Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney has published a mandate letter that calls on ministers in his new cabinet to make more use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Carney claimed that the government had to boost productivity by “deploying AI at scale” in addition to emphasizing efficient spending and using “scarce” tax dollars to catalyze private investments.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke remarked “well said” in response to the mandate in a post on X, claiming that there were more AI memos like his own “dropping every day.”
The letter comes just days after the prime minister appointed former journalist Evan Solomon as Canada’s first cabinet minister with AI explicitly in his job title. He is the first Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, as well as the minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario). Carney is continuing the Trudeau-era $2-billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. During his election campaign, he promised another $2.5 billion for broadband and data centres.
The cabinet has several other priorities in the mandate, including greater Canadian sovereignty, attracting talent, improving housing affordability through public-private partnerships, and trimming government spending.
While Carney didn’t outline how he expected AI to influence government work, his statements echoed the Canadian tech sector’s calls to rely heavily on the technology. Shopify CEO Tobi Lüke recently told his employees that AI use was a “baseline expectation,” and that teams would have to prove AI was inadequate for a task before receiving more resources and staff.
Cloud information giant OpenText went a step further by cutting 1,600 jobs as part of what it called an AI-first transformation. While CEO Mark Barrenechea said the company planned to hire another 1,000 workers for “key locations and high-impact functions,” a mandate email obtained by BetaKit made clear that AI skills were required for new hires, and that existing employees would need to learn prompting and programming techniques.
RELATED: Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke tells employees to prove AI can’t do the job before asking for resources
Industry heavyweights like Microsoft have downplayed the idea that AI would replace jobs, but The Information noted in December that clients of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have been using AI to limit or reduce their headcounts. Bell Canada, for instance, used Google AI to automate some of its customer service and save a claimed $20 million in labor costs.
Carney’s letter quickly sparked a reaction. Lütke remarked “well said” in response to the mandate in a post on X, claiming that there were more AI memos like his own “dropping every day.”
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Image courtesy of Dennis Jarvis on Flickr