BREAKING: Carney's AI Plan for Canada - Our Take

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
AI Spotlight.

**Amber** (0:02)
Well, we've been waiting for a long time. And finally, the federal government has come out with our AI plan for the future. It's called AI for All. And this is after consultations with more than 10,000 Canadians, almost 30 AI Strategic Task Force members. Jeff and I were both watching the announcement live. Jeff, let's start with you. What was your first reaction?

**Jeff** (0:31)
Well, my first reaction is, why can't they ever start any of those things on time? But other than that, this is six months overdue.
Looking through the actual strategy itself, definitely some promising things. It's nice to see some of these things put down on paper, but also a lot of things that harken back to times when I would not have the optimism that I would like to have about this AI strategy.
And we'll touch on that. But as the introduction from the minister says, Canadians want safe, reliable, and sovereign AI. They want the best tools to build a prosperous future guided by our values. And I think that really hits home, and that is a very commendable place to try to get to. So they go through, they talk about different elements of the ecosystem, like AI applications, models, data centers, cloud stuff, energy power research and development. So there's a lot of information in there, and it really touches, just like AI is starting to do, it touches almost every aspect of life in Canada. So there's a bit of background about Canada being an AI innovator and things like that as well. And then they break it down into some key priorities and pillars that we'll talk about in this conversation.

**Amber** (1:58)
We are definitely going to dive into those pillars and how all of this affects everyday Canadians, including entrepreneurs, small business owners, industry. But one of the things I wanted to stress is there was some repetition around the fact that we have a major adoption gap here in Canada.
Only 12% of Canadian businesses used AI to produce goods or services. That was between mid-2024 and mid-2025. I don't really need to go into these numbers, Jeff, because I think we're hearing the same thing over and over again. I'm speaking about AI at Keynotes every single week, and the message is kind of the same. Canada is actually behind when it comes to AI adoption, especially within business. But also, we know that Canadians don't have a lot of training about how to use AI, and then Canadians don't trust AI. So it is kind of a triple whammy in terms of our starting point, despite the fact that we have so much history in terms of the evolution of artificial intelligence in the early days of AI.

**Jeff** (3:01)
Yeah, with people like Jeffrey Hinton, who you interviewed, and I sent you a link just the other day about the Canada trust in AI systems.
In the actual government document, they say we ranked 42nd out of 47 on trust in AI systems. The stuff I sent you had Canada dead last amongst all of the countries considered in terms of our trust in AI. And that's interesting, and I think a bit of a commentary on Canada, and not necessarily even a bad one, but it is something that has to be overcome because AI is going to be coming along, whether we want it or not. So, you know, it's all about Canada's vulnerabilities for being dependent on foreign providers for infrastructure and AI tools, and how we actually, we don't need to accept that. We have these structural advantages. We've got a very educated workforce. We've got a huge amount of green energy that we can use to power data centers and things like that. And we can act as a leader in this because we're trusted by other countries who are going through the exact same thing, where they don't really want to look to the United States or China for leadership on these things.

**Amber** (4:21)
And I do want to say that there were three guiding principles. You mentioned the minister's opening remarks. That is the minister of AI, Evan Solomon, who's also been on our show. And he broke this down in terms of trust, opportunity and sovereignty. The prime minister built on those themes. And I think those are all really great principles in terms of a starting point.
The plan itself, I had a chance to scan through it. It's about 10,000 words or so long. So definitely a quick look as soon as that was released. But like you mentioned, there's a bunch of different pillars. And I think the starting pillar in terms of protecting Canadians and safeguarding our democracy, I think is a good thing. And it feels very Canadian to start with these values, front and center, maybe industry doesn't love that, but I certainly like that as a citizen.