One day after the European Commission unveiled is plan to bolster European tech sovereignty by reducing the continent’s dependence on American technology providers, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney chimed in with a plan to do the same for the Great White North.
Canada’s national AI strategy vows to invest a minimum of C$2.0 billion (U.S. $1.4 billion) into AI research facilities, creating a public AI supercomputer and programs to increase AI education and literacy. The government also promised to introduce new privacy and data protection legislation tailored to threats related to AI, such as deepfakes and surveillance pricing.
“Prosperity and sovereignty in the age of A.I. belong to nations that can build, adopt and govern A.I. on their own terms,” Carney told reporters at a press conference Thursday at a downtown Toronto hospital that is leading health technology innovations. “Canadian A.I. adoption will be prudent, pragmatic and pro-worker.”
Another key element of the plan is to cultivate multilateral alliances with other so-called Middle Powers such as Australia, France and Germany to help increase Canadian self-sufficiency in critical AI capabilities, according to the CBC.
The growing movement by countries to strengthen their domestic technology sovereignty comes as the Trump administration has sought to cement U.S. AI technology as the de facto global standard, using a combination of U.S. trade leverage and diplomatic pressure on foreign governments. Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Canada have grown particularly frosty in recent months after Trump began referring to the U.S.’s northern neighbor as “the 51st state,” sharpening Canadians’ appetite for measures to reduce U.S. influence.
Canada has deep roots in AI, but has struggled to retain AI talent against the pull of the U.S. Geoffry Hinton, the Canadian Nobel Prize winner known as the “godfather of AI,” sold his company to Google and spent several years working at the U.S. tech giant. Another Canadian, Ilya Sutskever, was a co-found of OpenAI. Other Canadian researchers, including Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio and Richard Sutton, also played key roles in the early development of AI.
Canada has long faced a “brain drain” in which it trains highly skilled workers who then depart, usually for the U.S. in search of better opportunities. Even when Canadian talent stays home, however, it remains tethered to the U.S.
“Canadian researchers train models on foreign cloud platforms. Canadian companies store sensitive data in foreign jurisdictions. Government operations rely on infrastructure Canada does not own,” the strategy laments. According to the plan, the government will seek to address those vulnerabilities by “building its key sovereign capabilities domestically whenever possible, while partnering with trusted allies or buying existing market solutions when appropriate.”
To combat Canada’s perennial brain drain, the AI strategy promises to fund research fellowships and increase the number of research chairs at Canadian universities focused on AI. The government also wants to attract more highly skilled AI workers from elsewhere by offering them a path to accelerated entry and permanent residency to Canada. The plan also calls for investing C$500 million in a Canadian Tech Growth Fund, which would provide flexible capital and investment support and allow Ottawa to take equity stakes in “the most promising Canadian AI firms.”
“This will help them attract private capital, compete globally, retain talent and intellectual property and remain anchored in Canada,” the strategy said.
Still, even as the AI strategy aims to reduce Canada’s dependence of U.S. technology and technology providers, Carney was careful in his comments Thursday not to further poke the bear to the south.
“This is a strategy any sentient country is taking,” Carney said, brushing off questions about whether the strategy could irritate the U.S.. “This is fundamentally strategic.”
