Canada is fast-tracking its national approach to artificial intelligence, assembling a short-fuse task force and pledging to deliver a refreshed strategy before year-end.
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Minister Evan Solomon announced the move at the ALL IN conference in Montreal on Sept. 24, saying the government will not wait for the original timetable to run its course.
The task force will draw about 20 members from industry, academia, and civil society.
Its mandate is intentionally brief and broad: consult widely, surface practical recommendations across research, adoption, commercialization, investment, infrastructure, workforce skills, and safety, and report back in November.
Membership will be disclosed later this week, according to the minister.
The accelerated process marks a notable shift for a country that launched one of the world’s first national AI strategies in 2017 and refreshed it in 2022.
Solomon cast the new push as both an economic and security imperative, arguing that public trust and digital sovereignty must anchor Canada’s next chapter.
He said the updated plan will arrive ahead of schedule and serve as a near-term roadmap for how Ottawa intends to fund research, drive adoption, and set guardrails for powerful models and data.
Solomon told the conference that Canada cannot be a branch plant for someone else’s economy, and that government can act as a market-making customer for Canadian-built AI.
He framed the coming blueprint as a way to connect talent and compute to paying customers at home while tightening protections around health, financial, and other sensitive data.
After his keynote, he underscored plans to modernize privacy rules and to clarify how key data stays under Canadian law in Canadian-controlled environments.
Officials say public input will be part of the sprint, complementing the task force’s work.
The minister also signaled an October announcement on a major quantum initiative aimed at retaining talent and intellectual property.
While details were light, both moves reflect Ottawa’s view that AI policy must be paired with domestic infrastructure and capital so companies can scale without offshoring data or ownership.
An updated national plan could influence near-term funding priorities, procurement signals, and technical standards that affect how AI is built and deployed across sectors from finance and health to manufacturing.
It also dovetails with Ottawa’s recent focus on “sovereign” digital infrastructure and with agreements that pull Canadian firms into public-sector pilots, including work with Toronto-based Cohere on AI in government.
The strategy refresh will arrive against the backdrop of previously announced federal initiatives.
Ottawa outlined a governance-focused AI strategy for the federal public service this summer and has pointed to earlier investments in research institutes and innovation clusters.
The new national roadmap is expected to go beyond internal government use to set direction for the broader economy, including measures to strengthen safety, skills, and commercialization.
One point still unclear is the exact gap between the original and new deadlines. Solomon has described the update as coming almost two years ahead of schedule in remarks reported by Canadian outlets, while startup press in Montreal framed it as one year early.
What is not in dispute is the speed. The task force has only a month to feed into the strategy, and the minister says Canada cannot afford to wait.
If Ottawa sticks to the timeline, the refreshed AI plan would land before the end of 2025.
That puts pressure on the task force to offer concrete steps on compute access, privacy reform, and standards that can unlock investment without dulling innovation.
It also raises expectations that the government will follow rhetoric about digital sovereignty with procurement and policy that tilt demand toward Canadian-made systems rather than relying on foreign hyperscale stacks.
The near-term test will be whether this process produces specifics that matter to builders and buyers.
Clear rules on sensitive data, a path to trusted deployment in regulated sectors, and funding mechanisms that reward domestic scaling would make the strategy more than a rebrand.
Given the compressed clock, the market will not wait long to find out.
