Inovia Capital partner Patrick Pichette, Cohere chief artificial intelligence (AI) officer Joelle Pineau, and Build Canada founder Dan Debow are among 26 members of AI minister Evan Solomon’s AI Strategy Task Force trusted to help the federal government renew its AI strategy.
“This is the second great technological revolution in the last quarter-century. It is incumbent on everyone in this room, all of us, and our government, to make it ours.”
Solomon revealed the roster, filled with leading Canadian researchers and business figures, while speaking at the Empire Club in Toronto on Friday morning. He teased its formation at the ALL IN conference earlier this week, saying the team would include “innovative thinkers from across the country.”
The group will have 30 days to add to a collective consultation process in areas including research, talent, commercialization, safety, education, infrastructure, and security.
“[AI] is the second great technological revolution in the last quarter-century,” Solomon said. “It is incumbent on everyone in this room, all of us, and our government, to make it ours.”
Other notable industry names on the list include Council of Canadian Innovators president Ben Bergen, CloudOps CEO Ian Rae, LawZero co-president Sam Ramadori, and League CEO Michael Serbinis.
On the academic side, University of British Columbia professor Gail Murphy, University of Alberta professor Michael Bowling, and University of Waterloo dean of engineering Mary Wells are also among those helping shape the government’s AI direction.
The group will report back to Solomon in November, fuelling the federal government’s refreshed national AI strategy, which the AI minister pledged would be tabled this year.
“This is going to be our roadmap,” Solomon said at ALL IN. “It was supposed to be [tabled] at the end of next year; [we] can’t afford to wait.”
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In a fireside chat with Toronto Star editor-in-chief Nicole MacIntyre following the announcement, Solomon said the tight, 30-day timeline avoids creating outdated policy.
“Two things happen in government too often: ‘pilot-itis’ and ‘committee-itis,’” Solomon said. “We can’t talk ourselves to death on this.”
Solomon observed that admission to the task force was in high demand, but he feels it is ultimately balanced in “all sorts of ways,” with different representation from across the country. The government will also open public consultations on Oct. 1, so Canadians not on the list can provide their feedback.
“Do I expect people to read this list and to drop a ball of confetti on my head? No, because it ain’t going to be perfect,” Solomon said. “That’s not the goal. The goal is to be effective and to be open.”
Canada had been iterating on its AI strategy for several years under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, beginning in 2017 with a $125-million commitment. The strategy evolved with further funding for Canada’s AI institutes and innovation clusters in 2022 before the government pledged $2.4 billion in the 2024 budget to support compute and bring new AI tech to market.
At ALL IN, Solomon said his priorities include addressing Canadian entrepreneurs’ concerns about access to capital, customers, and compute. He also wants to build consumer trust in AI, modernize Canada’s data privacy laws, and establish a Canadian sovereign cloud.
In an email statement to BetaKit, Bergen said the task force is “exactly the kind of collaborative process that CCI has long called for.”
“[The task force] brings industry leaders and policymakers together to ensure Canada doesn’t just adopt AI — we lead in commercializing it, regulating it responsibly, and building world-class companies here at home,” Bergen said.
The full AI Strategy Task Force is listed below; each member will consult their network on specific themes.
Research and Talent
- Gail Murphy, professor of computer science and vice-president – research and innovation, University of British Columbia and vice-chair at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada
- Diane Gutiw, VP – global AI research lead, CGI Canada and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
- Michael Bowling, professor of computer science and principal investigator – Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, University of Alberta and research fellow, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and Canada CIFAR AI chair
- Arvind Gupta, professor of computer science, University of Toronto
Adoption across industry and governments
- Olivier Blais, co-founder and VP of AI, Moov and co-chair of the Advisory Council on AI
- Cari Covent, technology executive
- Dan Debow, chair of the board, Build Canada
Commercialization of AI
- Louis Têtu, executive chairman, Coveo
- Michael Serbinis, founder and CEO, League and board chair of the Perimeter Institute
- Adam Keating, CEO and Founder, CoLab
Scaling our champions and attracting investment
- Patrick Pichette, general partner, Inovia Capital
- Ajay Agrawal, professor of strategic management, University of Toronto, founder, Next Canada and founder, Creative Destruction Lab
- Sonia Sennik, CEO, Creative Destruction Lab
- Ben Bergen, president, Council of Canadian Innovators
Building safe AI systems and public trust in AI
- Mary Wells, dean of engineering, University of Waterloo
- Joelle Pineau, chief AI officer, Cohere
- Taylor Owen, founding director, Center for Media, Technology and Democracy
Education and Skills
- Natiea Vinson, CEO, First Nations Technology Council
- Alex Laplante, VP – cash management technology Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and board member at Mitacs
- David Naylor, professor of medicine – University of Toronto
Infrastructure
- Garth Gibson, chief technology and AI officer, VDURA
- Ian Rae, president and CEO, Aptum
- Marc Etienne Ouimette, chair of the board, Digital Moment and member, OECD One AI Group of Experts, affiliate researcher, sovereign AI, Cambridge University Bennett School of Public Policy
Security
- Shelly Bruce, distinguished fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation
- James Neufeld, founder and CEO, Samdesk
- Sam Ramadori, co-president and executive director, LawZero
With files from Josh Scott
Feature image courtesy ALL IN