Industry and Technology Committee on April 13th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Mr. Guglielmin, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Myers, earlier you were talking about potential productivity gains. I heard you outline, a few moments ago, predictive and preventative maintenance, and I heard you talk about quality control and enhancements there.

Over the decades, we've seen Canadian manufacturing flee from Canada to other jurisdictions, especially low-cost jurisdictions. Out of curiosity, do you see AI tools as a use case for reshoring manufacturing in Canada?

[Jayson Myers]

I do. For a number of years, manufacturers have focused primarily on cost reduction. There are great opportunities to use AI to become more efficient in manufacturing, but the real opportunities are in how you create additional value and how you grow your business.

Today, every product, every process and every piece of equipment could potentially be a data platform. Products that are being manufactured are becoming data platforms to provide database services. Jet engines are leased to the airlines, and the manufacturer, for instance, is reading all of the data and protecting the integrity of the engine. That's a big example, but there are all sorts of other examples where manufacturers in Canada could use the data not only to provide a better, more customized and more specialized product, but also to generate much more in terms of services as a result of that.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Are there certain subsectors of the manufacturing sector that are disproportionately taking advantage of AI tools right now?

[Jayson Myers]

If you look at the electronics sector, the equipment sector, the robotics sector, clearly, and the advanced manufacturing technology sector, those are probably the leaders in AI adoption. Larger companies are using AI a lot. It's the smaller companies where we have the biggest adoption challenges.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

This brings me to one of the things you discussed previously with respect to cybersecurity. As more and more businesses start adopting different AI tools for manufacturing, robotics and other integration, what are some of the concrete security and cybersecurity risks that you see manufacturers facing on plant floors today here in Canada?

[Jayson Myers]

There's always a cybersecurity issue around being hacked and phishing applied to data. We've seen examples over the past several years of automated equipment and autonomous equipment—it could be forklifts or cars—being hacked. That's the type of cybersecurity concern that, in some ways, is a challenge in the adoption of AI.

There's a lot of data being generated by manufacturers, and AI can help those companies create value from it. At the same time, they're vulnerable. It's not only the software systems and the data, but the hardware that's data-enabled as well that are vulnerable to a cyber-attack.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

How prepared would you say Canadian SMEs are to deal with cybersecurity attacks?

[Jayson Myers]

I think there are a lot of Canadian SMEs that think they're prepared, but I don't think anybody is fully prepared for a cyber-attack. The most important part of being prepared is not the technology but the training.

When we're looking at AI adoption, for instance, I agree that trust is a major issue, but there's a whole cultural cybersecurity data management training that needs to be done throughout an organization, including top executives and management as well. I think that's probably the best protection for many of the cybersecurity concerns we've seen.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

You'll have to be quick on this one.

Is there a national standard right now for plants and facilities to look at to start developing their own cybersecurity infrastructure policy?

[Jayson Myers]

Yes, there is. Canadian cybersecurity groups—and American, through NIST—have a series of industrial standards around cybersecurity protection.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Guglielmin.

Mr. Eyolfson, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

I've heard from different people asking for the different professions they're in. Mine is the medical profession. I've seen some applications already in use in medical charting, such as using AI to give more concise documentation, dictating notes and these sorts of things.

I know my own profession has been very slow to adopt information technologies. I still know how to use a fax machine. In the hospital I recently worked with, they are still using them. It speaks to a greater issue of trust.

Mr. Veerman, you spoke of trust being one of the things that have been a barrier. What has been done in the education of industries and the general public with regard to this issue of trust?

[Alan Veerman]

At the Vector Institute, there's a two-pronged approach that we use. The main one is to get people hands-on. First of all, we found that's the most effective way to do skills transfers in AI. Second of all, for companies that are just beginning their AI journey, doing a low-level AI use case implementation is the best way to start to get them familiar with it. It reduces the apprehension level, and it has a relatively easier to achieve ROI. We always encourage companies to start with small-scale AI implementation first, to get them started on their trust journey and transformation journey in AI.

