Amid significant public distrust<\/a> of AI, the strategy also includes measures to improve people\u2019s understanding of how it works, and to train early- and mid-career workers in how to employ it in their jobs. And to address concerns about negative personal impacts, the Liberals are promising a small boost to AI safety research, and new protections and privacy rules, though the document doesn\u2019t provide a lot of detail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n \t \t Growing AI firms\u00a0<\/p>\n The strategy proposes to help AI startups scale up and compete globally through a mix of funding and contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n As The Logic reported Wednesday, the federal government has committed<\/a> $500 million for a new Canadian Tech Growth Fund, which will make investments in companies, and may take equity stakes in them. That marks a change in approach for Ottawa, which has typically provided loan-like financing or grants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Arvind Gupta, a University of Toronto computer science professor and member of the task force advising the government on the AI strategy, said the model could work if Ottawa invests alongside experienced venture capital firms rather than trying to pick winners itself, noting that the approach has worked well in Israel.<\/p>\n On top of the new growth fund, the strategy references the $1.75 billion Ottawa announced in the 2025 budget to draw in more private investment for innovative companies. That commitment includes $1 billion in funding for the government\u2019s flagship venture capital fund, called the Venture and Growth Capital Catalyst Initiative, plus $750 million for \u201cearly growth-stage\u201d funding.<\/p>\n Investment industry groups have spent recent months making the case for how that $750 million should be spent, with some<\/a> saying it should be used at the earliest stages of growth and others<\/a> at a later stage to help companies scale.<\/p>\n AI Minister Evan Solomon had promised<\/a> that the strategy would help startups raise more capital at the early and growth stages. Successive federal governments have also tried to increase the amount of money available to startups through venture capital programs to indirectly or directly seed funds that back tech firms.<\/p>\n The finance department will also look at ways to encourage investors to \u201creinvest gains earned from successful tech companies into Canadian startups.\u201d Build Canada, a tech advocacy group, has called<\/a> for such a rollover tax break, citing a similar U.S. incentive, while the Conservative party campaigned<\/a> in the 2025 election on deferring taxes on capital gains reinvested in Canada. Some members of the task force Solomon appointed<\/a> last September to propose ideas for the strategy had recommended<\/a> that Ottawa also increase tax breaks for the founders of AI startups.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cToo many promising Canadian companies grow elsewhere,\u201d the strategy acknowledges, citing the pull of the U.S. technology market, the world\u2019s largest.\u00a0<\/p>\n The strategy carves out a special place for Canadian makers of so-called foundation models, which power generative tools like ChatGPT and Claude. The document cites Toronto-based AI firm Cohere<\/a> and Montreal-based non-profit LawZero<\/a> as examples. It proposes to treat foundation models as \u201cstrategic assets, with the potential to scale globally while remaining anchored on Canadian soil.\u201d Ottawa plans to back research into such systems if they\u2019re built with safety in mind, and to help export them to countries \u201cactively seeking trusted alternatives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst said the strategy shows ambition, and that he was glad to see the principles on which it is based, which include fostering trust, providing opportunity and safeguarding sovereignty. \u201cIt\u2019s obviously a long way to go in between a new policy and how that affects the country and the industry, but it\u2019s broadly great to see the steps that are being taken,\u201d he told reporters at the announcement. <\/p>\n The Liberal government is also pledging to use its buying power to help homegrown firms, meeting its own need for new technology tools while acting as \u201ca strategic anchor customer\u201d that companies can tout when selling abroad. The new Digital Transformation Office, first announced in last November\u2019s budget, is designed to speed up procurement. Ottawa has already made some small-scale purchases from firms like Cohere and Ada Support as part of pilot programs or tests.\u00a0<\/p>\n Previous federal attempts to buy more from startups and innovative companies have not succeeded. Ottawa gutted<\/a> the last such program in February 2024 after departments consistently<\/a> failed<\/a> to meet their spending obligations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regulating AI<\/p>\n The strategy also gives some thought to putting guardrails around AI, though it\u2019s not immediately clear how some of the new safety measures will be enforced. <\/p>\n The prime minister acknowledged that Canada ranks near the bottom of countries in AI training, literacy and trust, and the threats the technology poses to privacy and safety. <\/p>\n The government plans to watermark AI-generated content, for example, and pitched a \u201cCanada Trusted AI Certification\u201d program to help people identify trustworthy AI products.