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editor-in-chief Nicole MacIntyre following the announcement, Solomon said the tight, 30-day timeline avoids creating outdated policy.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 task force is listed below.
- Ajay Agrawal: University of Toronto professor and co-founder of Creative Destruction Lab
- Ben Bergen: President of the Council of Canadian Innovators
- Oliver Blais: Co-founder and VP of AI at Moov AI
- Michael Bowling: Research team lead at Google DeepMind and professor at the University of Alberta
- Shelly Bruce: Former chief of the Communications Security Establishment
- Cari Covent: Head of AI and emerging technology at Canadian Tire Corporation
- Dan Debow: Former Shopify VP and Build Canada co-founder
- Diane Gutiw: VP and global AI research lead at CGI
- Garth Gibson: Former president and CEO of the Vector Institute
- Arvind Gupta: Professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science
- Adam Keating: CEO at CoLab
- Alex Laplante: VP of cash management technology at RBC
- Gail Murphy: Professor and VP of innovation at the University of British Columbia
- David Naylor: Former president of the University of Toronto
- James Neufeld: CEO of Samdesk
- Marc-Etienne Ouimette: Former global lead of AI Policy at Amazon Web Services and head of public policy at Element AI
- Taylor Owen: Founding director of McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy.
- Joelle Pineau: Chief AI officer of Cohere
- Patrick Pichette: Former Google CFO and current partner at Inovia Capital
- Sam Ramadori: Executive director at LawZero and former CEO of BrainBox AI
- Ian Rae: Founder and CEO of CloudOps
- Michael Serbinis: CEO and founder of League
- Sonia Sennik: CEO of Creative Destruction Lab
- Louis Têtu: Executive chair of Coveo
- Natiea Vinson: CEO of the First Nations Technology Council
- Mary Wells: Dean of Engineering at University of Waterloo
With files from Josh Scott
Feature image courtesy ALL IN