{"id":413194,"date":"2026-01-16T13:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413194\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T13:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:25:15","slug":"evan-solomon-wants-canada-to-trust-ai-can-we-trust-evan-solomon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/413194\/","title":{"rendered":"Evan Solomon Wants Canada to Trust AI. Can We Trust Evan Solomon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last September, nearly 6,500 people\u2014including start-up founders, investors, and researchers\u2014gathered at the Palais des congr\u00e8s in Montreal for All In, Canada\u2019s largest artificial intelligence event. After passing through a security checkpoint, they lounged on plush furniture and posed in front of a luminous \u201cALL IN\u201d sign. Everyone wore a lanyard with a QR code that could be scanned to connect through an app, a sort of modern-day business card. Kiosks showcased AI companies; smooth jazz flowed and so did coffee.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, was there, working the room. With a small entourage, he stopped by several of the kiosks, asking questions and shaking hands. He appeared at a funding announcement for INOVAIT, a national network focused on image-guided therapy and AI, and another with Telus as it revealed plans for a \u201csovereign AI factory\u201d in Rimouski, Quebec, which is intended to deliver AI compute power to Canadian businesses and researchers. At All In, there was money and goodwill to go around: the mood was frothy with it, yet also undercut by a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis conference comes at a hinge moment,\u201d Solomon said in his opening remarks from the main conference stage. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a technological revolution colliding with a political realignment, and the choices that we make are going to shape our economy, our democracy, and our daily lives for decades to come.\u201d What\u2019s at stake? In other words, only everything.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence is the branch of computer science in which machines are developed to simulate certain human functions, like learning and prediction. Its applications range from supply chain management to developing new products, like drugs. Canadians are probably most familiar with generative AI tools, which can produce text, video, and other content. These tools are often described as a sort of super assistant that can handle emails, scheduling, research, and other mundane tasks, freeing up time for more important jobs (or leisure) and ultimately making us more productive.<\/p>\n

Canada is betting big on AI. The 2025 fall budget earmarked about $925 million over the next five years for \u201csovereign public AI infrastructure\u201d to boost AI compute capacity, and announced the creation of an Office of Digital Transformation to lead AI adoption across the federal government, where these tools are already being implemented (for example, the Canada Revenue Agency has been beta-testing an AI chatbot to help people find tax information). At the same time, the budget outlined plans to trim approximately 16,000 jobs from the federal workforce, including through retirement and other forms of attrition.<\/p>\n

Nearly six in ten Canadians have used an AI tool, according to a 2025 Leger survey. The majority\u201485 percent\u2014think the government should regulate the technology for safe and ethical use. Solomon has emphasized that any regulation must be \u201clight, tight, and right\u201d because overregulation can chase companies and capital away. As Canada\u2019s first minister of AI and digital innovation, part of his job has been to win over a wary populace and convince them that the benefits of widespread adoption, like an anticipated boost to Canada\u2019s sluggish productivity, will outweigh the risks.<\/p>\n

In his political debut, the former journalist has moved with haste. He spent his first months in government laying the groundwork for an updated national AI strategy, which is expected in early 2026. Solomon says that the \u201cguiding principle\u201d of his ministry is \u201cAI for all,\u201d and that his approach is defined by four pillars: scaling up Canadian companies, encouraging adoption, promoting digital sovereignty\u2014that we control our own critical tech and data\u2014and building trust, which might be the keystone. \u201cTechnology moves at the speed of innovation, but adoption moves at the speed of trust,\u201d he said at All In. In December, when I asked him what we might expect from the forthcoming AI strategy, he mentioned trust again. \u201cWhat are we trying to do?\u201d he said. \u201cTrust first.\u201d<\/p>\n

For three months last fall, I set out to understand how Solomon is trying to earn the trust of Canadians. I attended some of his panels and events and tuned in to his media appearances. I reviewed decades-old issues of Shift, the technology magazine he co-founded in 1992, and read some of his fiction. I also spoke to AI and quantum researchers, including from each of the three national AI institutes; privacy and cybersecurity experts; economists; investors; labour leaders; and old friends and colleagues of Solomon\u2019s\u2014people who\u2019d known him for decades.<\/p>\n

