BetaKit caught up with the minister for a wide-ranging conversation on why the government is pushing Canadians to adopt AI, how the government plans to invest directly in it, and why Canada needs to have sovereign digital alternatives to US tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, listen to The BetaKit Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n On stage at the BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall<\/a>, you said your job was to make sure that safe, transparent Canadian AI is adopted. Can you explain why the federal government feels like it should be in the business of adoption of a specific technology?<\/p>\n When we launched our strategy, AI for All, the \u201cfor all\u201d matters, right? That\u2019s our principle: that this technology should be available and accessible and beneficial for all people in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n We don\u2019t want the digital divide, we don\u2019t want just a few people to benefit from this, we don\u2019t want just the early adopters. Distribution matters. We need to get the lift from this\u2014the real opportunities that AI presents and the risks that it poses. Our foundational principle is that everybody needs to have an opportunity here, and we should also try to mitigate the risks for everybody as well. AI for All is about trust, opportunity, and sovereign control, and essentially the whole strategy can be seen through those lenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is not unique for a government to make sure that access to technologies are equally distributed. There are technologies, and there are general-use technologies. So, for example, we\u2019ve had a universal broadband thesis to make sure that we have connectivity for rural areas, so that\u2019s making sure that all Canadians have access. We built an entire CBC network to make sure that everybody in Canada has access to programming and information. Every education system is built on making sure that every child has access to key technologies. At one point, we spent a lot of money making sure everyone\u2019s got access to a pencil and a pen and an eraser.<\/p>\n It sounds like you\u2019re saying that AI\u2014and being specific with AI is tough, because we\u2019re talking about generative AI, LLMs, algorithms\u2014you\u2019re considering AI to be foundational like reading and writing?<\/p>\n Yeah. We\u2019re at a specific moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I started my first company, Shift Magazine, it was at the birth of the internet. My business partner and I had the notion that we were at the beginning of something brand new that would be transformative. Now we\u2019re at the birth of something else, a general-use technology that will have transformative impacts, and we\u2019ve got to be open to all the opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n The vertical axis is that 150,000 people are working in AI, within 800,000 people who are in the digital innovation space in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n The horizontal axis is where AI starts intersecting with others: in manufacturing, you see industrial AI; in agriculture, where you\u2019re seeing AI technologies in how farmers are applying fertilizer; in healthcare, across every sector. That\u2019s why our government is seized with the notion that this is going to be a general-purpose technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n We need a literate, educated, skilled workforce. We need to have a regulatory environment that protects kids and our personal information and our privacy, and we need to invest to make sure foundationally, things are built here. Either we build the infrastructure here or we rent it somewhere else. Either we build the innovation here with our SMEs and our entrepreneurs, or we buy it from someone else, and either we make the rules here or we follow someone else\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those are the choices we\u2019ve got as a country. Then we\u2019ve got a shot at shaping the thing that\u2019s happening so quickly.<\/p>\n You put numbers to the AI strategy<\/a>: 90,000 AI-related jobs and work opportunities for young Canadians; 250,000 total new jobs through AI adoption by 2031. A $200-billion increase in GDP from productivity tied to AI. Getting AI adoption to 60% by 2034, from 12 percent. Are there any other metrics that you\u2019re looking at internally? What\u2019s the process to track this?\u00a0<\/p>\n We did this for this question exactly. You can have a strategy and just not put KPIs and goals, and then you\u2019re not accountable. We think Canadians deserve to have real goals of what we\u2019re trying to attain.\u00a0<\/p>\n How are we going to do it? We\u2019ve got the principle of accountability, and the strategic buckets, and then there\u2019s a series of tactical investments.<\/p>\n We are going to create job placements, working with organizations like Mitacs. We\u2019ll be working with partners like Patty Hajdu\u2019s jobs ministry and the Canada Summer Jobs placement. These are paid placements for young people in small and medium-sized enterprises that we are supporting.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for where the 250,000 comes from? Those come from OECD numbers. All the modelling that we use is based on OECD numbers, based on adoption rates that we think are very attainable.\u00a0<\/p>\n How are you going to know which of these levers are most impactful?\u00a0<\/p>\n What you\u2019re looking for is the overall impact. First of all, on AI and the economy, there\u2019s lots of modelling. We have data points. When you read a Bank of Canada report, you can disaggregate on labour market: what investments create what kind of job multiplier effect.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll give you one example. We have a government-sponsored cluster called NGen for manufacturing. They had a study of manufacturers that are using AI in their manufacturing process. They\u2019re measuring machine downtime\u2014how often the machines are down less, because the AI is catching things early. They\u2019re saying, \u201cwow, we have had a real return on investment on AI, our productivity is higher.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a commitment in the strategy for the federal government to start taking equity stakes in Canadian companies. Some are uncomfortable<\/a> with the idea of the government picking winners. Can you give any clarity on how you will approach making those investments?