From left: Brent Fowles, Lesa O’Brien, Catherine DesgagnésBelzil, and Scott McKenna, recipients of the 2025 CanadianCIO Awards, recognized for leadership in cybersecurity, notforprofit, private sector, and public sector innovation. Photo by Scott Ramsay for
Under the wooden beams of Toronto’s Old Mill, a venue more often associated with weddings than with digital transformation, Canada’s technology leaders gathered for the relaunch of the CanadianCIO Awards.
The Tudorstyle building, first established as King’s Mill in 1793, provided an oldworld backdrop for a celebration of the country’s digital future.
The ceremony brought together chief information officers and technology leaders from across the country to spotlight the people shaping Canada’s digital systems and strategies. Awards were presented in four categories: private sector, public sector, notforprofit, and CISO of the Year.
“The future of Canada isn’t shaped by the policies or the headlines. It’s shaped by you, technology leaders,” said Shaun Guthrie, president and chair of the CIO Association of Canada.
This year’s awards recognized four leaders whose work highlights the different ways technology is driving change across Canada.
- Catherine DesgagnésBelzil, executive vicepresident of business performance and IT at Beneva — Private Sector CIO of the Year
- Scott McKenna, chief information officer for Nova Scotia Health Authority — Public Sector CIO of the Year
- Lesa O’Brien, executive vicepresident of digital strategy and technology at the Canadian Cancer Society — NotforProfit CIO of the Year
- Brent Fowles, director of cybersecurity and business services at Western University — CISO of the Year
Rebuilding from the ground up
Private sector winner Catherine DesgagnésBelzil, executive vicepresident of business performance and IT at Beneva, reflected on the rare chance to build something new at scale.
Following the merger of two major insurers, La Capitale and SSQ, she led the creation of a new technology ecosystem instead of stitching together legacy systems. The result, she said, was “a brand new IT ecosystem from two mature, very complex enterprises.”
Her story captured the essence of transformation as design rather than repair. She credited her team for embracing risk and discomfort, noting that leadership “isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about asking the right questions.”
For DesgagnésBelzil, innovation is inseparable from inclusion.
“Different voices bring different ideas, and that’s how real innovation happens,” she said.
Her perspective reflects a broader truth in Canada’s private sector: rebuilding technology is often the easy part.
Rebuilding trust, alignment, and shared purpose within organizations is the deeper challenge, and the one that determines whether transformation takes root.
Designing systems that serve citizens
In the public sector, transformation is equally ambitious but even more complex.
Scott McKenna, chief information officer for Nova Scotia Health Authority, argued that healthcare’s sustainability depends on genuine change.
“We can continue to do the same things we’ve always done,” he said. “That’s not transformation. That’s modernization with technology.”
McKenna’s team has created one of North America’s first provincewide digital health records by adopting international data standards. The project unites family doctors, hospitals, virtual care, and pharmacies into a single health information ecosystem.
The goal, he explained, is to deliver the same seamless access people already expect from their privatesector experiences. He describes the effort as putting “the consumer first,” a phrase that signals a shift from institutional priorities to citizen experience.
The initiative shows what can happen when digital governance is backed by political will. McKenna credited provincial leadership for creating the conditions that made transformation possible, noting that alignment at the top was essential to sustaining momentum and trust.
Innovation under constraint
The same themes apply in the notforprofit sector, where technology leadership often means advancing despite scarcity.
Lesa O’Brien, executive vicepresident of digital strategy and technology at the Canadian Cancer Society, led a threeyear transformation to strengthen cybersecurity, streamline fundraising, and improve data use.
“Digital transformation is essential for nonprofits,” she said. “It helps us increase our fundraising capabilities, reach more people, and have more impact.”
Her approach demonstrates that innovation is not limited to those with large budgets. Through a shared digital roadmap and principles developed across fundraising, mission, and operations teams, O’Brien’s team consolidated data, modernized systems, and used analytics to connect technology investments directly to the needs of donors and clients.
In doing so, she reframed transformation as stewardship, a form of leadership that treats efficiency and empathy as equally strategic.
Security as a shared responsibility
Western University’s director of cybersecurity and business services, Brent Fowles, brought that same systems mindset to a different challenge: digital risk.
Named CISO of the Year, he leads cybersecurity across a sprawling academic environment that serves 50,000 people. His focus, however, has been cultural, not technical.
“Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT function,” he said. “It’s a shared responsibility that we all have on campus.”
By embedding risk awareness into everyday operations, Fowles’ team has moved Western from isolated defences to what he calls “a connected, riskaware ecosystem.”
The lesson applies well beyond higher education, showing that the resilience of Canada’s institutions now depends on the trust and literacy of the people who operate them.
A legacy revived
The evening also reconnected the CIO community with its roots. Longtime journalist and judge Jim Love reflected on the early years of the awards under the late Fawn Annan, who helped professionalize the CIO role in Canada.
“The intent is to highlight the many great examples of successful contributions made by these leaders for their respective organizations, for the industry at large, and for the CIO profession,” said Gary Davenport, chair of the national judging panel.
Each award recipient now joins the CanadianCIO Hall of Fame, a living record of leadership that dates back to 2011. The Hall, accessible through the CIO Association of Canada’s website, recognizes those whose work has redefined the role of the CIO as a driver of strategy and national competitiveness.
The 2025 awards are supported by Bell, Quantiphi, and Infolaser, reflecting industry engagement in Canada’s technology community.
What’s at stake
The evening’s stories revealed a pattern of technology leadership in Canada becoming less about managing systems and more about shaping the digital infrastructure that holds the country together.
Whether in insurance, healthcare, philanthropy or research, CIOs are a part of designing new models of resilience grounded in inclusion, accountability, and shared intelligence.
This shift is a sign of what is at stake for the national innovation economy. Taken together, the stories shared suggest that Canada’s ability to compete globally does not solely rely on the speed of technological adoption, but on the trust and integrity built into its critical systems.
Their work of balancing citizen experience, privacy and cyberrisk reflects the tensions at the centre of Canada’s digital transformation.
“When we celebrate leadership, we don’t just honour the past. We inspire the next generation of innovators who will shape Canada’s digital future,” Guthrie reminded the audience.
The leaders celebrated at the Old Mill showed that in a century defined by data, trust and talent, Canada’s edge may not come from faster innovation alone, but from how thoughtfully it’s led.
is the national media partner for the CIO Association of Canada.
