s economic playbook is stuck in the 1970s, with economic policy focused on low value-add resource extraction and manufacturing. This type of activity, while important, does not reflect the fundamental shifts that have been underway in the global economy for decades.

“Canada needs a strategic reorientation toward owning and capturing value from IP, data, and AI as well as governing against their array of harms,” said Balsillie. “As the U.S. shifted to capturing intangible value, Canada lost global GDP share and a widening gap emerged in overall economic performance.”

But understanding the opportunity for Canada, and for CPAs, means understanding the changes to the global economy over the last 35 years, and why those changes are accelerating.

The Fundamental Shift in the Global Economy

Since the 1970’s, the value of intangibles in the economy has risen dramatically. Once making up less than 20 per cent of the market value of the S&P 500, by 2019 that number had risen to the point where over 90% of all S&P market value is driven by intangible assets. By comparison, the value generated by tangible assets have declined from over 80% to less than 10%.

Likewise, the capital value of intangible assets has skyrocketed to over $37 trillion, when compared to just over $4 trillion in tangible assets.

So how has Canada benefitted from this IP “gold rush?”

It hasn’t.

While Canada leads in government funded research citations, ownership and commercialization of their ensuing innovations is weak. Balance of payments on patent rights has plummeted since the 1980s, and Canada is struggling in patent holdings in the very areas where Canada wants to lead, like AI, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing, according to recent research from the Conference Board of Canada.

While this may all seem somewhat abstract, according to Balsillie there are real world, tangible impacts for working Canadians. Canada trails the OECD in per-capita GDP growth, which means Canadians are, in effect, growing poorer, our standard of living is not keeping up, and the gap between the U.S. and Canada is widening.

According to Balsillie this is due in part to the fact that the Kaldor Ratio, an economic principle that states shares of national income received by labour and capital are roughly constant over long periods of time, is now broken. There has been a divergence between the percentage of national income going to capital, and the percentage now going to labour. The result is a shrinking percentage of national income going to workers.

He points to five structural forces responsible for this change:

• The shifting of labour to lower cost countries through traditional trade agreements
• The separation of tangible production and intangible value chain in the mid-90s
• The rise of the “precariat,” which undermines long-term worker security
• The emergence of the data driven “gig economy” and “attention economy” in the 2010s
• The explosion of machine learning capital in the modern economy, where AI is a new form of productive capital that competes with and compliments human experience

Boosting Canada’s standard of living will be dependent on capturing the value at both ends of the global intangible value chain, with R&D, design and AI compute on one end, and marketing and e-commerce at the other. Production and manufacturing now represent the lowest point of that curve.

Control of Canadian-made intangible assets is more than just an economic imperative for the country. It’s a national security and sovereignty imperative as well.

“The management and control of intangible assets shape both economic outcomes as well as a broad array of non-economic social and security outcomes,” said Balsillie.

That’s where the importance of frameworks, and CPAs background and understanding of standard setting, comes into play.

Frameworks, Standards and Sovereignty

In 1846 the British government codified the rail gauge, the distance between the rails on a track, through the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act, 1846. Given the global reach of the British Empire, this gauge became the standard used around the globe. This was a boon to British train manufacturers, who built their trains to the specifications of this standard. To this day, over half of all rail lines in the world use the Standard Gauge.

It may not be immediately obvious what railway legislation from over 150 years ago has to do with today’s intangible-based economy, but it is an illustration of how standards are not necessarily neutral. In fact, standard setting can benefit the countries and industries who have influence over how those rules are written.

“There are hundreds of thousands of global standards constantly changing via thousands of formal and informal bodies,” said Balsillie. “Firms that want to protect their margins as industries evolve must pursue a sophisticated standard strategy and be present at the table where standards are set.”

CPAs are already well-versed in the importance of frameworks for shaping business outcomes. The Income Tax Act, for example, is one legal framework that “writes the rules” for how businesses operate in Canada. The U.S. has already signaled its aggressive position through the GENIUS Act, it’s AI Action Plan and its National Security Strategy. They have made it clear that standard setting is a matter of national security, sovereignty and hegemonic power. Canada needs to do the same.

According to Balsillie, the “rails” of tokenization and unified ledgers powered through the blockchain are already being built into financial systems. The question for Canada will be who will “set the gauge” and own, control and regulate the systems that Canadians use. The stablecoin legislation introduced in the federal government’s 2025 budget is one example of how Canada is looking to set some “rails” of it’s own.

The Future and the Opportunity of the CPA Profession

The future and opportunity for Canada, and for CPAs, is clear. According to Balsillie, a strategic reorientation of the Canadian economy could result in an additional $500 billion to Canada’s GDP.

CPAs understand the interplay between frameworks and the business environment. Applying the CPA skill set of materiality, controllership and risk to the intangible economy will help Canadian business leaders navigate, and succeed, amidst these seismic shifts. CPA Ontario’s Innovation Leadership Accelerator, now in its third cohort, was created to help equip CPAs with the foundation they need to become leaders in the Canadian innovation space and ultimately drive the growth the Canadian economy needs.

“A CPA trained in the intangible economy asks these questions,” said Balsillie. “And the difference in capability here often separates a firm that reaches $10 million from one that reaches billions.”