Canonical tried and failed many times to be the driver behind improvements to Linux and the Linux desktop. They want control and influence across the stack, but so far their biggest bets have mostly been failures.

They pushed Upstart. It fell to systemd.

They pushed Unity. It fell to GNOME.

They pushed Mir. It fell to Wayland.

They pushed bazaar. It fell to git.

And so on.

Also worth noting that they've never been big contributors to the Linux kernel itself. Top contributors include Intel, AMD, Red Hat, Google, Meta, Linaro, SUSE. Even Oracle.

Canonical? Nowhere to be seen.