Isaac Phan Nay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s long-awaited and much-delayed artificial intelligence strategy on Thursday, outlining how his government plans to adopt and control the powerful technology.

The strategy signals the government’s support for large-scale AI adoption. The plan includes a $500-million fund to invest in Canadian AI companies and a commitment to support construction of data centres that will bring at least a combined 850 megawatts of compute capacity by 2030.

The government is already investing more than $2 billion in challenges that will help Canada grow its AI compute capacity. The new strategy includes a commitment to put $1.75 billion of the federal investments announced in Budget 2025 toward private sector investment in venture capital, which may be used to fund AI companies. And it notes the new $25-billion sovereign wealth fund, established to fund major infrastructure projects, could be used toward further investment in Canadian AI “champion” companies.

Canada estimates the strategy will create 90,000 AI-related jobs and that the industry as a whole will create 250,000.

But critics say the government is ignoring the technology’s effect on workers and is light on regulations for AI companies. Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis said in an emailed statement the strategy imposes AI on Canada without public debate.

“This is a document that is heavy on hype, but light on the right guardrails that we need to protect people and to ensure that the benefits of the technology don’t just flow to a handful of tech giants and investors,” Lewis said.

“It proposes a massive boost to business adoption of AI, with no concern for the consequences this will have for workers, especially young workers who are already watching careers vanish before their eyes.”

Lewis isn’t the only skeptic. Last month, hundreds of people in Vancouver rallied against data centre construction after the federal government and Telus announced plans to scale AI compute capacity in this province.

Vancouver Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed says he’s heard these concerns. As parliamentary secretary to the minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, Noormohamed is on the team speaking about the strategy.

“I am looking forward to making sure that we are doing our part to roll it out and sharing how Canadians can see themselves in it,” he said.

Hours after Canada launched the strategy in Toronto, Noormohamed sat down with The Tyee to speak about how the strategy accounts for jobs, AI safety and the pushback against data centre development.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: I’m wondering if you could take a moment and describe what the government’s vision for adoption looks like. What might a workplace look like if all of the goals in this strategy came to pass?

Taleeb Noormohamed: There’s no single blanket vision of what adoption should look like in every workplace. But I think we have to understand how everyone can see that they benefit from AI, and that they see how AI serves them, and not vice versa.

For me it boils down to a few things. One is making sure that across industries, we are using AI to improve outcomes. And that we are ensuring that workers have the tools that they need to be more successful at the work that they do, and to ensure that through this process we’re creating jobs of the future.

For example, the strategy includes 90,000 job placements that we’re going to create for young people, so they can understand how best to use AI in the fields that they choose. We’re going to make sure that we’re working towards further AI literacy, so people understand exactly what the risks are, but also what the benefits are.

And we’re making sure that we take adoption by small-to-medium-sized enterprises in this country way up. Canada has one of the lowest rates of adoption for AI in the world, particularly for small-to-medium-sized enterprises, and making sure that they have what is required to be able to adopt AI in a way that helps their businesses and empowers workers at the same time is hugely important.

A couple of weeks ago in Vancouver, there was a big anti-data-centre rally. I’m curious how you might respond to this kind of pushback?

A big part of this has to come from understanding what we are trying to do, and helping Canadians understand why it is that we’re doing what we’re doing. That’s our responsibility to do at a time when people are building data centres in other parts of the world that are incredibly harmful to the environment.

We’re placing a big bet on a data centre that uses closed-loop cooling, that is going to heat 150,000 homes in the Lower Mainland, that is going to be a green building, that is going to be sustainably built. This should be how we build data centres. It should be the gold standard for how we do things.

Data centres are getting built. They’re going to get built in other parts of the country, they’re going to get built in other parts of the world. We need this compute power in this country, so that businesses can grow and thrive, so that Canadian researchers can ensure that their IP is protected. But if we’re going to do this stuff, we should do it in a truly Canadian way, which is saying we need to build these things, but recognizing that we have the fight against climate change. That’s foremost in our minds, and those two things have to come together.

We should be holding the construction of data centres to that standard, and that’s exactly what that Telus project does.

So, people are right to ask questions. They should ask questions, and we should be there with good answers, which I am really grateful that this particular project in Vancouver actually does.

Let’s move on to AI safety. Looking at the strategy, I see that the government is committed to online safety laws. What might that look like?

You have the online harms legislation, which Minister Marc Miller is going to be spearheading. That’s going to be coming out shortly. At the same time, when we look at privacy legislation, we’re going to be ensuring that it is criminal to distribute deepfakes. We’re going to be looking at ways in which people have the right to delete content. These are big parts of ensuring that Canadians’ privacy and safety and security is protected.

Look, I’m a dad. I think a lot about what happened at Tumbler Ridge daily. And as a B.C. MP, I want to make sure that I can sleep at night knowing that my kids are safe, and the steps that we’re taking are going to ensure our kids are safe.

It’s not just the two pieces of legislation, but also investments that we’re making in the AI Safety Institute and the regulations that will inevitably come out of that. These are things that are going to ensure that our kids are safe. To me, this is paramount. We have to make sure that we are doing all of the heavy lifting up front so that people understand what the expectations are. Whether you’re a hyperscaler or a startup, know that your obligation is to help keep Canadians safe.

If I’m putting myself in the shoes of a skeptic, here, I think the concern might be that these investments and commitments to large-scale AI adoption are coming out before the regulatory framework. Can you speak to that concern?