<\/p>\n The strategy also includes a vague promise to protect critical systems from cybersecurity threats posed by advanced AI systems by working with frontier AI companies and international partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this spring, Solomon told The Logic that Canada\u2019s institutions can withstand<\/a> the threat posed by Anthropic\u2019s latest AI model, Mythos, which has proven to be particularly adept at cracking cyberdefences. He cited the capabilities of Canada\u2019s AI Safety Institute as one of the reasons he felt so confident.\u00a0<\/p>\n The government has pledged $50 million to expand its AI Safety Institute<\/a> to track emerging AI risks, do technical research and evaluate AI models.\u00a0<\/p>\n Solomon also turned<\/a> to the institute when it emerged that the teenage shooter who killed eight people in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in February after exchanging disturbing messages with OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT that the company failed to flag to police.\u00a0<\/p>\n Solomon asked the institute to examine OpenAI\u2019s safety protocols and report back. The tragedy in Tumbler Ridge put a spotlight on the safety risks associated with AI chatbots. The government is now considering<\/a> restricting children\u2019s access to chatbots as part of its long-awaited online safety legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n The strategy also promises to table a new law to update Canada\u2019s long-outdated privacy legislation to safeguard consumers\u2019 data. The previous Liberal government made<\/a> a similar attempt to bring Canada\u2019s privacy laws into the modern age, but the bill never made<\/a> it through Parliament.\u00a0<\/p>\n The strategy also emphasizes the need to build public understanding of AI, and get more people using the technology. It proposes free, entry-level online training, and programs run by libraries and community organizations. It also promises to give all post-secondary students \u201caccess to trusted AI agents.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ottawa has already renewed funding for AI skills education for kids via the CanCode initiative\u2014one of several innovation programs set up by the Liberal government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau that was set<\/a> to end\u2014with an additional $30 million for the next two years as part of April\u2019s spring economic update.<\/p>\n Driving AI use<\/p>\n The strategy sets a big target to diffuse AI across the economy, aiming to increase business adoption of the technology from 12 per cent today to 60 per cent by 2034.\u00a0<\/p>\n To help get there, the federal government is adding $500 million to a currently $200-million AI program run by its seven regional development agencies that helps firms pay for work to adopt and commercialize AI. The initiative offers loan-like funding of between $125,000 to $5 million, depending on the province and the project.<\/p>\n The strategy also incorporates BDC\u2019s LIFT program, a $500-million initiative announced<\/a> in April to help over 1,000 small- and medium-sized businesses adopt AI. The initiative pairs firms with industry advisors to figure out where to use the technology, and provides financing to install it. A BDC report<\/a> published Wednesday found that just 30 per cent of Canadian SMEs currently use generative tools, with non-adopters leaving some $150 billion in GDP on the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a complement to the financing programs, Ottawa aims to develop a new literacy and adoption assessment tool, which small firms can use to figure out whether they\u2019re ready to use AI, and for what.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s also expanding the AI Compute Access Fund, which helps firms pay for the processing power they buy from cloud service providers, with an extra $700 million. The oversubscribed program has so far awarded<\/a> $66 million of its original $300 million budget to 44 companies, including venture-backed tech firms like Basetwo<\/a>, EarthDaily<\/a> and Vendasta<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Corporate Canada has historically been slow<\/a> to adopt new technologies, contributing to what the Bank of Canada has described<\/a> as a productivity \u201cemergency\u201d for the country. AI proved no different in the early stages, with Canadian business rates of use trailing<\/a> other advanced economies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Task force members had called for tax breaks for firms that adopt AI, with incentives to buy from Canadian developers. During the 2025 federal election, the Liberals promised<\/a> a rebate for small and medium-sized businesses of 20 per cent of their AI adoption expenses, but the incentive was not included in the strategy released Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Building AI infrastructure<\/p>\n Ottawa plans to use its buying power to try to increase the amount of compute available to Canadian firms and researchers.