Industry and Technology Committee on April 30th, 2026

[Corey Mandryk]

For background, about this time last year, Rogers Communications let about 400 of its workers in the wireless department know that it no longer required them as employees. It still needed them to do what they were doing, but it pushed them off to become contractors with Ericsson. Ericsson Canada took them on as employees.

A few months after they were hired by Ericsson, the folks who worked in the back end—the technicians who deal with voice quality, voice messaging and all of that stuff—doing the exact same work on the Rogers network, were told to start training workers from the Ericsson branch in India to do their work and that the work would be transferred over. Now the network operations centre is in Noida, India, as are the technicians who look after all of the components that make our cellphones work.

Our stance is that when we have operational control or operational capacity, if we're losing that stuff from within our borders, we're now dependent on workers outside of our borders to take care of our networks. That begs the question of what data sovereignty and digital sovereignty are. Sovereignty, as you mentioned, is having that kill switch. We have the ability to close our physical borders down, as we did during COVID, but what happens with the digital border? Do we have the ability to stop that traffic from leaving and/or coming in?

Those questions have yet to be really sussed out well. I'm happy to have those ongoing conversations, but those are some of the big concerns.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for the three Alliance representatives.

Are telecommunications companies already laying people off solely because of AI?

[Roch Leblanc]

Major telecommunications companies are integrating automation and AI in general in a very subtle and gradual way over a long period of time, so it's hard to attribute that to AI directly.

On the other hand, we certainly are seeing the repercussions more often. When one big company lays off 3,500 workers, as we heard recently, and another lays off 10,000, we're left with major questions about how the work is going to be done.

As I often say, in telecommunications, the work will get done one way or another. Imagine squeezing one end of a big balloon: it just gets bigger on the other end.

We have serious concerns about this.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

I'm going to ask one last question. I only have a minute left, but I'll have another two and a half minutes later.

Does the Canada Labour Code include protection against technological change? Is AI considered a technological change?

[Nathalie Blais]

Yes, there is protection in the Canada Labour Code, which contains a provision on technological changes.

However, this provision dates back to the time when you could knock a hole in a factory wall to bring in a machine. You could see it coming, which is no longer the case. Employers get around this provision by using voluntary departure offers rather than layoffs. It kind of goes unnoticed.

AI is harder to see. It shows up on a computer and you don't see it coming. In many cases, everything is already set up and deployed before the union gets wind of it, so it's hard to have a conversation about how we're going to do the work with AI.

There are also risks to workers' mental health. We would like to have these conversations to keep the work interesting and use AI as a tool to improve our work, but that's not what's happening right now.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Mr. Falk, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for coming here and for their presentations.

Mr. Sanders, I would like to begin with you. You previously attended this committee and spoke about quantum computing. Can you very quickly, in layman's language, tell people watching these committee proceedings what you mean by quantum computing?

[Dr. Barry C. Sanders]

Quantum computing is really just computing. It just has a better engine. If you think about building a computer, nowadays we hear about GPUs from Nvidia, so there's a way of doing certain kinds of math better. Quantum computing is really about inserting a chip that is not about speeding up computing but about making certain hard problems easy to solve. That's what we're aiming for.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you. I'm sure that will help folks understand what we're talking about.

In your previous presentations to committee, you talked about the importance of working internationally. Our focus in the last year or two has been on data sovereignty and keeping things domestic. Are you still of the opinion that we need to be focused internationally?

[Dr. Barry C. Sanders]

Yes, and I'll elaborate.

I'm very aware of the tension between open and digital sovereignty. I just spent three months at CERN, involved with the Open Quantum Institute and dealing with exactly that kind of tension. Yes, we need to work internationally, because Canada alone can't do great things, but it doesn't mean that we have to work closely with every country. Like NATO, we need to—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

We need to choose our dance partners wisely.

[Dr. Barry C. Sanders]

That's correct—well said.

NATO and the G7 are very good examples of how we can build international partnerships.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Beer, thank you for your presentation and thank you for your domestic focus. I found it very intriguing that they sat you beside each other.

You've indicated very strongly that you feel we very much need to have a domestic solution for AI and data centres that are domestically owned, domestically located and domestically managed. How important is it that the workforce is also domestic?

[James Beer]

I think it's absolutely critical. Canadian companies have relied on Canadian workers to drive the economy and support critical health care initiatives, education and energy services, so yes, the Canadian labour piece is absolutely critical. I think Canadians have a unique set of values that we honour together. There's an element of closeness and understanding with our fellow companies that we work with. Yes, I think it's absolutely critical.