This is a strategy. And it’s been articulated in a way that allows us to have these types of discussions. We’re not doing this all tomorrow in one shot. This is about making sure that we are moving at a pace that people are comfortable with, but also moving quickly.

We have to make sure that the rules we put together can be adaptable as technology evolves. This takes time and effort. Things are coming very soon, and they will come in a way that people will, I think, be able to draw comfort from.

We’re going to do the consultation processes and committee work to ensure that at the end of this, Canadians can know that the laws have been put in front of them with the confidence of the folks that do the hard work of representing their views.

We all recognize that the strategy is not a finite point. It’s the beginning of being able to do things and adapt and evolve. I always use the analogy that you don’t look at your iPhone and say, “This is the phone I’m going to have forever.”

You recognize, “I like the platform, and I’m going to make sure that over the course of time the tools that I use on that platform evolves.”

We have to look at this in that way. This is a strategy, and it will evolve as technology and society evolves, as adoption goes up. The way in which we need to think about what we invest in will also change, and we have to be thoughtful and pragmatic in this.

We have to keep Canadians at the absolute centre of it. Canadian workers, Canadian students and Canadian young people have to be at the centre of this at all times. If we do that, we actually create incredible opportunities for innovation. There’s a very strong balance that we strike between safety and innovation for Canadians.

Let’s talk about these 90,000 AI-related jobs. What jobs will this strategy help create?

It’s going to be all over the place. There’s Canada Summer Jobs, making sure that the summer jobs placements for young people are there, so that alongside their education, they’re able to get real hands-on experience. These are going to be the types of jobs that actually lead to good long-term careers for young people and for others.

This is where the opportunity presents itself. Adoption isn’t just about creating a set of tools and creating a set of workflows. Adoption is about making sure people understand exactly how they are active in this, how they are part of the solution, and how they see themselves as being able to use the tools that are available to them to advance the quality of the work that they do, and to expand the horizons for the types of work that they can do.

But how will the government ensure these jobs are actually created?

The beauty of the Canada Summer Jobs program, as an example, is that it’s a program that we run. So being able to incentivize businesses through that is very easy.

I want to be clear, it’s not just about the 90,000 jobs that the government is going to help to support; it’s about the quarter million jobs that will also be created.

It’s about the fact that we are using the levers available to us, for example, the $1.7 billion that we brought to bring the best researchers in the world to this country. It’s about the types of jobs that come out of that research moving to commercialization that are also important.

It’s about the half billion dollars that we put on the table to invest in startups in this country, to be able to support them in creating jobs. And the fact that we can now lean on the sovereign wealth fund to be able to fund larger projects.

These are the types of things that allow us as government to actively and passively, through participation and through partnership, create the types of jobs that Canadian entrepreneurs need in this country, and actually build the transformative economy that the prime minister’s been talking about.

Transforming an economy requires us to be able to place bets on where the world is going, and to be able to make sure we’re setting up Canadians to be able to take jobs in those sectors, and to ensure the sector has the capacity to grow.

One of our biggest frustrations has been that we do really great research in this country and build some really cool companies, and then they leave. A big part of the strategy is making sure that Canadian innovators and Canadian companies don’t need to leave. That they have the levers that are required in this country to access capital, and that we are helping provide them private capital to build here and create jobs in this country.

The 90,000 jobs is actually a small part of a much larger strategy of ensuring there are jobs of the future available to Canadians today.

So is the idea that by helping AI companies scale and grow domestically, and helping businesses adopt these technologies, that will create jobs?

That is one part of it. The other part of it is making sure that the companies that are going to be developing this technology are able to build and hire in this country.

It’s not just about saying, “Hey, listen, we have X number of companies in this country, let’s all help them adopt.”

It’s “Let’s have more great companies in this country that are building the technologies of the future, so that they can be hiring.”

This is where subject matter expertise alongside understanding of AI actually matters. Think about farming, think about mining, think about sectors where you wouldn’t traditionally think about AI playing a role.

The fact that AI helps you analyze core samples more easily in mining enables you to hire more engineers to do more interesting things. In order to be able to train the models that are going to be using the data around those core samples, you need mining engineers and geologists who actually understand those elements.

So it becomes this really interesting synergy taking the talent that you have and optimizing them to be able to use their talent while they build companies here. It becomes this very interesting pyramid of opportunity, where by ensuring that businesses can access capital and talent, Canadians can then build world-class businesses that create more jobs here, and then create spinoffs, and create more businesses from those spinoffs. That’s how you start to really cultivate the ecosystem.

The strategy includes commitments to boost AI literacy in schools and support AI upskilling training. I’m curious to hear more about how the government plans to help the geologists and engineers that you mentioned, and other Canadians already in the workforce, to get jobs in the wake of AI adoption?

The first thing is working with institutions that are geared towards doing this, like post-secondary schools and others, to train them to work in those areas. We’ll work with public libraries, and we’re talking about working with community organizations, so that AI literacy actually gets to people where they live. We’ll work with the CEGEPs [public colleges in Quebec], the colleges, the polytechnics, so that workers can actually get practical AI skills.

Then there are sectors where specificity becomes a part of it. Today, we announced the strategy at Toronto General Hospital. Hospitals are a clear space where we know that AI adoption is starting to happen, and where it can have the greatest impact.

Canadian health data needs to be sovereign. It needs to be secure; it needs to be in a place where patients know that it is being held with trust. Once that happens, you can then use that patient data to do something really, really important. You can improve patient health-care outcomes by analyzing that data safely and securely, and by ensuring that physicians have the information that they need in a timely fashion. You can look at triage in a very different way.

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