Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 26th, 2025

[Malo Bourgon]

It really depends on which applications and which kind of AI he's talking about. Many people are surprised to hear that there was a recent executive order in the United States about the Genesis mission to have the U.S. government integrate AI, accelerate a bunch of science with AI and remove barriers to doing that. I think that's great. I support that.

If we're talking about disregarding things and trusting the companies to do whatever they want as they scale to these powerful systems, I would disagree with that part.

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what the minister was talking about. There's one way that I could very much agree with what he said, and there's another way that I think it would be an extremely big mistake.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes, we'll invite him to appear. We can ask him the question directly.

[Malo Bourgon]

If he's around, I'm here all night tonight and tomorrow.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

I kept to my time, didn't I, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Yes, because you have less than 40 seconds left. That works for Mr. Hardy.

Mr. Hardy, you have the floor.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

We said that artificial intelligence had many positive applications, and that we obviously needed to exercise a certain amount of control. Since Mr. Bourgon just responded to Mr. Thériault, I'll turn to Mr. Guilmain.

Given that this field is evolving extremely quickly, we need to promote the good and legislate against the bad. We need to leave things alone for a while, look at how this technology is being used from an ethical and logical standpoint and then legislate if we see any straying from the straight and narrow. We'll still maintain the things that benefit humanity in scientific, medical and other ways.

Do you have any comments on this? Do you think that we should have evolving legislation?

[Antoine Guilmain]

I'm honoured to appear before this committee.

If we really did create evolving legislation, I think that I would speak every year on each of the nine birthdays of the committee members. Indeed, so many changes are taking place that I myself have trouble keeping up with the technological, legislative and societal changes.

I won't deny that, even though it's unfortunate, law remains a science of reaction. I agree with you that law isn't ethics. Its very nature is unfortunately imperfect and it will never be perfect. It's a bit like Don Quixote trying to evolve, but always lagging behind the times. However, we can remain visionaries in our approach to drafting legislation, while staying neutral from a technological standpoint.

At the moment, we're already having trouble defining what constitutes an artificial intelligence system. On a more basic level, more recently in Canada, we weren't sure what constituted a high‑impact artificial intelligence system. Even today, this concept alone is still subject to debate. The thing that really scares me about this type of approach is actually having to celebrate each of your birthdays once a year. It would be nice, but challenging.

That's why I think that this meeting is vital. There will be others. That said, the reality is that we must consider whether we can say that legislation could evolve over time. I think that this would be difficult. Take fax machines, for example. No one uses them anymore. However, until recently, the Code of Civil Procedure included provisions on this concept. We end up in rather bizarre situations where we have older technologies. The idea of superintelligence may still exist in five years. However, it will no longer be called this, and the legislation will inevitably still refer to this type of concept.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Hardy.

Mr. Saini, you have two and a half minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Gurbux Saini, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you for coming.

This is something very amazing and very alarming.

My questions are for both of you. Should Parliament use AI? If so, should it be limited to parliamentary work such as voting, the consideration of laws and enacting laws?

I'd like to hear from both of you.

[Malo Bourgon]

Absolutely. It would have taken me a lot longer to make my speech as eloquent as it was if I didn't have an AI model helping me. I talk to people all the time who are in policy and who currently don't have access to these models. They are secretly doing the research on their phones, and the models are helping them with whatever policy brief, because they don't have access to them.

I think there are enormous.... The models still hallucinate, and there are problems. People have to understand how to use the current models in ways that will help their work, but I think it's going to increasingly be the case that, for the AI systems of today, you're just going to fall behind if you're not finding ways to integrate them into your work life. That's no different for Parliament.

[Antoine Guilmain]

I have the same response: I think it should be used responsibly. I always like to say that, for AI, what we have at the moment is a bad summer student, a really bad one who can be tested. Still, it's useful for some tasks. That's what we have today.

It's also good to use it on a daily basis, including by the people who are very skeptical, because at the end of the day, it's not going to go away.

[Gurbux Saini, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Are there other governments that Canada could follow as a lead to see if those systems are working and protecting the dignity of...?

[Malo Bourgon]

From my perspective, the country that has invested the most in this would be the U.K., with their AI Security Institute. I think that organization is the most well-resourced government body, and it is trying to understand AI very holistically. It is looking at the threats, trying to understand the big alignment problems that I'm talking about and trying to be the place the government feels it has permission to listen to on these issues and that does some of the best work. In fact, when I talk to U.S. policy-makers, I often give them trouble, asking why they are letting it hire all the best Americans to advise it about this technology. There are a bunch of smart Canadians the government could probably be hiring to do the same thing.

I think the U.K. is doing great work.

[Gurbux Saini, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Antoine, do you have anything?

[Antoine Guilmain]

It depends on the topic. When it comes to innovation, you may have seen the recent Genesis mission executive order in the U.S. Clearly, they are interested in innovation. When it comes to regulation, the U.K. is probably a good example.

I would say that at the moment, any jurisdiction, any country, has something to bring to the table, and that's the core of Canada. We take what's best from the rest of the world. That's, from my perspective, the DNA of this country. I think we can—by watching and by being slow, steady and really organized—potentially get to an amazing place.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Saini.

Thank you both, Mr. Guilmain and Mr. Bourgon, for being here for our first meeting.

As committee members know, the work plan showed that we were going to have the Minister of Artificial Intelligence here. For the benefit of the committee, I'll say that we've reached out—probably eight or nine times, Madam Clerk—to the minister to appear, and that still has not been arranged. If anybody has any ability to make sure the minister comes before the committee, I would strongly suggest that you push him and his office to do that.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here and providing to the committee what I thought was fascinating information.

I'm going to suspend. We'll go in camera to deal with committee business, and we'll return in a few minutes.

The meeting is suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]