Many in AI and the tech community more broadly (Solomon\u2019s file includes quantum) are thrilled to see a high-profile minister speaking supportively of their industries, not to mention handing out money. But Solomon, who has described himself as a \u201cskeptical optimist,\u201d has also alienated some who feel that their concerns about this rapidly evolving technology aren\u2019t being addressed adequately. He has been accused of naively embracing artificial intelligence rather than working to mitigate its harms, and of listening mostly to voices from the tech sector\u2014those who stand to benefit most from rapid AI adoption.<\/p>\n

Solomon is a born storyteller. One story he often tells is how, in 1992, he and his friend Andrew Heintzman\u2014who were then fresh out of grad school at McGill University\u2014launched Shift, which would become an award-winning digital culture magazine. \u201cThe first part of my life was as a small business owner and entrepreneur, tracking the evolution of technology\u2019s impact,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Shift started as a fiction magazine, a place to publish young writers (Heintzman let me borrow some issues, including the first, which features a short story by Solomon). Solomon and Heintzman had roughly $600 and produced the first issue from Heintzman\u2019s parents\u2019 basement.<\/p>\n

Heintzman recalled how he and Solomon walked up and down Yonge Street in Toronto, \u201cliterally going door to door\u201d to sell ads. The first issue was launched with a splashy party at Lee\u2019s Palace, a well-known Toronto music venue, where Heintzman\u2019s rock band performed. \u201cEveryone paid twenty bucks, and that\u2019s how we paid for our first [issue],\u201d Heintzman told me. Soon Solomon was talking up Shift on CBC\u2019s Morningside radio show, displaying an ease and confidence on air that would serve him in later roles as a journalist and now, a politician.<\/p>\n

After the second issue was published, he went to Asia, promising Heintzman, with whom he is still close, that he\u2019d return (he did, several months later). He cut his teeth in journalism in Hong Kong. \u201cI was working at a Chinese freight-forwarding company,\u201d he told podcaster Aaron Pete in 2024. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t pay me \u2019til the end of the month, and I knew I was going to quit, because I wanted to be a journalist. But I didn\u2019t know how.\u201d He connected with an editor from the South China Morning Post. \u201cHe said, \u2018What do you know about the Hong Kong pension fund situation?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Everything.\u2019\u201d In Solomon\u2019s own telling, this was a fib. He didn\u2019t know what a pension fund was. But he wrote the story, delivering 700 words the next morning.<\/p>\n

Shift was undergoing its own transformation. The market for short fiction wasn\u2019t as viable as they\u2019d hoped, Heintzman said, and the small editorial team had become increasingly hooked on the ideas of people like communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan and writer-artist Douglas Coupland, who coined the term \u201cGeneration X.\u201d No longer a literary magazine, Shift morphed into something weirder and more interesting: a place to explore internet culture.<\/p>\n

Issues I reviewed, which were published between 1992 and 1997, included an email interview with Wired founder Louis Rossetto; a rollicking tour by writer Miles Kronby through the \u201celectronic frontier\u201d of internet message boards; and Solomon\u2019s interview with Moses Znaimer, then at CityTV, in which Znaimer was invited to add his own acid commentary in the form of footnotes. Ambition and experimentation also infused the business model. According to The Ryerson Review of Journalism (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s Review of Journalism), Shift launched one of the first magazine websites in Canada. It also sold early digital ads on its website.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to emphasize how unusual this was. In the \u201990s, the internet was seen as the place where culture went to die, even though a whole new one was thriving online. By treating digital culture as a topic worthy of reporting on back in the \u201990s, Shift broke ground.<\/p>\n

But Solomon\u2019s ambitions stretched beyond the magazine. In part because of his on-camera work as host of the cable access show Shift TV, he was invited to audition for FutureWorld, a weekly half-hour show about trends in science, tech, and pop culture. He got the job, hosting four seasons on CBC Newsworld. He hadn\u2019t given up on the literary aspirations that first fuelled his work at the magazine, either. He eventually left Shift to focus on writing, and in 1999 published his first and only novel, Crossing the Distance. \u201cI\u2019ve sort of geared my whole life to this,\u201d he told McGill News at the time, hinting that he was also working on a screenplay. Two children\u2019s books followed, in 2005 and 2007.<\/p>\n

