Archive for June 4th, 2026

AI for All, Details to Follow: Government Releases a Big-Spending AI Strategy That Is Still Short on the Specifics That Matter

The government today released its much-anticipated national AI strategy, an ambitious plan featuring a myriad of new programs and initiatives to support AI adoption. The strategy emphasizes trust, framing its approach as “AI for All.” Spending dominates the announcement, with money sprinkled across the economy as the government bets on the economic returns that flow from widespread AI adoption. Yet spending money is the easy part. What stands out is the deferral of many of the hard policy choices. The government has no plans for AI-specific regulation, instead relying on updated privacy rules and a reintroduction of online safety legislation. AI Minister Evan Solomon started the process by noting that the prior government had “over-indexed” on regulatory plans, and that perspective remains largely unchanged. There are real risks in bad legislation (see yesterday’s reset of the Online Streaming Act), but the Canadian government will never outspend the market on AI. For the Canadian government, supporting AI development must primarily involve creating the legal and regulatory frameworks that facilitate investment, trust, and adoption, and deferring the hard choices to later does not help.

New Privacy Rights in the Morning, Mandatory Metadata Retention in the Afternoon: How Bill C-22 Undercuts the AI Strategy Before It Launches

The government unveils its long-awaited national AI strategy this morning. AI Minister Evan Solomon has made it clear that the strategy will emphasize trust, noting that Canadians will only embrace the technology if they are confident their privacy is protected and safeguards are in place against potential harms. The privacy assurances are likely to take the form of a new private-sector privacy bill that includes European-style rules, stronger penalties, and recognizing privacy as a fundamental right. The government has proposed as much before, adding fundamental-rights language to the Consumer Privacy Protection Act in Bill C-27 before that bill died on the order paper. But the government is, at the same time, pressuring the public safety committee to pass Bill C-22, whose mandatory metadata retention regime is the single largest privacy risk in Canada in years and one that comparable countries have already struck down as a violation of the fundamental right to privacy. The disconnect is dizzying: the government cannot claim privacy as a fundamental right in the morning and enact mandatory metadata retention that overrides it in the afternoon.