The bottom line is that we have some incredibly skilled folks in Canada domestically, whether they're electricians or mechanical folks, or they're in construction companies or professional services companies. We have all the labour to deliver these services today, and there's no reason whatsoever why we ought to be relying on international companies, particularly those that are disguising themselves as Canadian companies—and there's quite a bit of that going on right now.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You've answered some of my other questions already by indicating that we have the talent here in Canada to operate and manage these systems. Twice now, you've said, “Canadian values”. Can you briefly describe what you mean by Canadian values? It can mean different things to different people.

I have a second question, if you could answer that as well. Our other panellists have indicated that our telecoms provide the majority of communication and transportation highways for AI. Do our telecoms provide sufficient and secure enough services to meet the requirements, for example, of the data centres?

[James Beer]

First, on values, I think Canadians are well known to be fair, high-integrity people. We operate transparently with one another. There's a very unique set of those values that isn't shared by the global sphere these days. Primarily, it's being transparent with one another. Sure, it's focusing on building and growing, but it's doing it in a fair and open manner.

Second, on the network piece, our Canadian networks are well equipped to handle AI workloads, whether it's the capacity or the security, and that isn't the case with all international carriers. I'm quite proud of our Canadian carriers, whether it's Bell, Rogers or Telus. They have good security protocols and good capacity management. That isn't the case for all telecommunication carriers globally.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you. I think I'm out of time, but I'm not out of questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Falk.

Ms. O'Rourke, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair Carr.

Mr. Leblanc, thank you very much for your presentation. I think we need to revisit this in greater depth to look at the job losses in recent years and the potential of AI in the years to come. We're all taking note.

Ms. Blais, I'd like to talk more about the importance of the conversation within society about how AI can improve everyday life, because there's enormous potential. Thank you for your comments.

Mr. Beer and Mr. Sanders, I have many questions for you.

The Munk school put out a document called “Sovereign by Design: Strategic Options for Canadian AI Sovereignty”. It argues that “sovereignty in the AI era means freedom from coercion, not digital isolationism or technological self-sufficiency.” It maintains that there isn't a country in the world that “can achieve complete independence across the AI technology stack” and that our challenge is “how to structure [those] dependencies to preserve choice, reduce foreign leverage, and ensure that [our] Canadian data and infrastructure remain governed by Canadian laws and values.”

Mr. Sanders and Mr. Beer, you seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. However, what this recommendation looks at is that in Europe there's a way to have “coalition-building and hybrid strategies”. What do you think of that approach, Mr. Sanders?

[Dr. Barry C. Sanders]

I support the message of that Munk document. Some things we can do by ourselves, but the future is coming faster than we expected, and I think we need to work together.

I don't think I'm disagreeing with my colleague at all. I understand the need for jobs. However, if we're going to keep up with the race and stay ahead, we need to work through good governance regulations and standards, etc., and not cut off fast-moving tech.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Beer, did you want to interject quickly?

[James Beer]

I believe we absolutely need to operate globally. We need to be very careful about whom we work with. Particularly for Canada, there are some amazing opportunities to work with the EU. We share a common set of values and a focus on the desire to build. It doesn't mean that we need to be parochial and only operate inside Canada. There's very much a global piece, but it's not everyone.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's helpful. Canada was a leader in AI. Three of the godfathers of AI are from here, so we absolutely want to keep that knowledge and these jobs here.

Mr. Beer, you said that your organization services banking, energy, health care and defence. It ties in with this report from the Munk school in that there can be a hierarchy of the sensitivity of data. There are things that need to be fully sovereign and other things that may not need to be fully sovereign. Would you agree with that conclusion?

The challenge with coming out with an AI strategy that's fully baked and has all the regs is that it will be unusable tomorrow. Things are changing so quickly. How do we navigate the protection of the really critical domestic data and the other uses?

[James Beer]

It's a data classification exercise. To your point, not all data is the same. Some data will be low risk, and it's not, for example, health care. We need to be incredibly sensitive and careful around how health care is treated.

Yes, there are other types of transactions and data that are perfectly well suited for software as service applications where geography isn't as important. However, health care has some incredibly importantly data, of course. Many of our energy companies have decades of seismic data that needs to be protected, and there's intellectual property that needs to be protected.

There's a real data classification exercise that needs to run by sector. Some of those we can push to AI services with more ease than others.