Human Resources committee  Yes, I took a quick look. I would say it's a pretty impressive suite of measures. I think, broadly speaking, it's very good. It goes further than what we have as a legislative framework currently, which is frankly what you'd expect. I think the current AI bill is saying that this is sort of how we will frame rules, and then let's create those rules.

Human Resources committee  It's a very big question. If you look at our standard of living, our incomes and a lot of these things, you would think that this is a very productive economy, but if you look under the hood, it's less productive than you would expect. There are a lot of reasons for it, which are historical and have to do with industrial structure....

Human Resources committee  I'll pivot back to something Mr. Roberts said, which was about this not being the be-all and end-all. I think that's entirely fair. It really does matter where the money goes. It's all about how much wealth we are generating as a country, and then where the wealth goes is very much the stuff of politics.

Human Resources committee  That's definitely a big question, and I don't think I have a complete answer. I'm not sure that anyone does. What I would say is that, in a broad sense, I think countries that do well in AI are going to be the ones that are able to develop acceptance for AI adoption and use in societies, and I think that we will have to answer those questions in some format probably sooner rather than later.

Human Resources committee  From our perspective, I'm aware that there are some. This has been a topic of discussion at a high level, but speaking for our members, I can't say that this has come up a whole ton for us, because I think this is a fairly remote prospect in terms of being a reality.

Human Resources committee  That's a good question, and I think I would have to consult with some members to give you a very hard answer. What I would tell you is that this hasn't come up. I would say, perhaps on the processing side, that access to compute is an issue such that perhaps we might hit a bottleneck there in ways that other countries might not.

Human Resources committee  They do, absolutely. I think where we fall apart sometimes is in just making sure that Canadians see more benefit from the public investment we put in. We do get some—that's undeniable—but we want to make sure that the proportion of public value for public dollar to Canadians is as high as it can be.

Human Resources committee  I'll point, once again, to the really excellent report that the Scale AI global innovation cluster put together, which does talk a bit about this. The report says that we're at a point right now where they see us as having some start-up strength and really good research capacity, but the reality is that we may end up not having much of an industry here because our scale-up companies are not able to scale because of the various barriers that they face, both technological and broader, in terms of innovation policy that enables the growth of innovative Canadian companies.

Human Resources committee  I mentioned labour, which is a significant one. Companies are having trouble finding people with the right skill sets. I mentioned that we have good researchers, but lots of those researchers end up going to work for the Googles, etc., of the world, which are able to pay much higher wages—with better weather, it should be said, in many cases.

Human Resources committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to discuss AI policy issues with you here today. My name is Laurent Carbonneau. I'm here today as the director of policy and research at the Council of Canadian Innovators, or CCI.

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  I mentioned the foreign models earlier that this is based on. That is the case in those jurisdictions as well. In that sense, it's an established practice. We think, as Nick said, that's a very good step. I will also say on a quick personal note, because I didn't say it earlier: I was a staffer in this place for some years, and it was very fun to be on the other side of the table.

Finance committee  Perhaps I could expand slightly. When you look at the history of innovation programming in this country, it's focused, really, on the inputs and on crude outputs, which is to say that if we're spending research dollars, then innovation will come. Too often in Canada that just hasn't been the case, so to take a very commercialization-focused approach is, as Nick said, a fairly substantial departure from what's been done before.

Finance committee  I would simply add this: The problem with the Canadian economy is certainly not that there has been too much competition in key oligopolistic sectors over the last several years. As Nicholas said, we're broadly supportive of changes to the Competition Act. We made a submission last spring pursuant to that.

Finance committee  I can add to that, as well. Zooming out on the broader dynamics of innovation, it's been pretty well observed over decades that there is a certain “winner take most” effect to innovation-heavy industries—especially, as Nicholas said, industries where you have assets like data and IP that have the function of locking competitors out.