Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Jonathan Roberge. I'm a full professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, or INRS, where I also hold the Quebec research chair in francophone artificial intelligence and digital technology. Founded in 2024, the chair has three areas of research: first, the study of artificial intelligence ecosystems, particularly the impact of artificial intelligence on creative industries and the cultural sector; second, the issue of cultural content discoverability; and third, policy development, including at Canadian Heritage. This is all based on scientific expertise in the humanities and social sciences, which mainly stems from sociology, political science, law and communications. I previously held a Canada research chair for 10 years.
I mainly want to emphasize the need to develop public policies based on facts, research and expertise, particularly at Canadian Heritage. I'm saying this because, if we look at Canadian Heritage's track record, we don't see a growing body of research and expertise in this area, but rather a shortfall. This has almost become a hallmark of the department in Ottawa. I can give you the example of our two chairs. In 13 years of existence, they have never been given a research mandate by the Department of Canadian Heritage.
For example, if we look at the department's recent approach to addressing the impact of artificial intelligence on cultural industries, two main things stand out. First, when it comes to Canadian heritage, the government is biased towards artificial intelligence, often to the detriment of cultural industries. Take, for example, the consultation between Canadian Heritage and Mila, formerly known as the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. The entire consultation process came to an abrupt end, since stakeholders in the cultural sector simply rejected the idea of building a cultural policy based on data licencing. We see the same work or the same lack of legitimacy in the consultation on copyright.
All this goes to show that Canadian cultural policies would be better equipped if they had a stronger foundation in research data. This issue also affects the government's ability to better understand the international environment, particularly the capacity to carry out comparative studies. For example, the French department of culture's strategy for artificial intelligence, a comprehensive document of around 30 pages with no Canadian equivalent, includes the stipulation that progress must be made in research and that impact studies must be carried out. Once again, Canadian Heritage doesn't take this approach, either in terms of consultations or scientific research.
On that note, I'll give the floor to my colleague.