OTTAWA \u2014 The Liberal government has given its new AI \u201ctask force\u201d until the end of the month to fast-track changes to the national artificial intelligence strategy \u2014 a plan that critics say leans too much on the perspective of industry and the tech sector.<\/p>\n
Teresa Scassa, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada research chair in information law and policy, said the makeup of the 27-member task force is \u201cskewed towards industry voices and the adoption of AI technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The risks posed by artificial intelligence to Canada\u2019s culture, environment and workforce \u201cdeserve more attention in a national strategy,\u201d Scassa said in an email.<\/p>\n
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon announced the task force last month and tasked it with a 30-day \u201cnational sprint\u201d to draft recommendations for a \u201crefreshed\u201d AI strategy. Solomon said that new strategy will land later this year, nearly two years earlier than planned.<\/p>\n
The group has been asked to look at various aspects of AI, including research, adoption, commercialization, investment, infrastructure, skills, and safety and security. The government is also holding a public consultation on its AI strategy.<\/p>\n
Canada became the first country to launch a national AI strategy in 2017; it updated the strategy in 2022. Last year\u2019s federal budget included an additional $2.4-billion investment in AI, the bulk of which goes to building up computing capabilities and technological infrastructure. Ottawa also launched an AI strategy for the federal public service earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Joel Blit, an associate professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, said he has been encouraged by the government\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like the urgency of it,\u201d he said, adding that while a 30-day timeline for updating a national AI strategy is \u201calmost unheard of,\u201d the technology is moving fast and Canada isn\u2019t keeping up.<\/p>\n
Canada has \u201calways struggled to adopt new technologies as quickly as some other countries,\u201d Blit said.<\/p>\n
A recent paper from the C.D. Howe Institute noted that while Canada ranks second globally in top-tier AI researchers and is \u201cfirst in the G7 for per capita academic AI papers,\u201d it ranked 20th among OECD countries on AI adoption in 2023.<\/p>\n
Blit said the government hasn\u2019t invested enough in AI literacy and education and called for AI literacy campaigns \u201cin the same way that maybe 100 years ago we had\u2026 literacy campaigns for reading and writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luc Vinet is a physics professor at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al and CEO of IVADO, a research consortium focused on AI adoption. He said his reaction to the task force and Ottawa\u2019s approach to AI was \u201cquite positive overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
He suggested the government could focus on building up \u201cnational human infrastructure\u201d in AI by linking up professionals in academia and industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have remarkable experts in AI, but they might not accompany a medical doctor who wants to adopt AI,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have people in universities graduating with PhD, say in chemistry, biology, in economics, (who) still today do not really have much knowledge about AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Blit said he didn\u2019t want to criticize the task force, he noted that its membership seems to be weighted toward industry representatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is going to be advocating to make sure that every Canadian benefits from this, that we invest in education and in literacy and all the other things that we\u2019re going to need?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
The next \u201cbig Canadian economic champion\u201d might not be a big AI company, he suggested.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be a nurse that encounters AI and finds a way to re-imagine health care around AI,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Scassa said in a recent online post that few of the task force members specialize in social science or studying the ethical dimensions of AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no experts in labour and employment issues (which are top of mind for many Canadians these days), nor is there representation from those with expertise in the environmental issues we already know are raised by AI innovation,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Companies with representatives on the task force include generative AI developer Cohere, IT and business consulting company CGI, the Royal Bank of Canada, venture capital firm Inovia Capital, AI search company Coveo, cloud computing company Aptum, data storage company Vdura and crisis alert company Samdesk.<\/p>\n
Among the academics on the task force are three professors of computer science, a dean of engineering, a professor of strategic management, a professor of medicine, and the founding director of a research centre for media, technology and democracy.<\/p>\n
The group does have representatives from a public sector union, a tech sector group, a think tank, a new safe AI organization launched by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, and the First Nations Technology Council.<\/p>\n
Only three of the more than two dozen task force members have been asked to work on safe AI systems and public trust, Scassa said.<\/p>\n
She said she also has concerns about the government instructing task force members to consult their networks to develop recommendations. Scassa wrote that \u201csounds a lot like insider networking, which should frankly raise concerns. This does not lend itself to ensuring fair and appropriate representation of diverse voices.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, a coalition representing the cultural sector told MPs on the Heritage committee it was disappointed it wasn\u2019t represented on the task force, despite the threat AI poses to the sector.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Pybus, assistant professor and Canada research chair in data, democracy and AI at York University, said she would have liked to see more civic partners or humanities-based scholars on the task force.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Solomon said the task force \u201chas a diverse group of folks from across Canada as well as across sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pybus said she was still cautiously optimistic about the strategy, partly due to the government\u2019s approach to digital infrastructure. She said the government is recognizing \u201cthey have to own the tools and set the rules for the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his speech announcing the task force, Solomon emphasized the principle of digital sovereignty, calling it \u201cthe most pressing policy and democratic issue of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pybus pointed out that the \u201cvast majority of Canadian AI compute and data storage capacity sits entirely with platforms that are owned by\u201d U.S.-based companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press reported in September that since 2021, the federal government has spent almost $1.3 billion on cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Some of those services were used for what the Department of National Defence described as \u201cmission-critical applications that directly support operational readiness and national security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when AI companies have Canadian subsidiaries, Pybus said, \u201ctheir governance is still in the U.S., which ultimately means that\u201d legislation on managing that Canadian data \u201cis being shaped by American companies and by the American government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s embrace of AI comes as many warn of a potential bubble in AI investment. Blit compared the situation to the dotcom bubble and crash of the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that that technology wasn\u2019t real. It doesn\u2019t mean that that technology didn\u2019t then transform a big part of the economy (or) society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Blit said there is a certain amount of AI \u201chype\u201d about, \u201cbut give it a decade and it\u2019s not hype.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 7, 2025. <\/p>\n
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 The Liberal government has given its new AI \u201ctask force\u201d until the end of the month…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,76,45,49,48,46,549,75,295,15913,713,3717,47,714,66,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-197398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-ca","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-economy","16":"tag-education","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-environment","19":"tag-hardware","20":"tag-justice","21":"tag-labour","22":"tag-national","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-science","25":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}