Former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark is worried about Canada’s ability to compete on the global stage as technology continues to rapidly evolve.

“I’m concerned that Canada as a whole is not prepared and is dropping behind in the competitive revolution,” he told BNN in an interview Friday.

Clark helped launch Toronto’s Vector Institute, a recently-announced artificial intelligence research centre  backed by the Ontario government.  He said the institute will help increase innovation by bringing academics, business and government together – something Canada “has not been particularly good at,” said Clark.

“I think if you look around the world and see protectionism and the kind of issues that are going on, the best thing for Canada to do is to get to be more competitive,” he said.

Canada does have some innovation bright spots, said Clark and cited Shopify as a Canadian company that would be the next Blackberry. The e-commerce company’s impressive sales numbers on Black Friday are an example of the company’s recent rapid rise to success, he said.

“We have a tremendous innovation sector but I think there are things that we have to do to make sure that they keep scaling up and that they don’t just sail out,” Clark said. 

“This is a war of Canada being competitive with the rest of the world, not of Canada being competitive with itself.”