The launch of his book dovetailed with his next CBC show, Hot Type with Evan Solomon, in which he interviewed authors. On Pete\u2019s podcast, he described sitting down with American writer Richard Ford, a famously intimidating presence. (When fellow novelist Alice Hoffman gave Ford a negative review, he shot a bullet through one of Hoffman\u2019s books and mailed it to her.) Solomon recalled Ford bristling at one of his questions. \u201cI said, \u2018Well, Richard, you seem to be getting very defensive,\u2019\u201d he told Aaron Pete. \u201cI felt very clever\u2014like this is great, it\u2019s good TV, and I\u2019ve quickly whipped the ball back to you.\u2019 And [Ford] looked right at me and said, \u2018I am defensive. That\u2019s because I have something to defend. What about you?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After FutureWorld and Hot Type, Solomon went on to increasingly prominent roles at the CBC, reporting from ground zero in New York on 9\/11 and from Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2004, after the deadly tsunami there. In 2009, he was named host of the CBC\u2019s flagship Power & Politics and then of The House on CBC Radio One. Solomon and his family settled in Ottawa, where he got to know the current prime minister, Mark Carney, who was then governor of the Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n

Solomon is probably still best known for hosting Power & Politics, and for how he abruptly left the CBC. He was fired in 2015 following a Toronto Star investigation alleging that he\u2019d brokered art deals with some of the same people he was reporting on, including Carney. In Ottawa, with its outsize number of politicians, public servants, and journalists, some overlapping of social circles is bound to happen. But observers still declared themselves mystified that Solomon would allegedly risk even the appearance of a conflict of interest. \u201cI\u2019ve never said a bad word about the CBC,\u201d he told Pete on his podcast. He said that he and the CBC reached a settlement, the details of which have not been disclosed. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t an easy time. I\u2019m not going to sugar-coat it,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cIt was a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

He soon picked up fresh hosting duties on The Evan Solomon Show, a national talk radio program, and never seemed to lose his taste for reporting. In 2022, when the \u201cFreedom Convoy\u201d occupied downtown Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates and other aspects of COVID-19 management, Solomon was on the ground for CTV. Apparently unflappable, he was harassed by protesters; one threw a beer can at his head. \u201cI\u2019m out there every day doing stand-ups,\u201d he told the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. \u201cIt\u2019s very passionate. There\u2019s lots of yelling.\u201d He noted that CTV would send a security guard with him. \u201cPeople will threaten you, people will throw things at you\u2014that\u2019s all happened to me. If you have a big news camera, then you\u2019re a target.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked him how his years as a journalist prepared him for government, he described a walk he took in Toronto with his father, a lawyer, in the early booming days of Shift. He was pointing out landmarks, like the Horseshoe Tavern and the CityTV building, humble-bragging to his dad (who has since passed away) about his life as a magazine editor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was trying to prove that I was doing something productive,\u201d he told me. His father stopped him in front of a building and pointed to a window, growing misty eyed. \u201cThat\u2019s where your grandfather worked,\u201d Solomon\u2019s father said, according to this account. The building was a former \u201csweatshop\u201d where Solomon\u2019s grandfather, who had immigrated to Canada, sewed pockets onto clothing, including the suit that Solomon\u2019s father wore to his own bar mitzvah. Solomon said his grandfather died at age fifty-three, just two months after that event.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad said, \u2018Don\u2019t forget where you came from,\u2019\u201d Solomon told me. \u201cThat is a thing I think about literally every single day. Today I have the privilege to be in the House and make sure folks have opportunities to get their first step on the economic ladder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada was an early leader in AI development. This country launched the world\u2019s first funded national strategy in 2017, which saw the creation of three AI institutes\u2014Vector, in Toronto; the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), in Edmonton; and Mila, in Montreal\u2014aimed at recruiting and retaining top talent.<\/p>\n