<\/p>\n The federal government will back data-centre projects of at least 100 megawatts, larger than the country\u2019s largest existing facility not directly owned by a U.S. cloud giant. It\u2019s betting that committing to buy processing power for its own tech needs will help the builders of new AI infrastructure attract private investment, adding more capacity for companies and universities in Canada.<\/p>\n November\u2019s budget gave<\/a> Solomon the mandate to negotiate such data-centre deals. Ottawa has received 160 proposals, and deals in the works could add 850 megawatts of capacity by 2030, and grow to as much as 2.3 gigawatts over time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Canadian companies, governments and researchers currently rely on \u201cinfrastructure they do not own, govern or meaningfully influence,\u201d the strategy says. Organizations are sometimes storing data or using AI located in foreign countries. \u201cThese dependencies are a strategic exposure Canada cannot afford to leave in place,\u201d according to the strategy.<\/p>\n The document acknowledges that so-called hyperscalers\u2014the cloud arms of U.S. tech giants\u2014are likely to sell much of the AI compute that Canadian organizations will use for the foreseeable future. The country will \u201ccontinue to welcome that foreign investment where it delivers clear benefits,\u201d the strategy says. Still, the strategy makes clear the need for a \u201csovereign alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal government is already in talks<\/a> to back Telus to build three new compute facilities in British Columbia with a combined capacity of 150 megawatts. Several other firms, including telecom rival Bell<\/a> as well as data-centre specialists Hypertec<\/a> and eStruxture<\/a> have touted their Canadian expansion plans as a way of meeting Canada\u2019s need for sovereign AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n Several task force members had called for the federal government to help remove regulatory and paperwork barriers to data centres, which the strategy does not address.<\/p>\n Ottawa also aims to make more data available for innovators to build new products, including via $100 million in funding to expand Vital, a program based out of Toronto\u2019s St. Michael\u2019s Hospital that will let researchers work with anonymized health records. And the federal government will launch a new $100-million program with the Canadian Institute for Health Information that brings together research and clinical trial datasets.\u00a0<\/p>\n People and skills for AI<\/p>\n Under the strategy, the government will also expand a long-standing program designed to help universities recruit and retain top AI researchers. It aims to increase the number of AI chairs, which help AI institutes and schools pay for faculty and their labs, from 143 to nearly 200. The government will also provide $130 million for programming at the three national AI institutes to help commercialize research discoveries.<\/p>\n The chairs program\u2014which is managed by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research\u2014formed the core of the original national AI strategy, announced<\/a> with $125 million in funding in March 2017. Last July, CIFAR and the three national AI institutes proposed<\/a> a $186-million renewal package to expand the initiative amid what they described as an \u201cunprecedented global war for AI talent.\u201d<\/p>\n The strategy aims to create opportunities for up to 90,000 students to learn AI skills in the workplace. It\u2019ll offer those through existing federal programs for student work placements, Canada Summer Jobs and Skills for Success, as well as third-party organizations like Mitacs. Ottawa also plans to back the expansion of employer-led training programs for mid-career workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The federal government claims it\u2019s \u201cpursuing a pro-worker approach to industrial AI,\u201d in which the technology works alongside humans rather than instead of them. To give workers more of a say, Ottawa is proposing to set up six new sector-specific tables at which governments, employers, unions, post-secondary institutions and Indigenous groups can discuss skills gaps and the talent needed to fill them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gupta said he\u2019s generally encouraged by the strategy but that some of the measures were too vague to draw conclusions on. \u201cThe words all sound really good to me,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019d like to see the details.\u201d<\/p>\n With files from Catherine McIntyre in Toronto<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Canada\u2019s new AI strategy aims to put the technology to work to grow the economy, secure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[10661,439,143,111,2134],"class_list":["post-74850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-ai-strategy","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-federal-government","tag-mark-carney","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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