The federal government wants Canada’s energy workers to become adept at using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an effort to keep the country’s workforce competitive.
The feds have awarded $9 million over three years to the Alberta Institute for Machine Intelligence (Amii) to help train nearly 5,000 Canadian mid-career workers in the energy sector with AI skills. The AI Pathways: Energizing Canada’s Low-Carbon Workforce initiative is meant to upskill workers for clean energy technologies like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydrogen.
“I would say the average person on the street still has a very poor understanding of how these tools can improve their lives.”
Patty Hajdu, Minister of Jobs and Families
The funds were allocated through the Sustainable Jobs Training Fund under Employment and Social Development Canada, whose application period was open briefly last year. A total of $75 million was awarded to various organizations in February this year, aiming to upskill workers for clean energy jobs.
The initiative is in partnership with the University of Alberta and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. The training will be delivered both in-person and online, allowing workers to participate remotely.
The announcement was made at Amii headquarters in Edmonton this week by federal leaders, including AI minister Evan Solomon, Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu, and Prairies Economic Development Canada minister Eleanor Olszewski.
Amii is a non-profit institute focused on AI. Created in 2002 as a joint effort between the Government of Alberta and the University of Alberta, Amii supports machine learning research and commercialization. It’s also one of Canada’s three national AI institutes and forms part of the country’s Pan-Canadian AI Strategy.
In her speech, Hajdu said the initiative was meant for workers already in the energy industry “who need different skills to keep up with the technology that’s advancing [and] the low-carbon economy.” Part of this is ensuring these workers can “compete” by using AI tools, such as large language models (LLMs), for professional purposes.
“I would say the average person on the street still has a very poor understanding of how these tools can improve their lives,” Hajdu said.
Both Hajdu and Solomon struck an urgent tone. The jobs and families minister said Canada’s economy is “under attack,” and referenced the country’s rising unemployment rate. Solomon repeated his assertion that Canada is in a “crisis moment” when it comes to AI. The federal minister has promoted AI adoption as necessary for Canada’s economic future and warned that companies risk falling behind if they don’t adopt the technology. However, some research has indicated that AI pilot projects have not yielded desired productivity gains.
Minister Solomon also highlighted nearly $20 million the federal government had pledged and has now given to Amii for AI computing capacity. That money comes through its $2-billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, announced in last year’s Fall Economic Statement.
Introducing AI into education and workforce training has been a key theme in Alberta as the province embraces the technology, from data centre infrastructure to software applications. In May, Amii received $5 million from Google’s philanthropic arm to develop AI curriculum materials for post-secondary education. On the energy side, Calgary’s Energy Transition Centre secured $10 million last week from economic development agencies to expand its educational resources and facilities for entrepreneurs.
Feature image courtesy Evan Solomon via X.