Key Takeaways for Businesses and AI Stakeholders
On June 4th, 2026, the Government of Canada released its refreshed and much-anticipated national AI strategy, AI for All (the “AI Strategy”). The AI Strategy sets out a comprehensive national framework for AI in Canada, and is expected to shape the government’s forthcoming AI-related legislative efforts, public investments in AI, and its approach on national and global AI policy. Building on prior consultations and earlier policy pillars, the AI Strategy helps fill a void that was left in Canada after proposed national comprehensive AI legislation was not passed under the prior Liberal government. The new AI Strategy, with many targets set for 2031 and 2034, outlines a whole-of-government strategy with several concrete steps that are intended to achieve six core priorities: accelerate adoption of AI by Canadians, expand AI literacy in the country, scale Canadian AI firms (including “AI Champions”), strengthen international partnerships, build sovereign AI capabilities, and mitigate AI‑related risks, while concentrating investment across five priority sectors (health and life sciences; energy and natural resources; transportation; agriculture; and manufacturing and robotics).
Key takeaways:
- Refreshed national AI policy for Canada: The new AI policy under Prime Minister Carney’s leadership sets out a refreshed national AI approach for Canada, following previous efforts by Canada to advance national AI legislation which did not materialize.
- National AI approach focuses on broad, coordinated action: The new approach reflects a whole-of-government strategy that is intended to advance AI adoption in Canada, strengthen public trust and safeguards for AI, scale domestic AI companies, and enhance Canada’s global competitiveness and leadership in AI while building sovereign capabilities across key sectors in Canada.
- Coming efforts: Companies should expect legislative intervention by the government on select issues (e.g., deepfakes, surveillance pricing) as opposed to national comprehensive AI legislation. Canada has also committed significant funding to promote AI adoption by companies, to upskill and expand AI literacy among workers, to create AI-related jobs and to develop a Canadian sovereign AI foundation, including through a $500 million Tech Growth Fund, a further $700 million commitment to the Compute Access Fund and more.
Background:
Following Canada’s April 2025 federal election, the newly elected Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership appointed Evan Solomon as Canada’s first Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. In September 2025, Minister Solomon launched a 30‑day national consultation (the “Consultation”) and convened an AI Strategy Task Force to inform a renewed AI strategy, following the lapse of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) in January 2025, which was Canada’s initial effort to adopt comprehensive national AI legislation. Over 11,000 Canadians participated in the Consultation, and the government published a summary of the feedback it had received on February 2, 2026, which we covered in a bulletin earlier in the year. This was followed in April 2026 by the government’s release of the Spring Economic Update which foreshadowed the six pillars that would underpin the AI Strategy, which were to: protect Canadians, empower Canadians, drive AI adoption, build a sovereign AI foundation, scale Canadian champions, and strengthen global partnerships.
Overview of the AI Strategy
The AI Strategy that has now been formally released by the federal government on June 4, 2026 sets out key priorities that are aligned with these six pillars, with many target timelines within the next 5 to 8 years. Several of these key priorities are highlighted below:
Pillar 1 Protecting Canadians and safeguarding our democracy
- Strengthen safety, privacy and democracy: The government will modernize legislation to protect Canadians, particularly children, against AI risks and online harms, including by protecting their personal information. While details are lacking, efforts will include (i) providing Canadians with legal tools to combat deepfakes, (ii) protection of their data from surveillance pricing, (iii) online safety laws to protect social media and chatbot users, and (iv) protection of Canadian elections from AI-enabled misinformation and foreign interference.
- Ensure AI infrastructure is safe and trustworthy: To help ensure Canadians know which AI systems are safe to use, the AI Strategy aims to promote AI transparency, including by (i) investing $50 million in the Canadian AI Safety Institute to conduct transparent evaluations of AI models, (ii) advancing watermarking for AI-generated content, (iii) creating a “Canadian Trusted AI Certification” program to help Canadians identify trustworthy AI products, and (iv) furthering the work of the Standards Council of Canada’s AI program to support AI standards.
Pillar 2 Empowering Canadians
- Expand AI literacy: To ensure Canadians can meaningfully participate in an AI‑enabled economy, Canada will create a “National AI Literacy Initiative” to offer entry-level AI training for all Canadians. As part of this effort, AI training will be offered to 1 million post‑secondary students and 3000 educators, and every post-secondary student will be able to access trusted AI agents.
- Create jobs and upskill workers: Canada will create up to 90,000 AI‑related jobs for young Canadians as part of the AI Strategy, and will promote AI-related training and upskilling initiatives for mid-career workers. Through these and other efforts, Canada projects that over 250,000 new AI-relevant jobs will be created by 2031.
- Embed Canadian values in AI: To ensure that Canada’s customs, history and heritage are reflected in AI, Canada will promote AI tools / standards that promote the French language, remove accessibility barriers, and advance diversity and inclusion.
