The country’s new AI strategy puts sovereignty front and center as Canada moves to reduce its reliance on foreign cloud and AI providers.
On Wednesday, the European Commission unveiled the Technology Governance Package, introducing new legislation to loosen US Big Tech’s grip on European cloud and AI infrastructure. Now Canada has followed that action with its ‘AI for All’ strategy, which is built around six pillars and has a clear goal of ensuring that Canadians can “embrace, build, and govern AI on their terms”.
“We will strengthen Canada’s sovereignty at a time of greatest challenge,” the strategy said, referring to strained relations with its neighbors under the Trump administration.
“A lot of Canadian innovation is captured and measured elsewhere,” the strategy says. “In an era where prosperity, resilience, and sovereignty depend heavily on the ability to build and manage AI on national terms, this is a weakness Canada cannot leave unaddressed.”
The strategy published yesterday (June 4) identifies some of those “weaknesses” that Canada needs to address. Private computing power is described as “nascent”, Canadian organizations rely heavily on external providers for the infrastructure that supports economic, scientific and public sector work.
GPU chip design remains “almost completely offshore”. And only 12pc of Canadian businesses are currently using AI, behind their Nordic counterparts, it says, where adoption is between 29 and 42pc. The six pillars of this strategy include:
- security and the defense of democracy
- AI skills and learning for all Canadians
- accelerating adoption across the economy
- building an independent computing infrastructure
- rating Canadian AI champions
- building reliable international alliances.
In infrastructure, the Canadian government is committed to building the world’s best computer by 2031 and increasing private cloud capacity to reduce dependence on foreign providers, echoing the EU’s CADA (Cloud and AI Development Act) proposals published on Wednesday.
Canada aims to increase business adoption of AI from 12pc today to 60pc by 2034, create up to 250,000 new jobs through AI adoption by 2031, and generate nearly $200bn in GDP gains from improved labor productivity.
Key areas of investment will be: health and health sciences, energy and natural resources, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing and robotics.
The strategy shows that Canada has already signed new international economic and defense partnerships in the past year, 11 of which advance AI cooperation. The Canadian government says it will build a multi-strategic alliance to move from “trust to empowerment” in key AI capabilities and technologies.
For children and citizens, the strategy commits to modernizing privacy laws, introducing online safety laws, and providing free AI training to 1m post-secondary students.
Canada’s strategy and the EU’s sovereignty package this week are clear signs that the race to reduce dependence on a small number of US giants is now a key policy on both sides of the Atlantic.
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