Canada's government launched a national AI strategy on Thursday that includes a 500 million Canadian dollar fund — equivalent to roughly US$360 million — designed to help domestic AI companies compete globally and keep Canadian talent and intellectual property anchored at home.
Structured to address what Ottawa describes as a scale-up capital gap, the Canadian Tech Growth Fund would give the federal government the ability to acquire equity positions in AI companies while channeling flexible investment support to the sector, according to The Wall Street Journal. Keeping AI talent, intellectual property, and ownership within Canada's borders is among the fund's stated objectives, alongside enabling domestic firms to compete against larger foreign rivals.
The fund is one piece of a larger initiative Prime Minister Mark Carney called "AI for All," which also includes C$700 million in new compute funding added to an existing C$300 million Compute Access Fund, C$500 million channeled through a regional AI adoption initiative, and C$200 million committed to a healthcare AI mission. The Business Development Bank of Canada will separately provide C$500 million to finance AI tool access for small and medium-sized businesses, according to Reuters.
The strategy sets a target of 250,000 new AI-related jobs by 2031 and aims to increase AI adoption among Canadian businesses from roughly 12% to 60% by 2034. Rising AI adoption across major industries is expected to drive productivity improvements that the government believes could translate into GDP growth of 3%.
Carney has framed the initiative as a matter of economic sovereignty. Canada currently relies on foreign suppliers for much of the infrastructure that powers AI, including compute, cloud, and data storage — a dependence he said creates risks that foreign entities could access Canadian data or tilt market conditions against Canadian firms.
Canada's AI sector encompasses over 3,500 companies building models, tools, and applications, and those firms have together drawn more than C$37 billion in venture-capital investment, according to government figures. Even so, actual deployment of AI within Canadian businesses has been limited — with adoption standing at roughly 12% as of mid-2024 — and the country lags behind comparable nations on measures of AI literacy, training, and public trust, the government acknowledged.
Rounding out the strategy are plans to modernize privacy law, strengthen safeguards around children's digital lives, and direct C$50 million toward the Canadian AI Safety Institute so it can assess emerging risks and independently audit AI systems.
"AI is here. The question is whether it will improve the lives of all Canadians or benefit only a few," Carney said in a statement.