Question Period Note: CANADIAN SOVEREIGN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) COMPUTE STRATEGY

What is the Canadian Sovereign Artificial Intelligence (AI) Compute Strategy and how will it benefit Canadians?

• For Canada to remain a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), it needs access to affordable, cutting-edge compute infrastructure.
• More compute power means more innovation, more productivity and more opportunity for Canadian AI companies, researchers and talent.
• Budget 2024 announced $2 billion over five years to establish the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy.
• This Strategy will ensure that Canadian businesses, innovators and researchers have access to the compute capacity they need to drive research and develop made-in-Canada AI solutions across all sectors of the economy.

• Boosting access to powerful computing resources will drive productivity, fuel innovation, unlock opportunities, and help Canada remain globally competitive in artificial intelligence (AI).

• Reliance on foreign computing resources presents challenges, including security of access, and risks to the privacy and sovereignty of Canadian data.

• The Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy will make strategic investments in public and commercial infrastructure to ensure Canadian organizations, businesses, and researchers have secure, sovereign compute capacity.
• The Strategy includes three elements: mobilizing private sector investment, building public supercomputing infrastructure, and the AI Compute Access Fund.

In summer 2024, the government launched a public consultation to inform the design and implementation of new artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. Feedback from over 1,000 stakeholders—including research, industry, and civil society groups across Canada—was collected through roundtable discussions and an online survey.

The Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy consists of three elements that will boost domestic compute capacity, strengthen Canada’s AI ecosystem, and stimulate economic growth. The Strategy aims to safeguard Canadian data and intellectual property while empowering businesses, innovators, and researchers to advance research and deliver made-in-Canada AI solutions.

The three elements are:

1. Mobilizing Private Sector Investment
   With up to $700 million, the AI Compute Challenge will drive innovation and investment in Canada’s AI infrastructure by supporting private-sector projects that increase domestic compute capacity for the commercial AI industry and accelerate the development of innovative and sustainable AI compute technologies. Under this Challenge, the Government announced up to $240 million to Canadian AI champion Cohere. This anchor investment will support a large annotator workforce to advance the research, development, and international deployment of large language models, and help secure a partner to build a cutting-edge, multi-billion-dollar AI data centre in Canada—significantly expanding AI compute capacity for the broader Canadian ecosystem.

2. Building public supercomputing infrastructure
   A transformational investment of up to $1 billion to build public supercomputing infrastructure that will meet the needs of researchers, government and industry. This includes up to $700 million for the Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program that will build state-of-the-art Canadian-owned and located high-performance supercomputing facilities to meet the needs of researchers and a cross-section of R&D, and up to $200 million in near-term to augment existing public compute infrastructure to address areas of immediate need in the Canadian AI ecosystem.

3. AI Compute Access Fund
   With up to $300 million, the AI Compute Access Fund will help Canadian innovators and businesses overcome barriers to high-performance computing – namely high costs and limited domestic capacity – which were key concerns raised in consultations. The fund will provide financial support for AI start-ups and scale-ups to access AI compute resources and capacity to bring their made-in-Canada AI solutions to market and accelerate the access to sovereign compute capacity.

Together, these initiatives position Canada to lead in homegrown AI innovation while protecting core national interests.