MONTREAL — The Liberal government is planning a significant update to Canada’s national AI strategy, and tasking a group of 20 business and civil society leaders to help shape it, AI Minister Evan Solomon said Wednesday.

The new AI Strategy Task Force will have 30 days to make recommendations on policies and programs that could help Canada capitalize on the technology, Solomon said at the All In Conference in Montreal.

The group’s mandate will include proposals focused on AI research, adoption and commercialization, as well as questions of how to encourage investment, ensure safety and trust in the technology, skills development, digital infrastructure and the security of systems.

Past iterations of the federal government’s Pan-Canadian AI Strategy have tackled several of those issues. The program originally focused heavily on science, putting up $125 million for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and three AI institutes—Montreal’s Mila, Toronto’s Vector Institute and Edmonton’s Amii—to recruit and retain top AI researchers.

In April 2021, the program was renewed with $443.8 million in fresh funding, with $185 million of that for programs to help commercialize the technology, including via the federally backed innovation clusters.

Last year, Ottawa made its largest-ever commitment to the AI sector. The April 2024 federal budget promised $2 billion to increase computing capacity in Canada, as well as $50 million to set up a new Canadian AI Safety Institute; $200 million to pay for regional development agencies to subsidize firms to adopt the technology; and $50 million to retrain workers displaced by AI.

Solomon plans to name the members of his new task force at an event in Toronto on Friday. In addition to the new expert advisory group, Ottawa is launching public consultations on its AI strategy at the start of October. 

“We need a meaningful Canadian sovereign backbone,” Solomon said. 

He promised new measures to help AI startups raise capital, both at the early and growth stages. Solomon also reiterated Ottawa’s pledge to buy from those firms. “The goal here is not to be the farm team for someone else’s economy,” he said. “We’re not growing companies only to have someone buy it up and move.”

Solomon also reiterated that the Liberal government is planning new privacy legislation, but won’t revive wholesale the proposed AI law that failed in the last Parliament.

The Liberal government recast its AI advisory council as recently as March, naming executives from firms like Cohere, AltaML and Canadian Tire to the committee and setting up a new group focused on AI safety and security led by Université de Montréal professor Yoshua Bengio.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include more details from Solomon.