Canada’s artificial intelligence strategy promises productivity, sovereignty, and prosperity. As adoption accelerates, a difficult question emerges: can a government preserve human judgment while relying increasingly on automated systems?
Ottawa’s new AI strategy treats sovereignty as a question of compute, cloud and control. First Nations have been asking who holds authority over information for decades, and their answer suggests the governance conversation starts too late.
Ottawa’s new AI strategy addresses models and chips. The real contest for AI sovereignty is happening one layer up, in deployment, and Canada is not yet positioned to compete there.
Ottawa is investing billions to expand domestic AI capacity and reduce reliance on foreign infrastructure. But as extreme weather risks grow, the resilience of the systems supporting those ambitions remains overlooked.
