Prime Minister Mark Carney on October 2 launched the Prime Minister's National Council on Artificial Intelligence, a body charged with advising on the evolution of Canada's AI for All national strategy1. The council will provide independent guidance on accelerating AI adoption, fostering national champions, and building sovereign AI infrastructure.
The council's roster spans academia, industry, and government. Members include Ajay Agrawal, Yoshua Bengio, Sanja Fidler, John Graham, Gillian Hadfield, Jordan Jacobs, Eric Lamarre, Valerie Pisano, Senator Thomas Pitfield, Jody Thomas, Louis Vachon, Michelle Zatlyn, and Patrick Pichette. Yoshua Bengio's appointment follows Canada's commitment, alongside Germany, of up to $300 million in grant funding to his LawZero safety non-profit[2]. The council will also advise on making AI safer, protecting democracy, and ensuring broad economic benefit from AI.
AI for All, which Canada launched in June, sets several quantitative goals. The strategy targets an increase in AI adoption from just over 12 percent to 60 percent by 2034. It aims to create 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years and provide up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and work placement opportunities for young Canadians. The government projects an additional $200 billion of economic growth over the same period.
The council sits within a wider set of federal moves. Last month, Mark Carney launched Digital Transformation Canada, a federal organization intended to modernize government service delivery and help Canadian digital and AI companies scale and commercialize new technologies. The government frames AI as already in use across Canadian health care diagnostics, precision agriculture, and transportation networks.
ANALYSIS Placing Yoshua Bengio on the council alongside industry figures such as Patrick Pichette and Michelle Zatlyn gives the body a dual mandate: safety credibility through Bengio's research standing and commercial pragmatism through operators who have scaled technology companies. The 12-to-60-percent adoption target over roughly eight years implies a pace of institutional change that the council will need to translate into concrete policy recommendations across sectors.