Build Canada – a movement of Canadians working to help Canada achieve its full potential and become a more productive and prosperous nation – has released an ‘AI Strategy to Build Canadian Prosperity‘. The summary can be read below:
Canada’s prosperity depends on productivity growth but in recent years the country has been stagnant. Without productivity gains, Canada will fall behind economically and risk its sovereignty as other nations race ahead. AI offers a rare chance to boost output across every sector but only if the government creates an environment that encourages adoption.
Ultimately, new technologies spread as a result of entrepreneurial competition. When companies compete fiercely in markets, they experiment, innovate, and deliver better products. Canada must remove barriers that slow this process. Complex regulations, misaligned incentives, and an uncompetitive tax code are pushing founders and talent to the United States.
AI — like electricity, the steam engine, or the internet — will reshape every industry and create broad productivity gains. Canada has advantages that it can use to effectively adapt to this new period, energy, minerals, and talent, but only if action comes quickly. To make the most of these changes we need to make major reforms. Here are three that would have some of the highest leverage:
- Make it easy and profitable to build AI in Canada. Defer capital gains taxes for reinvestment. Raise exemptions for founders and early employees. Keep AI regulation light. Speed immigration for technical talent.
- Fix government incentives to adopt AI. Tie executives pay to service outcomes, not budget size. Require every deputy minister to submit an AI plan with measurable targets. Remove bureaucratic vetoes that block modernization.
- Empower defence leaders to buy AI. Simplify procurement from thousands of steps to about twenty. Give service commanders authority to purchase up to $5 million without additional approval. Retire outdated compliance frameworks.
You can read the full strategy here: https://www.buildcanada.com/memos/ai-strategy
Build Canada is doing important work to help foster a more optimistic and prosperity-focused mindset in Canada, something that our country certainly needs amid escalating external pressures and years of economic underperformance. Canadians need to dream big, and Build Canada is helping make those dreams a reality.
Spencer Fernando
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