Evan Solomon, Canada’s inaugural Minister for AI and Digital Innovation envisions AI as a transformative “Gutenberg moment” for the nation—a paradigm shift akin to the printing press that could unlock unprecedented economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.
He frames the current era as a “hinge moment in history,” blending geopolitical tensions with technological disruption, where AI represents an opportunity to build the “strongest economy in the G7.”
Solomon emphasizes urgency, rejecting complacency: “Countries that master AI will dominate the future—you’re either part of the bulldozer or you’re part of the road.”
His approach prioritizes Canadian leadership in AI research and commercialization while addressing adoption lags, ethical concerns, and national security. Solomon’s strategy is designed to foster an “AI nation” that is sovereign, inclusive, and economically vibrant.
Sovereign AI
Canadian industry players are actively implementing Solomon’s vision for AI sovereignty by building and leveraging domestic infrastructure that ensures data residency, security, and control under Canadian law, aka ‘Sovereign AI‘.
This aligns with the four pillars of the strategy—particularly Sovereignty—through the $2 billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, which funds public and commercial AI data centers, supercomputing, and access programs.
Many in the industry are rallying to support this call. Roy Chartier, a local expert and visionary in this field, has been describing a complete Blueprint for Sovereign AI Infrastructure in Canada, and many vendors have begun deploying these solutions. For example –
TELUS recently announced Canada’s Sovereign AI Factory, revolutionizing the nation’s AI landscape. This pioneering facility empowers Canadian businesses and researchers with cutting-edge technology, accelerating innovation and boosting productivity, while storing all data and computing power within Canada’s borders.
The Sovereign AI Factory marks the next step in TELUS’ longstanding leadership in AI, reinforcing its commitment to responsible AI innovation, productivity and economic growth in Canada and building upon its complete range of AI solutions.
This then provides the local platform for developing AI innovations that can service global as well as Canadian demand, such as Fuel iX, an award-winning enterprise-grade Generative AI platform.
OpenText will leverage TELUS’ AI Factory to deliver sovereign, more secure and scalable cloud AI solutions through its Aviator AI platform, serving over 1,600 Canadian enterprise and government customers with enterprise-grade cloud computing and AI that provides data residency, security and compliance.
Bell has also partnered with Buzz HPC to build one of Canada’s largest sovereign AI ecosystems via Bell AI Fabric. This collaboration integrates advanced NVIDIA GPU clusters (Ampere, Hopper, and Blackwell) over NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, ensuring all AI operations—from foundational model training to fine-tuning—occur within Canada to comply with data residency and cybersecurity rules.
Conclusion: Empowering Canadian AI Leadership
These innovations create “made-in-Canada” solutions, addressing risks like the U.S. CLOUD Act by keeping sensitive data (health, financial, personal) in hybrid, highly secure, or public models hosted on Canadian soil, while providing the platform for enabling and ensuring Canada is at the forefront of the largest, most transformational inflection point in the history of technology.
