Let me be absolutely clear. If China or any other country tries to develop superintelligence, we have to stop them at all costs. Superintelligence is a technology that, if developed anywhere, threatens our lives and threatens our global security, and we should treat it accordingly.
What does that mean? If we see a country threatening to develop it, Canada's reasonable reaction would be to use our full suite of deterrents to stop them. In this case, we need collaboration with as many countries as possible to give some teeth to our deterrence. The escalation ladder might begin with diplomatic pressure, followed by economic sanctions in the case of continued non-compliance.
It's also important to realize that if we don't have a trust-but-verify regime, and if the U.S. is about to develop superintelligence and China understands the situation, then we might see kinetic action from China to try to stop the U.S. Therefore, to avoid this, the only stable way is to look at the precursors to superintelligence and either have them inside the trust-but-verify regime where they're limited, or if people try to develop them outside the regime, then we have to prevent them from maintaining or acquiring them.