Solomon said a portion of Canada's NATO spending will be directed towards supporting AI and quantum computing companies.Spencer Colby/Canada report
The Minister of Artificial Intelligence said that building large AI companies is a “urgent issue” for Canada, but added that the country needs to work with foreign companies and work with other countries to ensure the capital needed to build the AI sector.
“We really need to choose companies that could expand,” Evan Solomon told Globe and the email in an interview Tuesday.
One way governments can do is to help grow by purchasing products and services from Canadian companies through sourcing policies. Canada has also committed to meeting targets of NATO's 2% military spending this fiscal year, and Solomon said some of the spending will support Canadian AI and quantum computing companies developing Canadian AI and quantum computing companies with both commercial and defence applications.
“Having a secure cloud and secure data center is an important tool for national defense, so we are not vulnerable to businesses that can close data, retrieve and make data accessible,” he said.
Solomon, a rookie MP and former journalist representing Toronto Centre riding, was appointed in May as the country's first minister of AI and digital innovation. Prime Minister Mark Carney has made AI a priority, citing the possibilities of technology that will make the federal government more efficient and create new jobs for Canadians.
Solomon said his priorities as a minister are to scale AI companies, boost recruitment, increase trust and build sovereign data centers to support technology.
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The federal government has long invested in supporting AI research, but the country has largely failed to commercialize technology and make economic profits. Canada also lacks the huge multi-billion dollar data centers needed to run AI models and applications.
There is a global race to procure computer chips and build data centers, with over half of the world's most powerful facilities in the US, China and the European Union.
Last year, the federal government announced a $2 billion package to help businesses access and build data centers here. “There's nothing,” Solomon said, but added that Canada must partner with other countries to secure AI investments. A single AI data center costs billions of dollars.
“Sovereignty does not mean loneliness,” he said. “That doesn't mean that everything in the stack has the fantastical idea that everything from top to bottom is Canadian,” Solomon cited the need to work with France, Germany, the UK and the US. He also met with a delegation from the United Arab Emirates earlier this month to discuss opportunities for AI investment.
He said it could also secure capital from Saudi Arabia, but he had no formal consultation with officials. The country has established a US$100 billion fund to spend on AI, and Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has launched an AI company called Humain, which develops AI infrastructure, among other technologies.
However, while Saudi Arabia has a disastrous human rights record, the federal government has received criticism in the past for its relationship with the country, including the export of arms.
“Diplomatic relations and investments do not mean agreeing with the government,” Solomon said. “AI cannot be considered a walled garden. “Yes, you can't take money from X or Y.”
The government has announced once so far through a $2 billion AI infrastructure package, allocating up to $240 million to Toronto-based Cohere Inc. to build a large-scale language model. The deal has been criticized by some industry experts who argue that Cohere cannot be considered sovereign because it spends funds in Canadian data centers. It is operated by CoreWeave Inc., an American company.
“What I don't want to do is a purity test of sovereignty. The main thing is that we have a Canadian-based company in Canada,” Solomon said. “Cohere is the award every country wants.”
Large data centers also have enormous energy requirements, and states with clean power grids face supply constraints and need to be aware of capacity allocation. Alberta is trying to attract data center operators to electricity facilities with natural gas that generates emissions.
Solomon said emissions can be reduced through carbon capture and storage. “This Prime Minister shows that we are going to build something big and we are going to build an energy system across the spectrum,” he said.
Solomon also stepped down fine lines on regulations. He said the government would not reintroduce artificial intelligence and data laws, components of Bill C-27, which died when Parliament was prologged earlier this year. In a speech earlier this month, he said Canada needs to be careful not to “excessive” on regulations.
“The climate has changed. The US and China see all forms of regulation as a constraint on national security and innovation,” he told Grove. “We are not embarking on the legislative framework we are trying to propose, but we can safely say that we are not trying to push the same rock up onto the same hill.”
The law has been criticized by businesses that claimed it would curb innovation, and civil society groups who said it was vague and that it had no teeth in enforcement measures. Solomon refused to identify any specifics about the act that would inappropriate it to move forward again today.
“I don't want to legislate publicly like this. It's a really bad habit for a minister to come in five weeks and tell people what we don't do or what we don't do,” he said. “We're not abandoning regulations. We're looking at it.”
Copyright reform will be another issue that Solomon will tackle. Artists, writers and other creatives have said it is unethical and illegal to train commercial AI models of content without consent or payment, but AI companies have told the government they prefer explicit exemptions in copyright law.
Solomon said the government has pledged to “ensure that our cultural makers are protected,” but “we are not planning to legislate right now.”
The federal government has already completed discussions on generative AI and copyright, but with multiple courts over the issue, Solomon said the government would “want to match the market signals for how content creators compensated.”
