“One of our greatest strengths in AI, in quantum, in cybersecurity is the people,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said at the Liberal cabinet retreat in Hamilton, Ont., responding to a question from The Logic about Alphabet closing the Edmonton office of its AI subsidiary. “But the good news I would say is that I think there would be opportunities for them in continuing to contribute their talent to grow the ecosystem.” (The Logic)

Talking point: London-headquartered DeepMind announced the Edmonton facility in July 2017, hiring a clutch of top University of Alberta researchers. Reinforcement learning pioneer Richard Sutton is also chief scientific advisor at Amii, one of the three institutes around which the Liberal government’s Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy is built. Some scale-up executives have long expressed concern that multinationals are commercializing technological discoveries from top scientists backed by public research dollars. “We’ve seen movements in the market,” Champagne acknowledged Wednesday, as tech layoffs pile up. But he pointed to other firms, both foreign and domestic, that are growing, including Nokia’s Ottawa expansion and Toronto-based Xanadu’s quantum computer development. “Hopefully things will balance out,” he said. “But I’m very bullish when it comes to the sector.”