A new era of Cyber Games in Canada

Let's talk about pathway.cyberm.ca, and if you don't know what that is yet, don't worry, you will (in good time). As Cyber Mounties' digital footprint keeps growing like a well-fed exploit chain, the need for a proper launchpad became undeniable. Pathway is exactly that: a place where anyone, and I mean anyone, whether you're a 40-year-old accountant who just discovered Wireshark or a 19-year-old who thinks SQL injection sounds like a medical procedure, can get started in cybersecurity and actually break into this field without someone gatekeeping the door with their LinkedIn certifications and a superiority complex.

CTFs, Partnerships, and the Canadian Dumpster Fire

Part of pathway's DNA is CTF participation. Not the "here's a riddle wrapped in Base64 and a dream" kind of CTF that most organizers vomit out. The CTFs I build are grounded in real-world scenarios, because when you're actually being breached at 2AM, the attacker is not going to hand you a cleverly themed puzzle about pirates and ASCII art. They're going to hit you with something real, dirty, and inconvenient, and you better know what you're doing.

We're currently working with Challenge The Cyber in the Netherlands and omniCTF in Romania, two events that actually give a damn about building a hacker ecosystem rather than just filling a conference room with sponsor-approved content.

But Canada? Let's have an honest conversation about Canada.

We have no home team. And that's not for lack of trying, it's because the existing Canadian cybersecurity and CTF event landscape is, to put it diplomatically, a spectacular mess. To put it less diplomatically: it's a circle of sponsor-worshipping, volunteer-exploiting, DEI-panel-holding, DEFCON-cosplaying mediocrity that would make any self-respecting hacker cringe into the fetal position.

We know of Canadian events that dream about being the next DEFCON. They talk about hacker culture. They post the aesthetic. They use the right words. And then. then. they short-change their volunteers. People who gave their time, their expertise, their sleep, their sanity, and got bent over a barrel with a smile for it. That's not a hacker event. That's a corporate networking cocktail party with a Kali Linux sticker slapped on it. Disgusting. Unethical. And honestly, kind of embarrassing for a country that prides itself on being "nice."

Here's the brutal truth: every existing Canadian CTF or cybersecurity event is terminally dependent on volunteer exploitation and sponsorship money. That's their oxygen. And that's exactly why none of them will ever become DEFCON, no matter how many times they say it in their mission statement. DEFCON wasn't built by people afraid to bite the hand that feeds them. It was built by people who didn't need that hand in the first place.

How We Got Here: A Brief History of Not Taking Anyone's Shit

When Canada had no vulnerability research team that welcomed everyone, and I mean everyone, including Afghans, without the xenophobia, without the quiet racism dressed up as "culture fit," without the bureaucratic cowardice that passes for HR policy, we didn't complain about it on a panel. We built Cyber Mounties. Then we built Delta Obscura.

And now? Our digital footprint is in over 10 countries, built on genuine collaboration with researchers and events from other regions, without sexism, without discrimination, and without a single DEI awareness ribbon in sight. Not because we don't care about diversity. But because we achieved real diversity the old-fashioned way: by being worth working with. People from the US, Romania, Netherlands, Poland, and beyond showed up because the work was compelling, not because we ran a recruitment drive with a rainbow banner and a checkbox.

That's the difference between performing inclusion and practicing it. One of those produces panels. The other produces people who can find 0-days on Microsoft Notepad, MongoDB, and NASA. Yeah. NASA.

People laughed at Delta Obscura 8 months ago. They're not laughing now.

The Plan: A Canadian Cyber Event That Doesn't Suck

So here it is. In the not-too-distant future, I'm building a regional cyber event based in Mississauga or Toronto. Funded out of my own pocket. Without sponsor overlords or government boot-licking.

Here's what we're bringing to the table, unfiltered, unapologetic, and completely unsanitized:

1. We're dragging the ostracized back into the room. 

Every scene has its elitists, its misfits, the brilliant hackers who got blacklisted because they didn't play nice with the establishment or refused to pretend that mediocre work deserved applause. We want those people. The ones who were too honest, too good, or too inconvenient. You know who you are. Come home.

2. We're killing the CTF name. 

"CTF" has been diluted beyond recognition. It now carries the same energy as "hackathon", which is to say, a room full of people frantically Googling things to impress a panel of sponsors for prize money they'll split four ways. We're calling ours something different. Cyber Olympics. Cyber Gauntlet. The Real Ones. Something. Because what we're building isn't a puzzle competition, it's a simulation of reality, and reality doesn't care about your point totals.

