Canada’s AI Council: Who Guides the AI for All Plan, and What It Can Actually Do

Key Takeaways

• Canada AI Council AI for All is the advisory body launched on 2 October 2026 to guide Canada's national AI strategy, not a new strategy launched in October.
• Canada's AI for All strategy, launched on 4 June 2026, targets an additional C$200 billion in economic growth and 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years.
• The strategy aims to lift business AI adoption from just over 12% to 60% by 2034, and to provide up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and work-placement opportunities for young Canadians.
• The Council advises only: responsible ministers and federal departments remain accountable for policy decisions and implementation, with a small Privy Council Office team supporting the Council.
• The Council's members include AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, entrepreneur Ajay Agrawal, researcher Sanja Fidler, and Cloudflare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn, with Patrick Pichette serving ex officio.

Introduction

Canada has an AI strategy with unusually concrete targets, and since early October it has a council to advise on delivering them. The distinction between those two facts matters, because coverage of Canada's AI plans sometimes compresses them into a single October announcement. The strategy, called AI for All, was launched on 4 June 2026 in Toronto by Prime Minister Mark Carney. The National Council on Artificial Intelligence, the advisory body meant to guide its implementation, was launched later, on 2 October 2026.

This article keeps those dates straight, explains what the strategy promises, who sits on the council, what the council can and cannot do, and where the scepticism about the targets comes from. For Canadian readers, it is a guide to a policy that will shape AI funding, training, and infrastructure for the next decade. For readers elsewhere, it is a useful comparison: a national AI strategy that measures itself in adoption rates and jobs, not just in model releases and data centres.

AI for All: The June Strategy in Plain Terms

Prime Minister Carney launched AI for All on 4 June 2026 as Canada's new national AI strategy. Its framing, in the government's own words, is that AI must be adopted responsibly, in a way that truly serves all Canadians, building trust, expanding opportunities, and reinforcing control of Canada's sovereignty.

The targets are the most concrete part. Over the next five years, the strategy targets an additional C$200 billion of economic growth to create 250,000 new AI-related jobs. It aims to increase AI adoption from just over 12% to 60% by 2034. It will provide up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and work-placement opportunities for young Canadians.

Those numbers need context to be meaningful. Canada's government itself notes that, while the country has world-class talent and one of the fastest-growing digital sectors in the G7, it is among the slowest countries to adopt AI at scale. The strategy's own diagnosis is that this adoption gap risks undermining public trust, driving Canadian talent and startups abroad, and leaving critical parts of the AI ecosystem under foreign control. The targets are therefore not just growth ambitions. They are an attempt to close a gap the government admits exists.

The strategy is also a sovereignty strategy. It promises a world-leading public AI supercomputer and investment in sovereign compute and cloud infrastructure, with a focus on high-performance computing that is sustainable, aligned with Canada's clean-energy expansion, and delivering tangible benefits for local communities. It aims to support small and medium-sized businesses adopting AI, to raise productivity, and to drive breakthroughs in priority sectors including health, energy, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, robotics, and government services.

Reporting at the June launch described three funding pieces alongside the strategy: a C$500 million Canadian Tech Growth Fund letting the federal government take equity stakes in Canadian AI firms, a separate C$500 million Business Development Bank of Canada initiative to finance AI tools for small and medium-sized businesses, and a C$700 million Compute Access Fund to widen access to computing. Those figures come from launch reporting, not from the Prime Minister's Office release quoted above, and they should be read as reported programme details rather than as confirmed budget lines.

The October Council: Who Advises, and Who Decides

On 2 October 2026, Prime Minister Carney launched the National Council on Artificial Intelligence. Its job, in the government's words, is to inform and advise the government on how to most effectively deploy AI in Canada: how to manage the risks, seize the opportunities, and ensure AI is used to improve the lives of all Canadians.

The Council's mandate spans economic competitiveness, AI adoption, government transformation, talent, research, and sovereign infrastructure. It is meant to connect public and private stakeholders, identify opportunities for coordinated action, and advise on cross-cutting issues affecting the implementation and evolution of AI for All.

The membership is deliberately broad. It convenes researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, public servants, and international experts, including specialists in AI safety, governance, and oversight. Members include Ajay Agrawal, Yoshua Bengio, Sanja Fidler, Jordan Jacobs, Eric Lamarre, Valérie Pisano, Senator Thomas Pitfield, Jody Thomas, Louis Vachon, and Michelle Zatlyn, with Patrick Pichette serving as an ex officio member. Bengio, a University of Montreal professor, is among the world's most cited AI researchers and a leading voice on AI safety. Zatlyn co-founded the cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. Gillian Hadfield, an AI governance and law professor, also joined the advisory body.

The most important sentence in the Council's announcement is the one that limits its power. A small team within the Privy Council Office will support the Council, while responsible ministers and federal departments will remain accountable for policy decisions and implementation. The Council advises. It does not decide, fund, or regulate. That is a strength if it keeps advice independent, and a weakness if its recommendations sit unimplemented while ministers move slowly. Readers should judge the Council by whether its advice visibly shapes decisions, not by whether it exists.

