Colin Deacon 🇨🇦🇺🇦

Independent Senator, Senate of Canada 🍁

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

About

Entrepreneurs and innovators solve problems and implement solutions faster and more effectively than governments ever can. Yet in Canada, they face needless challenges that prevent them from delivering their full value to Canadians across all sectors of our economy. Inordinately complicated procurement practices too often make it impractical for new entrants to compete. Command and control regulations prevent innovators from solving old problems in new ways. Outdated approaches to competition reward incumbents and create barriers for innovative new entrants. The risk averse culture of our public sector resists non-conforming approaches or ideas. Consequently, governments cannot respond to rapidly changing global market realities. Unless there is a crisis. COVID showed us that government can take risks and innovate, but it can also be very expensive. That’s why our office is focused on finding ways to improve how Government empowers Canada’s innovators and entrepreneurs. We know that they can help to solve our most pressing problems by inventing and scaling made-in-Canada solutions, both nationally and globally. The resilience of our economy, the capacity of our healthcare system, our ability to respond to the climate crisis, and our collective prosperity depends on fostering a culture of inclusive entrepreneurship in all spheres of our society. PLEASE NOTE: Due to high volumes of messages, I cannot respond to every meeting request in my inbox. To schedule a meeting, please contact my office. The contact information is on my website: colindeacon.ca. Thank you.

Experience

  • Senate of Canada | Sénat du Canada (8 yrs 2 mos)
    • Member - Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries & Oceans
      Sep 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 11 mos

    • Member - Standing Senate Committee on Audit & Oversight
      Sep 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 11 mos

    • Independent Senator, Nova Scotia
      Jun 2018 - Present · 8 yrs 2 mos

      • Champion of innovation, competition and entrepreneurship to drive our collective prosperity. • Advocate for startup founders and investors across traditional and emerging markets. • Member of the Canadian Senators Group.

  • Founder at BlueLight Analytics
    Dec 2009 - Oct 2018 · 8 yrs 11 mos

    • Founded BlueLight Analytics, a global expert in curing lights for dentistry, enhancing clinical processes. • Developed proprietary technologies that integrate polymer chemistry, photonics and machine learning to inform evidence-based clinical decision-making. • Provided clinical insights that are crucial to the provision of effective clinical care for procedures that generate half of all dental revenue.

  • Director & Vice Chair at Kids Brain Health
    Jul 2016 - Sep 2018 · 2 yrs 3 mos

    The world's largest network of researchers and clinicians dedicated to improving the lives of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families.

  • Entrepreneur In Residence at Startup Zone PEI
    Apr 2017 - Jul 2018 · 1 yr 4 mos

    Startup Zone supports entrepreneurs who feel a sense of urgency and have demonstrated a passionate commitment in pursuit of a business opportunity that addresses quantified customer needs and has scalable global potential. Our role is to help the entrepreneur explore and test their idea as quickly and inexpensively as is possible.

  • Executive Director at Kaplan Inc.
    Jun 2006 - May 2007 · 1 yr

    Multi-billion dollar education company that acquired SpellRead.