Alberta and Québec are collaborating on AI, signing a memorandum of understanding that will allow the two provinces to share resources.
The news: Alberta’s minister of technology and innovation, Nate Glubish, alongside Québec’s minister of cybersecurity and digital technology, France-Élaine Duranceau, as well as Jean Boulet, Québec’s minister responsible for Canadian relations, signed the memorandum yesterday.
Under the agreement, the provincial governments will share resources to ensure that each province can benefit from the other’s progress on AI adoption and public service modernization.
From the source: “By pooling our expertise, Québec and Alberta are drawing on solutions already developed by each of the two governments rather than starting from scratch,” Duranceau said in a statement yesterday.
Following the thread: Dubbed the Operational Cooperation Agreement in the Field of Artificial Intelligence, the agreement will establish a joint steering committee with representatives from both Alberta and Québec. Those representatives will guide the development of a shared work plan to identify opportunities for collaboration, as well as potential joint pilot projects. Additionally, Québec and Alberta will share their provincial AI strategies, policies, and governance approaches while pooling things like training materials and workforce development tools. In some circumstances, technical assets like source code, tools, or documentation could be shared between the two governments, according to statements from Alberta.
Final thought: Both Alberta and Québec are home to foundational, premier AI research institutes, with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) in Edmonton and the Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute—Mila—in Montreal. In Alberta, the governing United Conservatives have made efforts to position the province as a leader in AI use in government, going so far as to publish The Velocity Papers, a series of white papers on how other jurisdictions can integrate AI into government workflows. Quebec has been quietly scaling up AI use, as well. This spring, AI initiatives in Québec’s public sector spiked by more than 50 percent. A collaboration between Québec and Alberta is likely to streamline those processes even further.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy Alberta Newsroom.