TORONTO — The president of e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. is calling on Canada to address a problem he calls “the 600-pound beaver in the room.”

That problem is a lack of ambition that Harley Finkelstein described as hampering the growth and long-term success of Canadian companies, the country’s tech ecosystem and its broader economy.

“This idea of injecting more ambition into the Canadian psyche, of not going for bronze but going for gold, of owning the podium … is unequivocally necessary,” he said late Tuesday during an interview hosted by astronaut Chris Hadfield at the Elevate tech conference in Toronto.