A lot of groundbreaking research happened here too: in 2012, for example, a team led by Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto showed how deep learning could be used to improve a computer\u2019s ability to read images, an advancement that is considered foundational to much of the AI technology we see today. (Hinton collaborator Ilya Sutskever went on to co-found OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT.) But commercialization has largely happened elsewhere, and business adoption has been slow. Two of Canada\u2019s most high-profile AI researchers, Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, have spoken openly about what they see as AI\u2019s potentially catastrophic risks, which might help explain Canadians\u2019 pessimistic attitudes toward AI. The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global online survey, found that 31 percent of Canadians said they trusted AI, nineteen points lower than the global average.<\/p>\n

Although the previous Liberal government invested heavily in AI\u2014the 2024 budget set aside $2 billion over five years to be spent on AI compute\u2014it also explored certain guardrails. In February of 2025, Canada was one of dozens of countries to sign a document pledging to develop inclusive, sustainable AI; the US and UK refrained. And Canada pursued regulation through the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), which was tabled in 2022 as part of Bill C-27, although that bill died when then prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned and Parliament was prorogued. But AIDA was controversial even among those who might welcome some form of AI regulation, in part because critics said it relied too heavily on input from the tech sector.<\/p>\n

Once Donald Trump was elected US president in November 2024, tech policy seismically shifted like everything else. Trump named investor David Sacks, who has railed against \u201cwoke AI\u201d and regulation, his \u201cAI and Crypto Czar\u201d and issued executive orders aimed at eliminating hurdles to development. Tech execs have regularly turned up at the White House. Companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google helped pay for the new ballroom.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s comments about turning Canada into the fifty-first state sparked a nationalistic \u201celbows up\u201d movement that Carney rode to power. He recruited Solomon, who had moved to New York City to become publisher of GZERO Media, to join his team. (Diana Fox Carney, Mark Carney\u2019s wife, joined GZERO\u2019s parent company, Eurasia Group, as senior adviser in 2021.) Carney\u2019s creation of a dedicated AI ministry was a clear sign that Canada is staking its position. In naming Solomon minister, he installed a skilled communicator who has a long association with tech. Journalists love to report on their own, which didn\u2019t hurt either. (Solomon and I had not met before I started working on this story.)<\/p>\n

Soon he was doing interviews, podcasts, and panels, delivering a bullish message. Rather than drone about impending legislation or dwell on doomsday scenarios, he has compared this country\u2019s leading AI researchers to famous hockey players like Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers. More than once, he described how his father was initially hesitant to use his credit card online. It\u2019s a way to illustrate and gently deflate our fear of technological change.<\/p>\n

But there is no standalone Department of AI and Digital Innovation; Solomon\u2019s ministry sits within Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED), whose mission is partly to help businesses grow and compete. ISED supports multiple ministers, among them Minister of Industry M\u00e9lanie Joly. Solomon is also the minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario). Links to business and industry are, in a sense, baked into his role. And many I spoke with in those communities have been largely supportive of Solomon\u2019s work on AI so far.<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s tone has struck others as overly boosterish. \u201cWe\u2019re hearing a very \u2018sunny ways\u2019 message from Solomon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christian Sauvageau is chief executive officer of Reveal Surgical, with whom Solomon briefly shared a stage at All In. (Reveal was partially funded through INOVAIT.) That company has created an AI-powered tool that detects cancerous cells in the brain in under three seconds. \u201cWe\u2019re very impressed by the government, from an AI perspective,\u201d he told me in September. \u201cIt\u2019s more than just tone.\u201d Ottawa\u2019s prioritization of AI is sending a much-needed signal to private investors, he added. And Canada\u2019s investment in its AI institutes, including Mila in Montreal, the city where Reveal Surgical is based, has been important to the company\u2019s success, Sauvageau said. Without having this expertise close at hand, \u201cI\u2019m not sure we would have cracked the code.\u201d<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s tone has struck others as overly boosterish. \u201cWe\u2019re hearing a very \u2018sunny ways\u2019 message from Solomon,\u201d Matt Hatfield of internet advocacy nonprofit OpenMedia told me. To Hatfield, this didn\u2019t line up with Canadians\u2019 attitudes toward or concerns about AI\u2014for example, its environmental impacts, like energy and water use.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the growing problem of deepfakes. Today\u2019s AI tools can generate hyper-realistic images and other media that then circulate online, confusing or distorting reality and potentially putting people at risk. In the 2025 Online Harms Survey from the Dais Institute, 67 percent of Canadian residents reported seeing AI-generated or synthetic media online at least a few times a year, up from 60 percent the year before.<\/p>\n

