Science and Research

The committee was studying artificial intelligence, hearing from the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, and from two Department of Industry officials, Mark Schaan and Nipun Vats.

Minister Solomon described Canada’s AI strengths, including its three national institutes and the large language model company Cohere, and said a refreshed national AI strategy would be introduced in the new year. He highlighted investments such as the $300-million AI compute access fund and a $2-billion sovereign AI compute strategy, and cited a Deloitte study showing AI contributes roughly $100 billion to Canada’s economy. He did not commit to making public the names of all 11,300 public consultation participants, saying only that summaries would be published, and he declined to guarantee that future privacy legislation would include specific protections for French-language copyright, deferring to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. He also did not commit to appearing before the ethics committee before the Christmas break.

Mark Schaan confirmed that the first $240-million cheque from the $700-million sovereign AI compute fund went to Cohere, and that Cohere selected the U.S.-based company CoreWeave as its data centre provider. He argued that Cohere remains a Canadian entity subject to Canadian law and that the government’s focus is on ensuring Cohere stays Canadian, but he did not say whether the contribution agreement required Cohere to purchase compute from a Canadian supplier. He also described the voluntary code of conduct for generative AI, which over 50 organizations have signed, and outlined Canada’s role in international AI governance efforts such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and the AI safety network.

Nipun Vats said that federal research funding is allocated based on excellence, and that Quebec’s strong innovation performance reflects collaboration with the federal government. He did not provide data on whether Quebec receives an equivalent share of federal funding for its 25% of Canadian R&D, but agreed to send historical data broken down by province. He defended budget 2025 as building on multi-year investments from budget 2024, and said an advisory committee on science in French will provide recommendations next year. He also stated that the granting councils have some data on applications in French, but did not confirm whether the government measures linguistic equity in research funding.

The committee debated and then adopted a motion, as amended through collaboration, directing the government to have the Tri-Council develop a data management protocol and secure data-transfer process for disaggregated, anonymized data on funding applications, to be made accessible to accredited researchers under a security protocol consistent with the Five Safes model, with an action plan due within 30 days. A separate motion to extend the AI study by one meeting and reinvite witnesses from December 1 was not adopted, and the committee agreed to proceed with drafting instructions for two existing reports.