Pillar 3 Powering shared prosperity
- Increase business adoption: The AI Strategy takes direct aim at promoting AI adoption among Canadian business, particularly Canada’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). To this end, Canada will: (i) provide direct financing and support to these businesses to incorporate and commercialize AI tools, including through the existing $500 million BDC LIFT program and a further $500 million investment into the Regional AI Initiative; (ii) support the development of an “AI Literacy and Adoption Assessment” tool to help businesses identify their readiness, practical AI uses cases and provide introductions to programs / agencies to help operationalize these use cases; and (iii) provide tax credits / deductions, including the SR&ED tax credit and Productivity Super-Deduction.
- Launch national AI missions: To drive adoption in areas of greatest public impact, the AI Strategy will also launch a new “AI Missions Program”. The program will unite researchers, Canadian companies and governments, and also catalyze public and private investment in these areas, with measurable targets. The first mission will be in healthcare, with a $200 million commitment to accelerate adoption of AI in the health sector, including for diagnostics and patient care.
Pillar 4 Build a Canadian sovereign AI foundation:
- Build sovereign Canadian AI: With a view that “[s]overeign AI starts with sovereign infrastructure”, the AI Strategy outlines several initiatives to ensure that much of AI’s underlying infrastructure in Canada is operated under Canadian control and Canadian law, including the following: (i) Canada will build a world-leading public AI supercomputer to give Canadian SMEs and researchers access to sovereign and secure compute; (ii) Canada will support and leverage crowd-in private capital to significantly expand sovereign compute and cloud infrastructures, including through the construction of large-scale AI data centres in Canada; (iii) Canada will expand diverse high-capacity fibre lines and satellite connectivity to achieve a Canadian network infrastructure with sovereign capabilities; (iv) Canada will enhance the country’s chip design and fabrication capabilities, and (v) the government will make further investments in sovereign cloud and quantum initiatives.
- “Build-Partner-Buy” strategy: Where sovereign capabilities cannot be built domestically, the AI Strategy proposes to partner with “trusted allies” or to buy existing market solutions only “when appropriate”.
- Invest in talent and research: Recognizing that Canada’s AI talent is one of the country’s most strategic assets, the AI Strategy proposes to secure Canada’s talent base and also attract global talent by: (i) increasing funding to Canada’s national AI institutes, (ii) expanding the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs program to nearly 200 researchers to have more world-class AI talent in Canada, and (iii) expanding the “Global Talent Stream” program to accelerate the entry of highly-skilled AI workers to Canada.
Pillar 5 Scaling Canadian champions:
- Scale Canadian AI champions: Canada also proposes to support globally competitive Canadian companies including by (i) launching a $500 million Canadian Tech Growth Fund that will provide growth capital and allow the government to take equity stakes in the most promising Canadian AI firms and (ii) have the government serve as a strategic anchor customer to Canadian AI companies and leverage the government’s Buy Canadian policy.
- Support commercialization and SME growth: To enable SMEs to grow and compete globally, and maintain their data and IP within Canada, the AI Strategy proposes to: (i) expand the Compute Access Fund with an additional $700 million to provide SMEs with affordable sovereign compute, (ii) invest $130 million in commercialization programs through national AI institutes, and (iii) leverage nearly $160 million allocated in Budget 2025 to various IP protection initiatives.
- Championing Canadian foundation models: The AI Strategy indicates that Canada’s homegrown AI foundation model capabilities are a “strategic asset” which it will anchor at home, and that the government will support their expansion abroad to jurisdictions seeking trusted alternatives.
Pillar 6 Building trusted partnerships and global alliances:
- Strengthen global alliances and market access: Noting that the AI sector is currently “dominated by hegemons and hyperscalers”, the AI Strategy indicates that Canada must build its strategic autonomy and work with key allies to build out AI capabilities and supply chains to offer choice to citizens and others. These efforts will include: (i) expanding the Sovereign Technology Alliance (recently formed with Germany) to showcase Canadian talent abroad and open new markets for Canadian firms, (ii) leading a global effort to invest in and sustain open-source AI development, to reduce reliance on a small number of proprietary and closed system platforms, and (iii) leveraging 12 international partnerships already signed by Canada to expand Canada’s AI industry, attract AI talent, advance AI innovation and position Canada as a trusted global partner in how AI should be governed, built and deployed.
Going Forward
The AI Strategy represents a significant milestone in Canada’s approach to AI, establishing a comprehensive national framework grounded in trust, sovereignty, and shared economic opportunity. For organizations operating in Canada, this means more funding for home-grown AI related projects and also that a more structured approach to address AI in Canada is taking shape — particularly in areas such as privacy and online safety legislation, AI procurement, data governance, sovereign infrastructure, and commercialization support. AI adoption will be an area of critical focus over the coming years. How these commitments translate into opportunities and specific regulatory, funding, and compliance measures will be a key area to watch in the months ahead.