The competition will be entirely online. This is non-negotiable and intentional, Canada is a massive country and any serious national cyber competition must be accessible from Vancouver to Halifax without requiring anyone to book a flight or a hotel just to participate. If you can't deliver a world-class online competition, you have no business running one.

Shortly after the competition concludes, we host a small invite-only gathering in whichever Canadian city produced the highest participation that year. Capped at 100 people. Every single one of them earned their seat through performance, not a ticket purchase, not a sponsorship, not a job title. The city rotates: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Regina, Calgary, wherever the community is genuinely thriving, that's where we show up.

But let's be very specific about who we're trying to put in that room. We're not hunting for polished LinkedIn profiles and conference speakers. We're hunting for the basement dwellers, the blacklisted, the too-blunt, the too-good, the obsessive, the contrarian, the abrasive maverick who got pushed out of every sanitized cyber community because they made mediocre people uncomfortable just by existing. The self-taught immigrant who got rejected from security jobs because his degree was from the wrong country. The girl who was "too aggressive" because she was better than everyone around her. The guy in Calgary who called out shitty code and got quietly exiled for it.

These are our people. They've been scattered, invisible and quietly furious at a scene that had no use for them.

Just like some people are obsessed with DEI, I am obsessed with human rights for those who don't fit the mold, and I will fight for them with the same ferocity.

Fair warning, there's a mat at the entrance that says "Fuck Mediocrity" on it and you will stomp on it, spit on it and grind it under your heel like the worthless establishment garbage it represents before you're allowed anywhere near the door, and if that offends you, good, you weren't invited anyway.

The long game is simple: eventually fly all 100 of the best competitors from across the country to one location. One room. The best Canada has ever produced. Earned entirely on merit. No sponsorship boot-licking required.

3. Zero useless diversity panels. Zero. 

We are one of the most genuinely diverse teams in the Canadian cyber scene and we didn't get there by chanting slogans. We got there because people from Romania, Poland, the Netherlands, the US, and beyond chose to work with us based on merit, mission, and mutual respect. Diversity panels are what organizations do when they want to look inclusive without doing the uncomfortable work of being inclusive. We skipped the theatre. You're welcome to skip it with us.

4. Competence will be loud. Loudly celebrated. Aggressively celebrated. 

If you are an excellent hacker, you will be allowed, no, encouraged, to prove it out loud, in front of everyone, without some event coordinator nervously asking you to "tone it down" because it might intimidate newer attendees. Being good at something is not toxic. The culture we're building celebrates elite skill unapologetically. Mediocrity will not receive participation trophies. Mediocrity will be stared at uncomfortably until it either improves or leaves.

5. Sponsors are welcome. Their egos are not. 

You want to be part of what we're building? Fantastic. But your logo does not go on our event unless your mission aligns with ours. You don't get a panel. You don't get to shape content. You don't get to quietly steer things toward whatever your sales team needs this quarter. We will not kiss the ring. If that's a dealbreaker for you, then you've accidentally revealed that you were never really about the community anyway, you were about the optics. Goodbye.

6. This will produce some of the best hackers Canada has ever seen. 

Not because of hype. Not because of marketing. But because we've already done it once. Delta Obscura was a joke to a lot of people. Today its members are identifying zero-days on Microsoft Notepad, MongoDB, and NASA infrastructure. Let that sink in. NASA. Laugh at the new plan if you want to. I'll wait.

The Money Talk (Because Let's Be Adults)

Here's the honest part: this is a future plan. It's not happening tomorrow. It's not happening because we found a sugar daddy with a cybersecurity brand to polish. It's happening when I have the cash to do it right, and we're not talking about a yacht budget. Under $10,000 (USD). That's it. That's the number.

We run the entire Cyber Mounties digital infrastructure for under $100 a month. We know how to do a lot with a little. We've been doing it for years. So when I say I'll deliver this for under ten grand, I'm not being delusional, I'm being precise.

If this had sponsorship, we'd already be off to the races. It doesn't. So you wait. And while you wait, you can watch the existing Canadian events keep doing what they do best: making sponsors happy, burning through volunteers, and wondering why nobody takes them seriously.

In Closing

Pathway.cyberm.ca is going to be created because the door to cybersecurity was closed to too many people who deserved to walk through it. The future Canadian cyber event we're building exists because the current landscape is a curated, sanitized, sponsor-dependent performance that has nothing to do with actual hacker culture.

We didn't build Cyber Mounties because someone gave us permission. We didn't build Delta Obscura because the establishment approved. And we're not building this because Canada asked us to.

We're building it because it needs to exist.

See you on the other side.