Science and Research Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2025

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Well—

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

The possible answers are “yes” or “no”.

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

The legislation I am preparing is on privacy and data. The Minister of Canadian Heritage is really the one who's going to be in charge of the copyright legislation. I don't want to speak for that minister, but I am certainly working on privacy and data legislation. I'm happier to stay in my lane and speak about that.

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

That wasn't one of the possible answers, so it's an incorrect answer.

Several hundred experts, including Yoshua Bengio, whom you like to quote so much, warn us that advanced artificial intelligence models could threaten humanity.

Where do you draw the actual line between innovation and protecting the public? What type of artificial intelligence model do you think should be strictly regulated or banned in Canada?

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

AI safety is absolutely critical. That's what our legislation will be about.

We have invested $50 million in the AI safety institute. Yoshua Bengio in Montreal is one of the leading thinkers on that. We're working very closely with him. That's a great question.

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

Madam Chair, I would like an answer in writing. I'm not really satisfied with the length of the answer or the explanation. It doesn't reassure me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Can you please repeat that?

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

Given that you gave the minister 10 seconds to answer my key question, could I receive a written response?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

The time is up.

If it is possible, could you send in a written response? We will circulate it to members.

With that, this panel comes to an end.

On behalf of all members of this committee, Minister, I really want to thank you for your time and for providing us with important information for this study on artificial intelligence.

We will begin in a few seconds with the next panel. The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call this meeting to order.

I would like to welcome our witnesses from the Department of Industry: Mark Schaan, associate deputy minister, and Nipun Vats, assistant deputy minister, science and research sector.

There will be no opening remarks. We will go directly into our first round of questioning. We will begin our first round of six minutes with MP Ho.

MP Ho, please go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks for being here, deputy ministers.

I'll get straight to it. The Liberal government announced a $700-million sovereign AI compute fund last year, a fund that is explicitly advertised as a five-year effort to build up Canadian AI infrastructure. Earlier this year, the very first cheque they wrote was for $240 million, representing more than a third of the entirety of the fund. It went to Cohere. Can you confirm that?

[Mark Schaan, Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Industry]

I can confirm that, yes.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Cohere used that $240 million not to build Canadian compute, but to purchase the capacity from another company, CoreWeave, to help them build it out. Is that correct?

[Mark Schaan]

The nature of the investment to Cohere under the compute challenge program was to further their R and D efforts as it related to the build-out of their continued capacities. That included the further articulation of their LLM capacity, which included data centre operations.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Data centre operations are contracted to CoreWeave.

[Mark Schaan]

CoreWeave was selected as the shell provider by Cohere as part of the R and D effort that we are supporting.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

CoreWeave is a U.S.-based company, headquartered in the United States. In the committee last week, multiple Canadian data centre operators testified that they have existing capabilities and scalable facilities that can expand quickly.

Are you comfortable that Cohere decided to pick CoreWeave, a U.S.-based company, over Canadian competitors?

[Mark Schaan]

Thank you for the question.

I want to put our overall investment strategy in context. The $2 billion, part of the 2024 envelope for building digital infrastructure in Canada, had a number of component parts, and $300 million was dedicated towards the AI compute access fund. That is enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to be incentivized to continue their AI journey. It provides incentivized and subsidized compute loads that favour compute facilities that are operated by Canadians. That $300 million is in the process of being finally articulated, and we'll have announcements in the new year.

The $700 million was for the compute challenge, and there are two archetypal component recipients of that. One is someone with an R and D capacity that is actually utilizing sufficient enough numbers and volumes of data that they may themselves be a proponent, and the other archetypal client is a mid-tier data centre operator, provider or otherwise that is going to be incentivized to create further sovereign alternatives—

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

I know you can't control specifically, directly. You don't make the decisions at Cohere. I understand. You're a government official.

Did the government require Cohere to purchase the compute from a Canadian company? Were there any strings attached, or could they just pick whichever bid they pleased?

[Mark Schaan]

The overall envelope of the compute challenge continues the significant effort that goes into all of our contribution agreements as they relate to innovation and related programming—

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

In the contribution agreement, was there any requirement, to your knowledge, that would require a purchase from a Canadian supplier?

[Mark Schaan]

The contribution agreement centres around the R and D project of Cohere, and Cohere's R and D is what we are supporting through the compute challenge program—

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Okay, Cohere decides how to build out the R and D. There are no strings attached, essentially. You would have said yes.

Back in the summer, Cohere signed an MOU with the federal government to “transform” federal public service delivery, which would inevitably give Cohere access to sensitive government data.

Knowing that, do you see any issue with outsourcing the infrastructure to CoreWeave, a U.S. company?

[Mark Schaan]

I think it's really important that we continue to note that the entity in question is a Canadian entity subject to Canadian law and is continuing to build out Canadian IP and Canadian R and D capacity.

Much like many of the operational environments that are privy to...the infrastructure providers to a number of our core industries, there are lots of dimensions to the relationship with their operator—

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

The operator—