Prime Minister Mark Carney recently launched AI for All — an ambitious five-year national strategy. It aims for $200 billion in economic growth, 250,000 new jobs and a surge in AI adoption across Canada, from 12 per cent to 60 per cent by 2034.

As someone who works daily at the intersection of medicine, health systems and equity — I’m a hospitalist physician and the inaugural senior associate dean for health equity and systems transformation at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary — I read the strategy with genuine enthusiasm and an urgent concern: has equitable implementation even been considered?

The strategy is largely silent on one problem: transformative technologies do not reach all communities equally, and the gap between intent and impact is widest where stakes are highest.

In health systems, those stakes are life and death.

AI is already transforming Canadian health care. Will that transformation be equitable and inclusive of all Canadians?

Black, Indigenous, racialized patients suffer

Canada’s AI adoption rate sits at just over 12 per cent — one of the lowest rates among peer nations. The AI for All strategy names this as a risk.

But there is a second gap demanding equal attention: within that 12 per cent, AI tools are not being adopted uniformly. They cluster in institutions with existing resources and technical infrastructure. They........

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