Science and Research Committee on Nov. 24th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have one minute and 20 seconds.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Again to you Dr. Gutiw, you mentioned public trust. With regard to the CRA, as an example—obviously a federal responsibility—recent reports have said that a number of pieces of advice given through the current system of call centres have actually been incorrect, and the CRA is looking to introduce AI.

Isn't there a bit of a problem of garbage in ending up as garbage out with the introduction of AI? What do you see as the best way of avoiding that issue?

[Diane Gutiw]

In the advancements in research, we've been focused on increasing reliability. By taking the AI tools you see now and using them as a service rather than as a search engine, how can we focus on knowledge retention, getting access to information very quickly and using agentic models to test the quality of answers before they're received?

We're at a perfect time in our history, when 25% to 40% of the population will be retiring in the next 10 years. These tools are a fantastic way of maintaining that knowledge and being able to serve us in service delivery so that the call centre people will have access to all of that knowledge that is retiring and will be able to get very quick answers to questions.

You're absolutely right, but more research and investment into quality solutions, reliability and transparency are going to help solve that over time so that it becomes more reliable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you. The time is up.

We will now proceed to MP Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses who are here today as part of this new study.

My first question is for Ms. Gutiw.

Quebec is world-renowned in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly thanks to Mila, as you mentioned a few times in your opening remarks. It's also world-renowned in the field of data science, thanks to its network of public, private and industrial centres. However, Canadian businesses have been slow to adopt artificial intelligence on a large scale.

How do you explain that paradox?

There's academic and industrial supremacy in Quebec. However, it's clear that the adoption of artificial intelligence in Canada is still limited.

[Diane Gutiw]

The question is related to the ability of the public sector to move forward quickly. This is where we really need to move away from a public sector culture of risk aversion.

A lot of the limitation comes from the need to go through the rigour. The public sector has an unprecedented responsibility to our citizens to protect our data and to ensure that our infrastructures and technology are supporting that protection. However, by being risk-averse, we are slowing down the ability to have efficiencies and to leverage and adopt the tools in such a way that they're providing meaningful efficiencies and changes. This is where I believe the AI strategy refresh will be able to provide better guidance so that we're able to move the dial forward, advance and take advantage of what the private sector is seeing as a huge efficiency gain in technology.

As well, I know there are a lot of pockets of the public sector where there are different innovations, pilots and proofs of concepts under way, but we've seen, through our own studies, that the ability to move those into production has been slow. We need the infrastructure, guidance and guardrails to be able to use these technologies and move them forward. A perfect role for the federal government is to provide the guidance that will let the provincial governments and different ministries know how they can use these technologies safely to get the same gains as the private sector.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

CGI is working on the real integration of artificial intelligence into operations, not just on research.

From your perspective, is Canada investing too much in university research and not enough in industrial integration, that is to say, experimental development and support for businesses, particularly small or medium-sized businesses?

[Diane Gutiw]

The question is related to whether or not we are investing more in research and not so much in industry and business being able to use this technology.

I believe we have a good investment and a plan for investments so that we have a more fair spread across industry, but the collaboration among public sector, private sector and academic is critical. It would be short-sighted not to work together to advance and accelerate ourselves as leaders, so having a more even and more aligned investment strategy....

For example, the supercluster funding is not available to the public sector. In the private sector, there is funding available that is very slow to move, and it's unclear how to get access to it. Conversations I had during the task force with small and medium businesses indicated that sometimes they were stumbling across funding opportunities, rather than having a clear path.

Aligning and streamlining access to funding based on marketable solutions that are going to advance us—the public and private sectors—to make Canada a real leader in this area is absolutely critical.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you for your answer, which was quite comprehensive.

My next question is about intellectual property.

Much of the research funded by the federal government generates intellectual property, among other things. However, too often, it unfortunately ends up being bought out by foreign actors.

What do you think the federal government should do to ensure that the intellectual property generated in Quebec and Canada stays here and won't be acquired by other countries or multinationals?

[Diane Gutiw]

The question related to intellectual property goes hand in hand with my statement on the need to clearly define what we mean by sovereignty.

Canada is not a large country. We need to be able to collaborate to accelerate. However, we need to do it thoughtfully, and we need to define, first of all, what we will absolutely protect—what remains in Canada and will not be shared. Intellectual property is on that list. Ideation and our investments in research through to marketable solutions need to be protected.

