This week’s episode of The BetaKit Podcast is the final in our annual series of fireside conversations on the BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH.
“It used to be that Silicon Valley was the kind of Mecca of the entrepreneur. What’s happening is everyone has got the tools that used to be crowded in there. Now what we need to do is get the capital.”
AI Minister Evan Solomon
To close things out with a bang, we have new AI Minister Evan Solomon, sadly not in conversation with a BetaKitten but C100 executive director Michael Buhr, who you might remember from a podcast earlier this year about AI at ALL IN in Montréal.
Michael’s conversation with Minister Solomon is certainly AI-focused, discussing ambition, procurement, talent, ROI—the whole lot. But it is also a handy companion to BetaKit’s Budget 2025 coverage, and in this instance, you get to hear things right from the minister’s mouth. Solomon says he’s really selling the budget, but walking through the feds’ commitments to Canadian tech with some context on what led them to these commitments.
Minister Solomon is, however, aggressive in selling those commitments as not coming down from on high, but the product of a listening tour with people like you. So, what are Canada’s AI and innovation ambitions, and what exactly did the feds hear in what you told them?
Let’s dig in.
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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by QuickBooks on the Intuit Platform: Built to help Canadian businesses work smarter, more efficiently, and make confident decisions.
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Recorded live on the BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH. Feature image courtesy SAAS NORTH.