On January 12, the UK\u2019s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation into Elon Musk\u2019s X platform amid reports that the Grok AI chatbot was creating and sharing \u201cundressed images of people\u201d and sexualized images of children. Musk, who has previously suggested on X that the UK wants to suppress free speech, said that anyone using Grok to make \u201cillegal content\u201d would face the same consequences as those who upload any such content to X.<\/p>\n

Following an earlier report in the Telegraph that the UK, Canada, and Australia might work together on a coordinated response, Solomon posted on X on January 11 that Canada was not considering a ban of the platform. (News of this was reposted by Musk, who added heart and Canadian flag emojis.) \u201cDeepfake sexual abuse is violence,\u201d Solomon said in a separate post on X. \u201cWe must protect Canadians, especially women and young people, from exploitation. Platforms and AI developers have a duty to prevent this harm.\u201d The statement went on to mention Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, which would amend the Criminal Code to provide Canadians with greater protection from non-consensual deepfakes.<\/p>\n

Some observers have criticized government officials for continuing to use X at all. A politician\u2019s presence on X does not amount to an \u201cendorsement,\u201d Solomon\u2019s office told me via email, noting that officials keep posting there \u201cto ensure that Canadians can access accurate, timely public information where large audiences already are.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all the ways that AI can make our lives easier, it also makes the work of bad actors\u2014from cybercriminals to authoritarian governments to garden-variety trolls\u2014easier too. Then there are the more existential worries. As AI becomes more advanced, self-preservation tendencies have been documented in certain models. In 2025, AI firm Anthropic reported on an experiment in which its Claude Opus 4 tried to blackmail a company executive to prevent itself from being shut off. At the Canada 2020 summit in June 2025, Solomon was asked about AI regulation in the context of self-preservation concerns. He suggested that regulation is difficult, while acknowledging that certain guardrails, including data and privacy protection, are necessary. \u201cHow do you regulate? No constraint has worked,\u201d Solomon said, noting that Canada already has a voluntary code of conduct on the responsible use of generative AI. And the Canadian AI Safety Institute, launched in 2024, conducts research into risks. Solomon has said that updates to Canada\u2019s privacy legislation are coming.<\/p>\n

In September, he announced a thirty-day \u201csprint\u201d to inform Canada\u2019s approach to AI. This involved a public consultation (run through ISED) and a twenty-eight-member task force that would provide recommendations. Digital rights advocates had long been calling for a broad public consultation on AI; many have highlighted Canada\u2019s overreliance on US tech giants, suggesting common ground with the Carney government, which has emphasized the need to prioritize digital sovereignty, including through a \u201csovereign Canadian cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to some I spoke with, the process launched last September missed the mark. The list of names on the task force struck them as heavily skewed toward industry: those who stand to benefit most from rapid adoption. Blair Attard-Frost, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta who has studied AI governance in Canada, said it would be difficult for a non-expert to participate in the consultation, in part because it asked technical questions and gave only thirty days to answer them. (For example: \u201cHow can Canada better connect AI research with commercialization to meet strategic business needs?\u201d) To Attard-Frost, the public consultation on AI resembled a \u201ccheckbox exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n

An open letter dated October 31, 2025, and signed by more than 120 groups and individuals\u2014including the BC Civil Liberties Association, PEN Canada, and OpenMedia\u2014decried what it called the \u201cprioritization of business and economic interests\u201d in ISED\u2019s survey and the \u201clack of human rights, civil liberties [groups] and similar representatives\u201d on the task force. It called on the government to extend the public consultation, review the mix of voices on the task force, and rewrite the survey to make it more \u201cunbiased.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who signed the letter was Ron Deibert, who is founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto\u2019s Munk School, which investigates digital threats to democracy, human rights, and global security. Deibert is a well-known expert in tech and cybersecurity. He told me that he opted not to participate in the government process. \u201cI don\u2019t want to lend credibility to such flawed processes by participating,\u201d he said in an email. He cited a need for much greater transparency from AI companies\u2014for example, mandated transparency requirements and independent auditing of their platforms\u2014alongside the long-awaited updates to Canadian privacy laws.<\/p>\n

