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Canada Finally Has a National AI Strategy. Experts Hate It

We asked researchers, entrepreneurs, and policy analysts to read the plan so you don’t have to. They found plenty to worry about

For a country that helped invent modern AI, Canada has been surprisingly hesitant about what comes next. As other nations move aggressively to capture the technology’s economic and strategic benefits, we are still trying to define our role—all the while grappling with the risks, from job displacement and misinformation to privacy, security, and the concentration of power in a handful of American firms.

The federal government’s long-awaited national AI strategy, released yesterday, is an attempt to answer that challenge. But does it meet the scale of the moment? Over the past twenty-four hours, we’ve spoken to voices from industry, academia, and civil society to ask what the document gets right, where it falls short, and what Canada needs to do if it hopes to be more than a spectator in one of the most important technological transformations of our time.

What follows are their responses, sometimes edited for length and clarity.

“It is difficult to imagine how such a regulatory strategy will inspire greater trust in most Canadians.” Blair Attard-Frost Canada CIFAR AI Chair; Fellow, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta

Most Canadians do not trust AI and are not excited to use AI.

The 2026 edition of the Ipsos AI Monitor published earlier this week shows that 67 percent of Canadians feel nervous, and only 26 percent of Canadians feel excited about it. This follows a 2025 survey by KPMG and the University of Melbourne showing only 34 percent of Canadians are willing to trust AI, while 75 percent of Canadians expect our government to regulate AI.

The government states that “trust is the North Star of this strategy” but offers limited protections in pursuit of that North Star. The strategy’s regulatory framework for AI is largely voluntary. While proposed legislation for data protection and online safety from the Trudeau era will be revived in some form, the Carney government does not commit to put any type of high-risk AI system on a statutory footing. Instead, this strategy proposes that a suite of voluntary certification schemes, standards, and “proactive” engagement with AI companies will be sufficient to protect Canadians against the well-documented harms frequently caused by AI systems.

This will be a loose, inconsistent, and opaque regulatory regime. The extent of protections that Canadians receive will be decided not through a democratic process or independent regulatory body but through market forces and closed-door deals with US tech titans. Enforcement will be subject to the motives of political and business leaders rather than consistent, codified law and public oversight mechanisms.

It is difficult to imagine how such a regulatory strategy will inspire greater trust in most Canadians. Though specifics will emerge as the strategy is rolled out, it does not currently appear that AI companies will be required to comply with any certification, watermarking, or other assurance measures described in the strategy. The government will have no statutory obligation to publicly disclose the actions, audits, evaluations, or decisions made in their safety investigations.

While the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act proposed under the Trudeau government had many flaws, it did specify some clear requirements for AI companies along with mandates for public disclosure. Instead of sending a clear signal of regulatory intent, this strategy leaves concerned citizens and businesses with a non-committal scaffold for maybe-stronger-regulation-later. Provinces and sectors will fill this void with their own policies, standards, and guidelines, further fragmenting Canada’s regulatory landscape and creating barriers for interoperability and adoption.

This strategy is an ambitious attempt to connect the dots between a constellation of policy issues in one stroke. Programs for AI literacy, training, infrastructure, and adoption will succeed only if Canadians are excited to participate in those programs and trust our government institutions to protect us against harmful technologies. In safety-critical sectors such as aviation, food, and nuclear energy, regulations that are clear, targeted, and consistently enforced are vital for securing the consumer trust needed for businesses to be able to innovate and adopt new technologies.

AI is also a safety-critical sector. Minister Evan Solomon would be wise to rethink his regulatory approach for this sector, and to learn from the failure of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act in doing so. Trustworthy, effective AI regulation must begin with deliberative public engagement and civic dialogue. Canada’s anxiety and mistrust in AI are culturally rooted and must be addressed at the cultural level. Public awareness campaigns to build civic AI literacy, a national town hall series, or a white paper soliciting public feedback on proposed legislation would all be good next steps.

“This strategy leaves people on the receiving end of AI systems unprotected.” Maroussia Lévesque SJD Candidate in AI Governance, Harvard Law School; Former Senior Policy Analyst, Global Affairs Canada

Let’s start with the positive. The strategy’s push for talent attraction and multinational alliances is a welcome development. In terms of talent attraction, it’s no secret that some of the brightest AI minds trained in Canada, only to seek greener pastures in the US. Canada is spot on to capitalize on the current Move Away, Go Abroad movement (US citizens and residents relocating in light of the political situation) to retain, attract, and regain talent. The move to spearhead multinational alliances with pooled research, talent, and compute also draws from our long-standing tradition of coalition building, including with the Global Partnership on AI.

It’s the smart move in the current political climate, and a good implementation of Carney’s vision for a new world order requiring deeper and broader bonds across middle powers, though some partnerships with Middle East countries with a poor track record on civil and political rights warrant caution.

Next, mixed: measures to support Indigenous leadership and to push for AI in the health care sector. The strategy acknowledges the importance of Indigenous agency and pledges to support self-determination, something Abundant Intelligences and other groups have called for. But contrary to other aspects of the strategy with specific commitments in the millions and even billions, these measures lack specific funding to guarantee implementation. If the government is serious about reconciliation, honouring its treaty obligations, and changing the tides of broken promises, it needs to put its money where its mouth is with hard commits backed by numbers.

As for health care, the strategy proposes to make it the first sector for adoption at scale. Though AI can certainly improve access and care, technosolutionism alone will not “solve” long-standing access inequities and systemic racism.

Incomplete regulation and unambitious compute plans are most problematic. On regulation, the strategy focuses on privacy and protecting children. As important as they are, these selected rights are far from the comprehensive approach AI calls for. Our legal framework should offer people and companies a clear, predictable framework ensuring all rights are respected, providing the ability to understand and contest AI-driven decisions and establishing clear responsibility rules in the complex AI supply chain.

Canada took the wrong lesson from the failed attempt to pass AI regulation. Instead of defining comprehensive obligations based on meaningful consultations,........

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