Thank you. It's an excellent question, and I appreciate it.
Data sovereignty is core to this strategy. We want to make sure Canadians' most sensitive data are protected here in Canada under Canadian law, and that it's also not subject to the coercion of other laws. We need the infrastructure to build that. We need to build the infrastructure to make sure we have all aspects of what they call the “ecosystem”, whether it's about building data centres or building them the right way. There will be questions about sustainability—water use like closed-loop water or making sure we're reusing the heat. We're being very transparent about it and building with our values. All the way up, we need Canadian compute. Computers are the fuel of the innovation that companies need so they can buy Canadian. That's very important.
I often say that sovereignty is not solitude. Canadians have access to all the tools of innovation from countries around the world. Many of those countries are here. They employ Canadians. They employ engineers. They've been here in communities for a long time. We welcome that, but Canadians also want a sovereign option. That's why we're investing.
Let me read how we're building that. It's not only by investing in SMEs. This is one of the largest investments in technology innovation for small and medium-sized businesses and Canadian innovators in Canadian history. We have $1.5 billion through the BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, and their LIFT program. We have a $500-million tech growth fund to invest in innovators and reward people starting businesses here. We'll encourage them to do that. We have another $500 million that will be invested through regional development agencies because there's great innovation on the ground. Then we have about $700 million in what's called the compute access fund, so small companies are incentivized and subsidized to get compute and to buy compute from Canadians. That's really important. We're investing in our researchers as well.
I'll read you a quote from the CEO of eStruxture, Todd Coleman. He said, “The federal government's AI strategy is a positive step that recognizes Canada's AI ambitions and the data economy depends on secure, resilient, Canadian-based digital infrastructure that gives businesses, governments and communities confidence in where data lives and how it gets used”. He also said, “Building value for Canada needs to be done with Canadian values”.
We're really happy to see that kind of support.