Why Canada's Problem Is Adoption, Not Invention

Canada's AI story has a paradox at its centre. The country produced foundational AI researchers, hosts three national AI institutes, the Vector Institute in Toronto, Mila in Montreal, and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute in Edmonton, and has universities, startups, and established technology companies with deep AI expertise. Yet only just over 12% of Canadian businesses had adopted AI, and the strategy aims to reach 60% by 2034.

That gap is the strategy's real subject. Inventing AI is no longer enough, as analysts of the Canadian plan have put it. Nations need the compute, companies, capital, skills, and regulatory confidence to deploy it. A country that produces researchers but depends heavily on foreign infrastructure can find itself renting the foundations of its digital economy, and the strategy's sovereignty language is a direct response to that risk.

The adoption target is also the hardest to verify. "Adoption" can mean anything from a single employee trying a chatbot to a company rebuilt around AI workflows, and the government's releases do not publish a detailed adoption measurement method alongside the 12% to 60% target. The honest way to track this strategy is to watch for the measurement: which survey, which definition of adoption, and which sectors move first. A target without a published yardstick is a promise, not yet a programme.

Small and medium-sized businesses are the key test. Large companies can buy AI expertise. Small companies need financing, training, and shared infrastructure, which is why the reported BDC financing and Compute Access Fund matter more than the headline growth figure. If AI for All works, it will show up first in small-business adoption and in the youth job placements it promises, not in national GDP figures that take years to move.

The Scepticism: Jobs Created, Jobs Displaced

No honest account of AI for All can skip the counter-argument. The strategy promises 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years. At the June launch, reporting noted a forecast warning that the same technology could wipe out more than half a million jobs first: Signal49 Research, formerly the Conference Board of Canada, projected in January 2026 that AI and automation could cause an initial loss of 550,000 jobs by 2030. Government officials said they would not contest the figure but would monitor potential displacements.

That tension is not a flaw in the strategy. It is the central policy problem of AI everywhere, stated more openly in Canada's case than in most. A strategy can create AI-related jobs while AI displaces other jobs, and the net effect depends on retraining, on the speed of adoption, and on whether displaced workers move into the new roles or out of the workforce. The strategy's promise of up to 90,000 jobs and placements for young Canadians is a start on the retraining side, but it is small beside a 550,000-job displacement forecast, and the gap between those figures is where the political argument will live.

Canada's starting position on skills makes the point sharper. Reporting at launch cited a KPMG and University of Melbourne study ranking Canada 44th of 47 countries on AI training and literacy. A country that ranks near the bottom on training cannot close an adoption gap on infrastructure alone. The national AI literacy initiative promised in the strategy, offering entry-level AI training for all Canadians, will need to be judged on participation and outcomes, not on announcement.

What to Watch Next

Four things will tell you whether AI for All and its Council are working. First, whether the Council publishes advice or recommendations that visibly shape a ministerial decision, rather than operating behind closed doors. Second, whether the government publishes how it measures the 12% to 60% adoption target, and reports progress against it. Third, whether the reported funding pieces, the Tech Growth Fund, the BDC initiative, and the Compute Access Fund, actually open for applications and reach small businesses. Fourth, whether the sovereign compute and supercomputer commitments produce capacity that Canadian researchers and companies can actually use, at prices they can afford.

There is also a comparison worth making. Canada's approach, with its emphasis on adoption, literacy, and sovereignty, sits between two other models visible in recent AI policy. The United Kingdom's approach, covered in our post on UK AI Security Funding: Inside the £600 Million Plan to Defend Against AI Threats, leans toward security funding and testing capacity.

The Bottom Line

Canada's AI Council is a sensible addition to a strategy with unusually clear targets, and its membership gives it real expertise to draw on. But a council that advises is only as good as the decisions it influences, and a strategy that promises C$200 billion in growth and 250,000 jobs is only as good as its measurement, its funding delivery, and its answer to the displacement forecast sitting alongside it.

The dates to remember are simple: strategy in June 2026, council in October 2026, adoption target for 2034. Judge AI for All on the next twelve months of visible decisions, published measurements, and small-business uptake, not on the size of its headline numbers. If Canada closes its adoption gap while keeping its researchers, its companies, and its infrastructure under its own control, it will have done something few countries have managed. If it does not, the gap between invention and adoption will remain the story.

Sources

• Prime Minister of Canada, "Prime Minister Carney launches AI for All: Canada's new national artificial intelligence strategy," 4 June 2026: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/06/04/prime-minister-carney-launches-ai-all-canadas-new-national-artificial
• Prime Minister of Canada, "Prime Minister Carney launches new National Council on Artificial Intelligence," 2 October 2026: https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/10/02/prime-minister-carney-launches-new-national-council-artificial?ref=theouut.com
• Wealth Professional, "Carney launches Canada's AI for All strategy with a $200 billion growth target," June 2026: https://www.wealthprofessional.ca/news/industry-news/carney-launches-canadas-ai-for-all-strategy-with-a-200-billion-growth-target/392652