\u00a0<\/p>\n We heard in this process that what people want is help on the three Cs\u2014capital, compute, customers\u2014and the two Ts\u2014trust and talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n We kept hearing \u201cI can\u2019t get investment here, I have to go to the US, or I have to go elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n On the investment side, there\u2019s $500 million through this new fund, the Technology Growth Fund<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get into that first $500 million. That\u2019s supposed to give access to capital. That has the optionality of equity. There\u2019s often a lack of a lead investor; we could play that role.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s often a lack of a lead investor; we could play that role.<\/p>\n We are in discussions of exactly what the structure will look like, but I will just tell you that there are options on debt instruments, so any fund you can lend, but we thought it\u2019s important also to have equity optionality.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you\u2019re investing, governments don\u2019t like risk because you\u2019re politically volatile. If you\u2019re a VC, you can afford to have misses if you have one hit. Governments, we have a responsibility. This is taxpayer money. We have to be careful.<\/p>\n RELATED: AI minister says Ottawa considering taking the lead on AI investment rounds<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s another model in policy where we reward risk-taking. There are some suggestions in our strategy where we\u2019re looking at ways to make sure that we\u2019re rewarding risk in a better way to incentivize risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like you, as the AI minister, will be cutting the cheques, right? You\u2019re going to go through more traditional mechanisms.<\/p>\n Yeah. We have to structure these things. Canadians want accountability.\u00a0<\/p>\n We will be working, obviously, with partners, and the structures\u2014we\u2019ll be transparent about it.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about compute. How much of the Compute Access Fund goes to international hyperscalers? Do you foresee any mechanism to turn more of that capital toward Canadian companies?\u00a0<\/p>\n The Compute Access Fund, was, candidly, designed by the last government. It was designed to give a 50 percent subsidy if you\u2019re using an international provider, and 67 percent if you\u2019re using Canadian.\u00a0<\/p>\n The department told me we\u2019ll probably get a few hundred applications, and it was just a firehose<\/a>. SMEs genuinely need access to compute. The diligence process took a long time. We recognize that this is a really important part of the innovation supply chain, and we\u2019ve learned some lessons.<\/p>\n Every company is probably trying to get access to this new technology.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s good! Now we\u2019ve realized, OK, demand is high, we\u2019ve got to process these faster.<\/p>\n First order of principle: let\u2019s make sure it\u2019s not general admission anymore, that we have a better, more orderly fashion. Second is that we want this to incentivize Canadian compute. You will see a scoping of this to make sure that there\u2019s an incentive to use Canadian companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED: Nokia\u2019s Ottawa expansion tests Canada\u2019s definition of \u201csovereign AI\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But, as I like to say, sovereignty is not solitude. We have companies that we want to invest here. Foreign direct investment in Canada has gone up dramatically this year, but Canadian infrastructure, Canadian companies, that\u2019s all first-order priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic was recently told<\/a> by the US government to restrict foreign access to its two most powerful models. This came shortly after the Canadian government was granted access. [Editor\u2019s note: After this interview was conducted, Anthropic was granted permission to reopen foreign access to its models.]<\/p>\n How is the government ensuring Canada has access to frontier models? Is there a plan in place to regain access to Mythos, or does it reinforce the need for sovereign alternatives, like those built by Cohere?\u00a0<\/p>\n You gotta do two things at once. Let me reassure Canadians: we are in close contact with the US government all the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n We are making sure our banks and our critical infrastructure are protected. Our Canadian Cyber Security Institute works very closely with US government security. That said, what\u2019s happened with Mythos, what\u2019s happened with Fable, for some was a clarification moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sovereignty is not solitude. But sovereignty is choice. Sovereignty means that your most important information, data, is not dependent, is free from the coercion of others.<\/p>\n Cohere\u2019s Nick Frosst likes to define sovereignty in terms of access and agency<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. Choice, access, agency. So, what does that actually mean, practically? We all want to use the best models in the world and the best tools, and we\u2019re not trying to cut people off. So, if good models are coming from the US or France or Japan, Canadians want options.<\/p>\n You do need sovereign control over certain things\u2014that\u2019s why Canada is one of the four countries with a large language model. The US, China, and France have one, and we have Cohere. We have a huge competitive advantage here, and it\u2019s a strategic advantage. Which is why we did an MOU with Cohere, and a sovereign tech alliance with Germany, which led to the Cohere Aleph Alpha merger. Which, as The New York Times<\/a> said, gives an alternative to Silicon Valley models. Doesn\u2019t mean it has to replace them, but it\u2019s an alternative.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s an interesting diplomacy and business development combo.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s strategic autonomy.<\/p>\n And this is just the beginning. I will just say: watch this space.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back to the strategy, because you\u2019re going to hold me accountable for this: what are we doing on sovereign control? We are making sure that we have strategically strategic autonomy. We are going to do that through investments; we are going to do that through alliances. We are using our critical parts of the chain where we have competitive advantages.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Evan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Solomon-podcast-1024x576.webp\" "\\"Evan")
<\/a>Image courtesy The BetaKit Podcast.<\/p>\n![\"Evan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Solomon-podcast-hands-1024x576.webp\" "\\"Evan")
<\/a>Image courtesy The BetaKit Podcast.<\/p>\n