Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here.
I want to start by saying congratulations, and thank you for your work in launching the strategy and for taking into consideration Canadians and how we want to be ahead at this time. Another thing I want to also commend you on is not just the three principles but the pillars, which focus on safeguarding our democracy, making sure that we're empowering Canadians and, of course, focusing on sovereignty. All these pieces make this much stronger.
One thing I want to ask about is something we just discussed. Canada's AI for all strategy rightly recognizes that we want Canadian workers, researchers and businesses to benefit from AI. We also need the underlying infrastructure to be right here at home. That means focusing on data sovereignty, which we talked about, which brings us to the concerns around data centres. In my riding of Scarborough Southwest, the proposed expansion of the Stack data centre has raised many important questions and concerns from my constituents about electricity demand, water usage, land usage and, of course, the impact on local communities and community members.
Minister, could you talk about how our government is ensuring that the new AI investments—and you've just announced some as well—are planned in a way that strengthens AI sovereignty and innovation while also being transparent, sustainable and beneficial to the communities that host them?