At the ALL IN AI conference in Montreal on Wednesday, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon promised ‘new tools’ to help entrepreneurs scale their companies, secure investment and keep their headquarters in Canada, but did not outline any new policies or strategies to do so.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
The federal government is launching a task force on artificial intelligence and will deliver an updated national strategy to support and develop the sector by the end of year, AI Minister Evan Solomon says.
The task force will suggest policies to improve research, talent, adoption and commercialization of AI in Canada, among other goals, Mr. Solomon said Wednesday during a talk at the ALL IN conference in Montreal.
“They’re going to deliver bold, practical ideas that move quickly from paper to practice,” he said. The task force will report back in November, and the ideas are part of a consultation process to help inform the new AI strategy.
The government had intended to deliver the updated plan at the end of next year, but Mr. Solomon said AI is an urgent file. “Canada’s got to stay competitive.”
The members of the task force will be announced on Friday.
These goals are not entirely new. Canada launched the $125-million Pan-Canadian AI Strategy in 2017, which provided funding for the Vector Institute in Toronto, Mila in Montreal and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute in Edmonton. The government has also previously announced $2-billion to help companies access the computer chips necessary to build and run AI models, and to encourage data centre companies to build facilities in Canada.
AI sparks debate as Canadian professionals weigh risks and rewards
The government’s efforts over the past few years have helped spur AI research in Canada, but the country has lagged when it comes to commercializing the technology. The largest and most influential AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are based in the United States, while Canadian AI talent is frequently poached by foreign companies.
“The success of the federal government’s AI strategy will come down to a basic question: Do we own and control the assets?” said Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators. “Trying to drive commercialization and adoption won’t deliver real benefits to the Canadian economy if we don’t have a strategy to ensure that Canadian companies own the AI systems.”
As the government also prepares to roll out a strategy for the nascent quantum computing sector in October, many experts fear the country could squander its lead, as with AI. “This is bigger than quantum. Time and again, Canada has been an early leader in developing frontier technologies, only to see others capture the value through commercialization and scale,” said Lisa Lambert, chief executive of Quantum Industry Canada, a consortium for the sector. “We cannot afford to continue repeating that pattern.”
Ms. Lambert said the quantum strategy should focus on scaling companies, building supply chains and supporting Canadian technologies in markets abroad.
Opinion: The AI boom is bringing life back into North American cities. Can they handle it?
On stage at ALL IN, Mr. Solomon promised “new tools” to help entrepreneurs scale their companies, secure investment and keep their headquarters in Canada, but did not outline any new policies or strategies to do so. The issue is pressing, as recent research has found that Canadian founders have been starting their companies abroad at an increasing rate since 2020.
Later, on a panel with Cohere Inc. CEO Aidan Gomez, Mr. Solomon reiterated concerns that AI adoption in Canada is lagging behind other countries. “That’s a productivity issue, that’s a competitive issue,” he said.
Last month, the federal government signed a non-binding deal with Cohere to deploy AI in the public service, a priority set by Prime Minister Mark Carney. Separately, Cohere announced Wednesday that it raised US$100-million, one month after closing a US$500-million round.
While Mr. Solomon emphasized that Canadian businesses and citizens need to have trust in AI to adopt these tools, he does not plan to reintroduce AI-specific legislation put forward by the previous Liberal government. Instead, the government will focus on updating the country’s privacy and data protection laws, including provisions to deal with deepfakes.
There is no “perfect way to regulate AI that allows for perfect innovation, and so we have to be really careful,” he said. Canada is a free-trading nation with many competitive advantages, and “we have to make sure, in protecting those, our regulation doesn’t suffocate those” advantages, he said.
Yoshua Bengio, who won the Turing Award for his contributions to the field, said that regulation and innovation do not have to be at odds. “It’s obviously not true,” he said in an interview. “Look at all the areas where we’ve made incredible technological progress and we are protecting the public.” Dr. Bengio has been a proponent of regulation, and this year started a non-profit called LawZero to develop safe AI systems.
With a report from Sean Silcoff