The other part is where we direct the corporation's efforts on a strategic level. Early on in the Vector Institute's life, we recognized that AI is a topic that provokes quite a visceral reaction in the general population. We thought about that in two ways.

The first was the extent to which and to acknowledge that we receive a large amount of public funding. We looked at the government as a corporation that spends money. Where should that corporation want to use AI to improve the efficiencies and outcomes of its operations? The largest expense line in public expenses is, unequivocally, health care. The extension of that thought is, to the extent that AI as a topic is a topic that can provoke fear in the general population, if we advance health AI projects, explaining to the general public that we have used AI to improve health outcomes to reduce mortality, reduce waiting times, reduce comorbidities and increase detection of disease so that we can do early intervention would be one of the best ways to encourage greater levels of trust in AI adoption.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you. That's very helpful. From the limited exposure I've had to it, it appears to be something that has some promise in the profession.

To change topics, we talk about the sovereignty of our data and different worries we have, particularly across borders. There are laws regarding access across governments. There is a law in the States, the CLOUD Act, which says the U.S. government could have access to any data on servers it owns in other countries. Canada has not signed on to this, but what assurances can we give to Canadians that data or information being used in this would actually be sovereign, that there would be the proper guardrails to make sure that actors from outside our borders wouldn't be able to either gain information or, even worse, control these technologies?

I'll start with you, Mr. Veerman, and then go on to Mr. Myers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

We actually have only about 30 seconds remaining, so unfortunately, Mr. Eyolfson, I'm going to let Mr. Veerman take that one, and then we'll conclude.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you.

[Alan Veerman]

My colleague, Ms. Blackman, is best positioned to answer.

[Jessica Blackman, Director, Chief Data Officer, Vector Institute]

As a national AI institute, one of the things Vector does is make Canadian compute available to researchers on a scale that otherwise would not be available to them. This means they are working with Canadian data in the context of a Canadian compute environment, where they can be sure that their data is safe and secure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much.

We have two quick things before we finish. First, we'll take the opportunity to wish Dr. Eyolfson a happy birthday today. I think we're all chipping in to get him a brand new fax machine.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

That's the first order of business.

Next, I have a very quick question. I'm going to use my prerogative as the chair.

Mr. Myers, in your introductory remarks, towards the end, you spoke about underwriting risks, and you said the government needs to underwrite risks. Can you very quickly clarify what you mean by that, please?

[Jayson Myers]

I think the most important thing is to help facilitate the collaborations that need to take place. Usually, if there is funding required to support some form of technology implementation, the risk is largely in the collaborative aspects of that funding. If the government is focusing on accelerating the adoption of industrial AI, there is a role for it to play in providing funding, particularly for these collaborative projects, to integrate technologies that would lead to successful outcomes to boost productivity, particularly on the part of SMEs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay. I appreciate the clarity. Thanks very much.

Witnesses, thank you for making yourselves available to us. It was a very useful and meaningful discussion.

Colleagues, we're going to suspend briefly as we turn over to the second hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I call the meeting back to order.

We are going to continue with the second hour of our study, and we're going to welcome a few new witnesses. We have three here in the room with us, and I believe one online.

Joining us from Bell Canada, we have Mark Graham, senior vice-president of legal and regulatory, and Michel Richer, president of Bell AI, Bell AI Fabric, operations and quantum, who I understand will be giving the opening remarks. From Cohere, we have Joelle Pineau, chief AI officer, who is joining by video conference. From TELUS, we have Chris Madan, vice-president of digital product and head of the AI factory.

Witnesses, as a reminder to you, if your earpiece is not in use but is plugged in, please make sure that it is on the sticker in front of you. If it's on your ear, of course, you have nothing to worry about.

With that, I'm going to allow our colleagues from Bell to begin. I will pass the floor over to Mr. Richer.