When we are working and collaborating with partners, we need to decide who we are willing to collaborate with and who makes the most sense. As we're working on these collaborative opportunities, we need to make it very clear that Canada will retain our intellectual property and will have opportunities for the talent we're bringing into the country, as well as our own talent of Canadians, making sure that it's a place where they want to work.

Canada is a very attractive place. People want to come here in their research capacity, and they want to stay. We're limiting the ability to stay through permanent residency, other opportunities or time-limited work permits. Our intellectual property is not just the tool; it's also the people.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Ms. Gutiw, you work with public, private and government clients.

Do you think Canada is too dependent on foreign cloud computing, particularly that of Amazon, Microsoft and Google?

Do you think this poses a real risk to digital sovereignty and data security?

[Diane Gutiw]

The question is related to our partnering with organizations that are not Canadian, such as Google, Microsoft and others.

Again, I don't think it's practical and it may be short-sighted to think that we can immediately 100% advance ourselves without having partnerships and collaboration with organizations that have advanced it.

However, we need to define what we're going to protect. We need to ensure, if we are working with Google and Microsoft in Canada, that they are hiring Canadian staff and are using the tools to enable and advance Canadian talent within those organizations. It becomes part of defining what we mean by sovereignty and who we are best willing to partner with that's going to preserve our culture, our intellectual property, our data and our talent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

With that, the first round comes to an end.

We will now start our second round, of five minutes and two and a half minutes, with MP DeRidder.

Please go ahead. You will have five minutes.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you to everyone for coming today.

My question will be for you, Ms. Adam.

We constantly hear about massive U.S. players, such as CoreWeave, Microsoft and Amazon, receiving Canadian incentives or securing large blocks of Canadian power, while Canadian-owned providers compete for the same constrained grid.

In your dealings with federal programs, are Canadian-owned data centre operators getting equitable access to power, land and investment incentives compared with foreign hyperscalers? Are we effectively subsidizing our future competitors?

[Angela Adam]

The reality is that the hyperscalers and large buyers you mentioned are actually critical parts of our ecosystem, as you heard just a few seconds ago. They bring the scale, global standards and innovation velocity.

Are we being treated fairly by our government in our allocation and grants? I think the government is now starting to understand the scale of Canadian players as compared to international ones. I think so far we have been treated fairly. We just need, as an industry, to educate. We find that there's more and more need to educate our government and government agencies on what is possible and available in Canada. What type of digital infrastructure can be made available by Canadian players from data centres such as us, from cloud providers that compete with international cloud providers, from hardware providers and so on?

To answer your questions, we feel like we're treated fairly. It's just incumbent on us to create more visibility with our government, because our international counterparts have done so for much longer.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You say they're a critical part of our infrastructure. A lot of your customers are Canadian enterprises that have to comply with PIPEDA and other domestic laws. Our hyperscalers are foreign-owned facilities operating on Canadian soil, but they're subject to U.S. or other foreign jurisdiction laws, like the U.S. CLOUD Act. This is a real-world risk to protecting our health, financial and government data.

What concrete mechanisms should our government put in place to ensure that our data sovereignty is kept on Canadian soil and in our Canadian data centres so that there's no risk to our data, given, as you said, that these players are critical to our infrastructure?

[Angela Adam]

What this means is that we need to focus our sovereign ambitions on access boundaries. Who holds the encryption keys? Who decides where the data flows? Who can turn things off if needed? It means having Canadian-sided and power-credible infrastructure that can support those workloads here on our own terms.

We need to focus on establishing access boundaries. In practice, that could look like a hybrid model where domestic platforms like ours work hand in hand with hyperscalers on the frameworks that embed Canadian governance and cryptographic controls and that also create some local value.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Do you think there's a current comprehensive plan in place for AI sovereignty?

[Angela Adam]

I don't believe there's a full-fledged comprehensive plan. We are still trying to define it. We're still trying to define what “sovereign” means.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There's $900 million in this budget for large-scale sovereign public AI infrastructure. With that, there's no plan.

[Angela Adam]

We have faith that our government, after the 30-day task, will come out with a clear path forward and a framework that we can work with.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have 45 seconds.

[Kelly DeRidder, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'll just thank everybody for coming today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Now we will proceed to MP Rana for five minutes.

Please go ahead, MP Rana.