Do I lose my IP if I demonstrate software on a laptop?

In general and whatever the legal system considered, I would advocate to apply the precautionary principle: avoid to divulge the functionality of your software before filing a patent to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

Specifically, Canada (I am writing under the control of the Canadian patents attorneys of the network), the applicant who discloses his invention and this anywhere in the world, (i) must be the first to protect it through the patent way and (ii) has a period of one year after the first disclosure, to obtain a date of Canadian patent. This can be achieved through the filing of a Canadian patent application or an international application (PCT) - designating automatically Canada - with a receiving Office.

In the occurrence, to save your patent rights in Canada in the event that the invention would actually be publicly disclosed at the said conference, whatever the place of it in the world, a priority patent application must be filed as soon as possible. And if this priority claim is not Canadian and is not an international application (PCT), then you will have to file a Canadian patent application within a year of public disclosure. Indeed, for Canada it is not sufficient to file a priority application to circumvent the obstacle of the disclosure (as can be seen elsewhere).

In European countries, however, you can not enjoy a "grace period" that would maintain the novelty of the invention despite his personal disclosure, except in very special hypothesis where such disclosure would be the fact of third parties and would be considered as abusive (industrial espionage, violation of the obligation of confidentiality ...).

In Canada and U.S., you get a 1 year grace period to file your patent application. So, you can do a demo and still file for patents in Canada and US within one year of the demo date. Most other jurisdictions (e.g., Europe) do not have this 1 year grace period. I would consider filing a provisional patent application in the US before doing the demo. The filing fee for a provisional is $65. You can either file the provisional yourself or hire a Patent Agent to do it for you. Patent Agent fees for filing a provisional will range from $2k-$4k. But that could vary based on the complexity of the invention.