{"id":546276,"date":"2026-03-19T07:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/546276\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:24:10","slug":"federal-government-looking-to-support-canadas-ai-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/546276\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal government looking to support Canada\u2019s AI industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a packed house at Platform Calgary<\/a> on Wednesday as Canada\u2019s minister for AI and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, explained more on how the government is looking to support the growing AI industry.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on a mission for \u2018team yes\u2019 to find answers,\u201d explained Solomon. \u201cMy job is to facilitate \u2018team yes.\u2019 To get out of the way when we need to, and to give a boost when we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Solomon, Canada is at a critical juncture where we are living through a period of political and technological change happening at an exponential rate.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMinister Evan Solomon says his government is here to support Canada\u2019s AI industry.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cThis political and this technological realignment poses real challenges to our sovereignty, to our values, to our communities\u2026 but it also presents opportunities,\u201d Solomon noted.<\/p>\n

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Minister Solomon noted that there seem to be two distinct sides of the AI coin. Those with pompoms, who believe AI will solve all the world\u2019s problems, and others with pitchforks, who say AI will take away jobs, harm the environment and our future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be open to the opportunities here and not stifle the innovation, and make sure that we\u2019re candid about their concerns,\u201d said Solomon. \u201cPrivacy, data, jobs, and we will protect those things as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThose attending Wendesdays event listening intently to potential regulations for AI.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Alberta-based AI firms are responding positively to the idea that the fed\u2019s are willing to fight to keep Canadian companies in the country.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat spirit of collaboration and ecosystem growth, built on an actual federal level? I think that\u2019s absolutely key,\u201d affirmed Ferdinand Hingerl, chief technology officer with Ambyint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWith such a strong neighbour in the south that we always have to deal with (brain drain), the question is how can we address that challenge so that all the money we invest in our people here stays in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are three key pillars to the federal government\u2019s plan: ensuring access to capital, computing, and consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost companies would rather have a contract than a grant, and the federal government can play a big role in that,\u201d said Shannon Vander Meulen, co-founder of WaitWell<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a bit of a double-edged sword with that because obviously a lot of companies like mine sell extensively into the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, Canada only has a voluntary code of conduct<\/a> for the development and management of advanced generative AI systems. Solomon tells Global News that he and other ministers are working on introducing new legislation to provide more concrete framework to protect Canadians and their data.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe justice minister has tabled legislation on the non-consensual sharing of sexual and synthetic deep-fake imagery, to criminalize that,\u201d Solomon shared.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be tabling legislation to update our privacy, to protect our consumers, to protect our children, and make sure our children\u2019s information is safe\u2026 And then Marc Miller is going to have the online harms element.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMount Royal University information design associate professor Lauren Dwyer says regulating AI in Canada is critical for protecting Canadians.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

At Mount Royal University, information design associate professor Lauren Dwyer says sorting out a mandatory framework to protect Canadians is hugely important.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are driving next to a cliff with potential huge consequences if we aren\u2019t managing this properly,\u201d noted Dwyer. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve seen some of the most deadly versions of this when we look at what happened in Tumbler Ridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dwyer\u2019s research focuses on a number of different areas within the sphere of artificial intelligence, including how the design of AI shapes communication, our behaviour, and what people do about it.<\/p>\n

To her, if we want to remove the human element, there needs to be a greater focus on accuracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re using this tool to make things more efficient, we\u2019re also removing the possibility of a person at every single step,\u201d Dwyer said. \u201cWe love to talk about artificial intelligence with this \u2018human in the loop,\u2019 someone supervising the decisions being made, and that\u2019s fantastic if efficiency isn\u2019t the goal. If you\u2019re supervising all these decisions but you\u2019re being urged to move faster, and chances are you\u2019re only taking a quick glance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dwyer notes that, traditionally, in order for a new technology to be adopted, there has to be a foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA study coming out of Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s social media lab showed the majority of Canadians that they surveyed were using AI, specifically gen-artificial intelligence like ChatGPT,\u201d explained Dwyer. \u201cAnd yet the majority of Canadians (who were surveyed) said they didn\u2019t trust the information that was coming out of it. So we\u2019re seeing those models start to break.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But Dwyer is optimistic that Canada is following other jurisdictions when it comes to coming up with those regulations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe European Union is doing a phenomenal job with regulation and it\u2019s doing a much stronger job than let\u2019s say the U.S. is doing with regulation,\u201d Dwyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that they have it perfectly figured out, and that the work the EU is doing isn\u2019t without its flaws. Canada is right to be taking its own path on this and figuring out how to strike the best balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a packed house at Platform Calgary on Wednesday as Canada\u2019s minister for AI and digital innovation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,212897,277,49,48,714,64,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-546276","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-artificial-intelligence-canada","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546276","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=546276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}