For their part, unions want more transparency around how AI is deployed in the workplace. And there are signs this is happening, at least at the federal level. In November, Canada launched a public register of AI use in the federal government. Chris Roberts of the Canadian Labour Congress welcomed this as a \u201cpositive step,\u201d although he said the group would like to see it extended to other levels of government. According to the Treasury Board, a public consultation on the registry will happen this year.<\/p>\n

Last October, when the task force and consultation were still underway, I asked Solomon how he felt about charges that the task force wasn\u2019t inclusive enough, and that timelines were too short. \u201cThe mix on the [task force] is pretty good. I\u2019m pretty satisfied with it,\u201d he said, noting that he and his team were also meeting with \u201cstakeholders\u201d across the country. As for the tight timelines, Solomon emphasized that the goal was to be agile and efficient. \u201cIf I did a year-long task force, by the time I got it back and we heard from everybody, would it still be relevant?\u201d<\/p>\n

The public apparently had a lot to say on the topic of AI. The thirty-day online consultation attracted over 11,000 responses, the most ISED has ever received. The federal government used an AI tool to review and summarize responses to its public consultation on AI, Solomon told the Canadian Press in December.<\/p>\n

As the minister moves with haste, he has telegraphed the urgency of this file. It\u2019s a tone we\u2019ve heard from Carney and other officials as our relationship with the US convulses. Pierre Trudeau once famously likened Canada\u2019s position to \u201csleeping with an elephant,\u201d and these days we are insomniacs, awakened at random hours by some new crisis or surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a challenging economic global environment, where there\u2019s a need for us to diversify trade routes,\u201d Solomon told me. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re not going to continue to trade very robustly with the United States.\u201d The Carney government has prioritized building stronger ties with allies like the European Union, and in December, Solomon signed agreements with EU counterparts to expand collaboration on AI. It\u2019s a delicate balance, because the US has opposed efforts to regulate the technology. Moving too aggressively might risk further alienating our most important trading partner. We are between a rock and a hard place.<\/p>\n

At a time of cutbacks and belt tightening, when affordability concerns are top of mind for so many, it might seem odd, to say the least, for the government to be heavily investing in \u201cdeep tech\u201d sectors. AI isn\u2019t the only industry that\u2019s benefited from attention and money during Solomon\u2019s tenure: in December, he announced up to $92 million for the Canadian Quantum Champions Program, aimed at keeping top quantum companies here.<\/p>\n

Investments in AI have been framed by the Carney government as a way to increase productivity and thus the prosperity of the middle class. \u201cDeep down, Canada\u2019s affordability problem is really a productivity problem,\u201d the Bank of Canada\u2019s Nicolas Vincent said in November. \u201cIf we want to make things more affordable, we need to raise our income. And the way to grow our income is by increasing productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Productivity is one of Solomon\u2019s main arguments for boosting AI adoption. \u201cProductivity is a massive challenge,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe prime minister has been very open about our need to increase productivity.\u201d The fall budget cited an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimate that AI adoption could raise productivity by 1.1 percentage points annually over the next decade.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence yet that AI can boost national productivity statistics. But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not coming.<\/p>\n

But estimates vary and the productivity impacts of AI are not clear cut, even at firm level. A 2024 report from the Dais at TMU, for instance, found no relationship between AI adoption and short-term productivity improvements at Canadian firms; in fact, those companies that adopted these tools were already more productive. \u201cWe\u2019ve heard a lot about how AI is going to solve Canada\u2019s productivity problem, and we wanted to examine that,\u201d said study co-author Viet Vu, who leads economic research at the Dais. The study\u2019s findings, from 2020 and 2021\u2014which was pre-ChatGPT\u2014suggest that AI is \u201cnot going to be a silver bullet,\u201d he told me. What\u2019s more, just 2 percent of Canadian business leaders reported seeing a return on investment in generative AI, according to a separate survey from KPMG Canada released in November. But 93 percent of the 753 executives surveyed said their organizations were using AI in some way.<\/p>\n

