In a sleek Toronto venue, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a message that was part economic blueprint and part moral sermon.
“The question is not whether AI will transform our lives. It will,” Carney told the crowd. “The question is whether it will improve the lives of all Canadians or benefit only a few.”
With those words, Canada officially entered the global tech race with its long-awaited national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, dubbed “AI for All.” Backed by an initial $2 billion in new funding, the strategy treats AI not just as software, but as critical national infrastructure on par with energy and defense.
It is an ambitious pivot away from a decade of exporting brainpower.
While Canada has long been a heavyweight in AI research, it has historically failed to commercialize it. Homegrown talent routinely defects to Silicon Valley, and domestic business adoption of AI languishes at a sluggish 12%. Carney’s strategy aims to aggressively scale that adoption to 60% by 2034, injecting an estimated $200 billion into the economy.
But the plan goes beyond economics; it is an assertion of northern sovereignty. By pledging to build a world-class sovereign supercomputer, semiconductor capacity, and domestic data centers by 2031, Ottawa wants Canadian data to stay within Canadian borders, governed strictly by Canadian laws.
Recognizing it cannot stand alone against U.S. and Chinese tech behemoths, Canada is forging a multilateral alliance with like-minded middle powers including the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan to secure technological independence.
Yet, for all its geopolitical ambition, the strategy’s success hinges on an elusive variable: public confidence. Globally, Canada ranks near the bottom in AI literacy and trust.
“Technology moves at the speed of innovation, but adoption moves at the speed of trust,” said Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon.
To bridge the gap, the government is betting on an ethical framework. Carney, a practicing Catholic, even consulted Pope Leo XIV on AI ethics prior to the launch, channeling the Vatican’s emphasis on human dignity. The resulting strategy promises to modernize federal privacy laws, introduce strict online safety legislation to protect children, and combat AI-generated deepfakes and election disinformation.
Furthermore, the government plans to provide free AI literacy training to one million entry-level post-secondary students.
For tech leaders like Valérie Pisano, CEO of Montreal’s Mila AI institute, the strategy is a masterstroke that “puts a stake in the ground.” However, on Parliament Hill, the reception was decidedly icy.
The strategy boldly projects the creation of 250,000 new jobs through AI adoption, including 90,000 opportunities for youth. Opposition lawmakers aren’t buying the math.
With Canada already reeling from substantial recent job losses, Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman slammed the figures, noting the lack of concrete safety details and questioning how a government could promise youth employment during an existing youth unemployment crisis.
From the left, NDP Leader Avi Lewis warned that the government is rushing ahead “with no brakes,” arguing that widespread AI adoption without robust labor regulations will cause careers to vanish.
As Canada attempts to navigate this transition, “AI for All” represents a high-stakes gamble. Ottawa is betting $2 billion that it can transform Canada from a cautious observer into a global digital superpower—provided its citizens learn to trust the machine.
