Evidence of meeting #45 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was strategy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Michael Ma Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you.
Minister, it's claimed that the AI for all strategy is light on details when it comes to jobs, but the strategy sets out concrete targets of up to 90,000 AI-related job and placement opportunities for young Canadians, up to 250,000 new AI-relevant jobs by 2031 and a major increase in business AI adoption.
Can you walk the committee through how the strategy turns AI from a source of anxiety into a source of opportunity for Canadian workers, students, SMEs and young people entering the workforce?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
I know I can come back to it.
Just to remind people, there are 150,000 people currently working in the AI industry and 800,000 people in the digital innovation space. It's the fastest-growing sector of the economy. We made sure that we're creating jobs. We will actively be supporting those job placements for 90,000 young people. We believe the OECD data shows that if we invest in SMEs as we are, we'll create 250,000 new jobs in the next five years. The investment in SMEs, in innovation, in jobs and in skills training is an essential pillar to make sure of, and the details are very clear in the plan.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you, Mr. Ma.
Mr. Ste‑Marie, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I'm going to raise three points right now about your strategy, and then you can respond.
First, the strategy makes no reference to a possible international treaty, even though Canada sponsored a draft resolution to that effect at the United Nations in 2024.
Second, in terms of partnerships with Europe, the policy refers to market development and supplier diversification, but not regulatory harmonization. Why not?
Finally, your strategy does not mention ethical considerations in the development of generative artificial intelligence. Why not?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Thank you for those good questions.
There's a lot of information in the strategy about our alliance with other countries.
We refer very strongly, for example, to the sovereign technology alliance that we've built with Germany. This is a critical alliance that has already led to one of the most important Canadian companies, Cohere, a large language model, partnering and merging with a German company called Aleph Alpha, giving Cohere sovereign presence in Europe and making it a legitimate competitor to any other large language model.
That sovereign alliance is really important, by the way. There are only four countries in the world that have large language models: the U.S., China, France and, now, Canada. That alliance has really helped. We have digital alliances with the EU. We have a technology alliance with India and Australia, as well as with the U.K. I will observe today, Chair, that the U.K. has followed Canada in age-restricting social media. Today, they followed what Canada did last week. There's lots of coordination. I was just at the G7 coordinating that. In the strategy, pillar three, which is sovereign control, has a whole section on building sovereign alliances.
I think there was another element to your question at the end.
I'm sorry, I forgot the last part.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette—Manawan, QC
I was asking why your strategy makes no reference to ethical considerations in the development of generative AI.
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
I want people to understand that we talk about AI, but there are different types of AI. There's generative AI, which is the kind of AI that people most commonly use. They type into an AI agent, and it gives them an answer. They call it generative because it's generating a response. It's a predictive machine.
The other kind of AI is called agentic, and not to get too technical, but it does tasks for you. That's the second stage. There are two kinds of AI. Both of those, agentic and generative, in the strategy, we just call them AI. They are all going to be, of course.... Any company subject to, obviously, either the privacy regulations.... If they're using private information, that's very important. We have invested heavily in safety and ethical guidelines—we already have a voluntary code—to make sure that AI is used to serve Canadians and not the other way around.
Liberal
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Minister, the AI document speaks to principles but not execution. There are some action items, sure, and some job promises, but there is no execution on how to get there. When will Canadians see an operational plan that outlines concrete timelines and economic impact for the investment in required resources, such as other ministries' involvement—procurement, defence and infrastructure, for example?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Thanks for the question. I appreciate it was a long document.
This strategy is by far the most detailed national AI strategy in the G7. We have a full page on metrics and how we're going to get there: 60% adoption by 2034 and 12% today, and 250,000 new jobs. You asked for targets.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
My question is about how you are going to get there. There's great language about what you're going to do, but my question is this: Operationally, how are you going to get there, and how are you going to govern it?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Again, I appreciate the question.
There are very specific investments tied to how we are going to do it. How are we going to improve, for example, the adoption rates? One way is by setting up our most successful program, called the compute access fund, to give small and medium-sized businesses—many of which, by the way, I know are in your riding—access to compute. It is really important to subsidize access to that so they have access. That's a $700-million plan, and it builds—you asked how—on the $300-million plan that we've already rolled out.
We know how to do it. That's a very specific program that we are building on. Again, we're building a billion-dollar supercomputer for our researchers. We've done the RFP. The decision will be made in the fall. Those criteria are out. On building sovereign data centres, the RFPs are out.
You can see we've already done the first project with Telus. Those are all very public, and the steps are very clear. We tried to give real targets and tie real investments to them so that Canadians can track them and have accountability.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you.
I'm going to ask a question about how the document was put together.
Protecting Canadians and safeguarding our democracy is pillar number one, and from that stems trust. Given that this document had over 11,000 contributions to support the strategy, how did you know that this was a sample representation of Canadian companies and it wasn't overwhelmed by the contributions of foreign actors who also partook in this strategy? How did you make sure that it was wholly Canadian voices and not from American and foreign firms?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
We are really proud of the consultation. We think it's important to have consultation with Canadians when you're setting up an AI strategy—there are real concerns—and part of that is being here at committee with you.
It wasn't just the 11,000 really detailed contributions that we got from Canadians, which was great. We also had the 28-person national AI task force. I did a series of round tables for months with entrepreneurs, Black entrepreneurs and indigenous leaders, so we had widespread consultation.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
With all due respect, though, you're not really answering the question.
How did you make sure it was wholly Canadian input? ISED shows that some of the submissions received were from huge, U.S.-based firms, such as Google, Tesla, Amazon and IBM.
How did you ensure that it was Canadian voices that developed this AI document?
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
The question about consultation is important. By the way, we do consult with businesses that conduct business here and that employ Canadians—businesses from around the world. There are companies that invest in Canada, and we're proud. In many ridings, our foreign direct investment is really important. We want companies to come here, because we have great workers to invest in Canada, and we support that. We made sure—
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Minister, I'm not being combative, but you're not answering the question.
I have 30 seconds left, so I want to get one more question in.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Yes, I understand.
Often it's the clock we're fighting, so I'll take that out of the equation. I'm going to pause it with 25 seconds left for you, Ms. DeRidder, and I'll be generous on that 25 seconds. We're going to offer the minister 20 or 30 seconds to conclude his remarks. It will not take away from your time. I'll allow you the opportunity to pose one more question and allow him a similar amount of time to answer it.
Minister, go ahead.
Liberal
Evan Solomon Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Thanks for that, Chair.
Again, we took consultation, not dictation. It was important that we consulted with people and that we listened to people, but we then made the strategy, AI for all, for Canadians to serve Canadians. The investments speak for themselves. This is about trust, opportunity and sovereignty. We made sure that we drew up the strategy, but we widely consulted.
Conservative