I asked economist Ajay Agrawal, founder of Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto and a member of Solomon\u2019s AI task force, whether there\u2019s evidence that AI can boost national productivity. \u201cThere is no evidence yet in any [national] productivity statistics,\u201d he told me. But, he added, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not coming. In Power and Prediction, Agrawal and co-authors Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb describe the moment we\u2019re in as \u201cThe Between Times\u201d: AI solutions exist but are still small and localized in their effects.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t unheard of in the history of technology. \u201cYou can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics,\u201d US economist Robert Solow famously remarked in 1987. Back then, productivity was in a rut despite the rapid uptake of computers. It\u2019s possible that we\u2019re seeing the same sort of lag today, with AI. \u201cWe\u2019re in phase one of a profound transformation,\u201d Solomon told me. In other words, give it time.<\/p>\n

When I asked Solomon how AI can boost national productivity, he talked about start-ups such as Reveal Surgical. Its AI-powered tool could help ensure that a patient\u2019s cancer is removed while healthy tissue is not, meaning fewer surgeries, reduced patient wait times, and less overall burden on the health care system. (The device isn\u2019t approved, but a US Food and Drug Administration trial is scheduled for later this year.) It\u2019s easy to imagine potential productivity gains from this, not to mention patient benefits. Maybe they aren\u2019t showing up in national economic data yet, but Solomon wants Canadians to trust that they will come.<\/p>\n

At All In, after the INOVAIT announcement, I followed Christian Sauvageau to his kiosk and asked him to show me Reveal Surgical\u2019s cancer-detecting device, called Sentry. We sat at a table. He held the small AI-guided probe in his hand. It looks like a slim silver pen with a wire sprouting from one end, which leads to a box about the size of a bar fridge on the floor. By bouncing light off a patient\u2019s cells (known as Raman spectroscopy), it captures what Sauvageau calls a \u201cmolecular fingerprint,\u201d using AI to translate this into a simple piece of information indicating whether cells are healthy or not, which the surgeon can take into account.<\/p>\n

So far, the device has been tested on patients diagnosed with breast, lung, and other types of cancer. It was originally developed for use in the brain, said Reveal co-founder Kevin Petrecca, who is a surgeon-scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital. \u201cBecause it\u2019s the brain, you are reluctant to remove tissue you\u2019re not sure of,\u201d Petrecca told me. Rather than relying on pre- or post-surgical MRIs to locate the tumour, surgeons could use the device while the patient is on the operating table. The day after I met Sauvageau, Petrecca performed surgery on a brain cancer patient using the Sentry device at the Montreal hospital where he works.<\/p>\n

In 2017, my father died of cancer, and I remember the cost\u2014emotional, physical, financial\u2014of his treatments. Sitting beside Sauvageau, staring at the pen-like object, I had to wonder if such a device might have spared him some of that. Of course, it\u2019s impossible to know.<\/p>\n

AI is sometimes spoken about with a sense of inevitability, as though it\u2019s a meteor headed for Earth and all we can do is get ready. But there\u2019s nothing inevitable about the moment we\u2019re in. Attard-Frost told me that the tendency to frame AI in this way obscures what we\u2019re really talking about, which is people\u2014in business, in government, in civil society\u2014and the decisions they make. An AI system \u201cdidn\u2019t just spontaneously arise,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has a whole business case driving it. There are people profiting from it [and] people who are at risk.\u201d Whatever happens next will be the result of a series of decisions made not by machines but by us.<\/p>\n

In Solomon\u2019s own telling, the choices we make right now will define our economy, our democracy, and our daily lives for decades to come. With a new AI strategy set to be unveiled, he has asked Canadians for their trust. But only they can decide if he has earned it. <\/p>\n

\t\t\"Kate<\/a><\/p>\n

Kate Lunau is a Toronto-based writer and editor whose work explores how science and tech shape our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last September, nearly 6,500 people\u2014including start-up founders, investors, and researchers\u2014gathered at the Palais des congr\u00e8s in Montreal for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-413194","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-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413194","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=413194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}