OTTAWA—The Carney government’s long-overdue national AI strategy will drop later this week, with a focus on boosting adoption, growing trust around artificial intelligence, and strengthening domestic control of the technology.
The strategy is based on six pillars unveiled in April’s spring economic update: protecting Canadians and safeguarding democracy, empowering Canadians, powering AI adoption, building sovereign AI, boosting Canadian champions and forming global alliances.
Details of the road map were first reported by CBC News and confirmed by a government source to the Star on the condition they not be named.
The strategy’s release will bring an end to months of delays for a document that was initially expected to drop at the end of 2025, before repeatedly being pushed back as the new year progressed.
Last fall, Solomon announced a revamped version of the strategy was on its way by unveiling a 26-person task force, which was charged with embarking on a “30-day national sprint” to advise the government on a series of themes, including AI adoption, attracting investment, and building safe systems.
The strategy is also informed by the submissions from over 11,000 respondents who took part in public consultations last year, with individuals weighing in on subjects like ethical AI research, transparent governance, sovereign infrastructure, and AI literacy.
The draft version of the strategy pledges to meet a number of commitments by 2031, including offering access to free AI literacy training, with an emphasis on training a million post-secondary students; creating up to 90,000 jobs and opportunities related to AI for young workers; and supporting the creation of 250,000 jobs through increased AI adoption.
Within the next five years, Ottawa also hopes to bolster business adoption of AI from 12 per cent now to more than 60 per cent by 2030, give small- and medium-sized enterprises access to public computing resources, and create a global alliance while maintaining sovereign autonomy over certain AI capabilities.
The draft strategy includes other commitments, such as earmarking money for the government’s Office of Digital Transformation — a government office intended to drive AI adoption across the public service, which the Star reported Monday has yet to launch despite its unveiling last year.
Another key goal of the strategy is focused on protecting Canadians — especially children and youth — from the harms posed by AI.
The Liberals have already indicated that refreshed online harms legislation is on its way, which falls under the purview of Culture Minister Marc Miller, and will look at whether advancements in artificial intelligence and the use of AI chatbots ought to be included within the bill’s scope.
The strategy in particular references updating federal privacy legislation to protect personal information and data, and commits to safeguarding elections from misinformation and foreign interference stemming from artificially-generated content.
Part of the protections around AI transparency includes watermarking AI-generated content, with the government source saying Ottawa plans to set up consultations on how that process would work rather than rolling out the measure immediately.
Carney’s sovereign wealth fund, announced in late April, also factors into the strategy.
The government source said that if Canada wanted to invest in a “Canadian champion” — such as an AI company — Ottawa could draw from that fund to invest in the company to scale up its operations.
Solomon’s office would not comment on the details of the strategy, which is expected in the coming days.
