Michael Cooper at the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee

February 5th, 2026 / 3:55 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister.

Minister, your government gave $240 million in taxpayer dollars to Cohere as part of your government's so-called Canadian sovereign AI compute strategy to build an AI data centre.

We now know that Cohere handed the same $240 million in taxpayer dollars to a U.S.-based company, CoreWeave, to build and operate the data centre. Effectively, this is a $240-million handout, not to a Canadian company but to a major U.S.-based tech company headquartered in New Jersey.

Is it the case that, in the lead-up to this $240-million handout, your government knew that it was going straight into the pockets of a U.S. headquartered company?

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