The head of a national self-driving-vehicle advocacy group wants Ottawa to copy a British funding model for transportation innovation.
"The government-led model is not working," Barrie Kirk, president of the Canadian Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI), wrote in an open letter this week. "We need the UK model -- a cooperative government-industry-academic approach to transportation innovation."
Kirk cites Transport Canada's 2025 annual report, which found Canada's transportation sector had "the worst total factor productivity performance" among G7 countries over 25 years.
Kirk's model, Zenzic, is not a standalone fund. It is the connective piece in a UK setup that also includes the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, a joint policy unit of the Department for Transport and the Department for Business and Trade, and Innovate UK, which administers the money.
Zenzic runs a shared five-site testbed network for road trials and helps deliver funding rounds, including a recent £150-million round, CAM Pathfinder, backing 14 projects from London bus depots to a Glasgow transit trial.
Kirk's ask for Canada is thinner by comparison, a "new agency" partnered with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, modelled on Zenzic. His says the first step is a summit, convened by Transport Canada and ISED with industry and academia, to work out "the extent to which it mirrors the UK model."
His third ask is cultural: more government tolerance for "risk and trial-and-error." He points to the Ford Model T, which he says took roughly 20 prototypes to reach mass production in 1908, an anecdote drawn from company lore, not a cited source.
"Let's adopt the UK approach and ensure that Canada is a leader with these innovative changes," Kirk wrote.
CAVI is a not-for-profit association for people working in connected and automated vehicles.
