Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is proposing to reduce government spending on artificial-intelligence initiatives, according to the party’s election platform, at a time when other countries are investing in the sector to capture the promised economic benefits and productivity gains of the technology.
The platform released Tuesday provided no explanation or details about which AI programs could be cut or reduced. The proposal is listed in a table outlining changes in program spending should the Conservatives form government.
The Conservatives are projecting nearly $2.3-billion in savings by 2028-29 through reducing AI spending.
The projected cost savings per year in the Conservative platform correspond almost exactly with the amounts that the federal Liberals proposed to spend annually on a $2.4-billion AI strategy announced last year that would roll out over the same time period.
That plan allocated $2-billion to help companies access the computing power needed to train and run AI models, build Canadian-owned and operated data centres for AI, and entice private companies to construct those facilities here. Accessing AI infrastructure, as it is called, has been a barrier for some Canadian AI companies and researchers.
A spokesperson for Mr. Poilievre did not return a request for comment about whether the Conservatives are proposing to scrap that program.
Support for the AI sector has been a point of pride for the Liberals, with more than $4.4-billion allotted since 2016. That includes funding for AI research centres in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton, each one tied to a luminary in the field: Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Richard Sutton.
Some experts have criticized Ottawa’s approach to AI for not focusing on maintaining intellectual property in Canada or on commercializing technologies.
The Liberal plan announced last year also included $200-million to help AI startups bring products to market and boost AI adoption in critical sectors such as health care. Another $50-million went to establish the Canadian AI Safety Institute.
Canada’s AI community hailed the spending plan. “The government of Canada is acting responsibly and is positioning itself on the right side of history with this announcement,” Prof. Bengio, the scientific adviser at Mila, Quebec’s AI institute, said at the time.
Others, such as University of Waterloo economics professor Joël Blit, have argued that the investment is unlikely to significantly boost innovation or productivity.
The Liberal government has made one funding announcement through its AI infrastructure program, giving up to $240-million to Toronto-based Cohere Inc., which competes with OpenAI. The money is effectively a prepurchase of computing capacity at a data centre that will be operated by U.S. company CoreWeave Inc., and which is slated to open in Canada this year. Some domestic data-centre companies have criticized the deal because the money ultimately flows to an American company.
The Liberal Party election platform proposes several AI initiatives, such as expanding programs at the country’s AI institutes and a tax credit for small and medium-sized businesses for deploying AI adoption projects. The Liberals are also proposing to invest in energy infrastructure to make Canada a more attractive location for data centres and “ensure we have technological sovereignty.”
Other countries are shoring up their AI sectors. The Labour government in Britain unveiled a plan this year that "mainlines AI into the veins“ of the country. That includes developing a strategy for meeting Britain’s AI infrastructure needs backed by a 10-year investment commitment, and creating “AI growth zones” to speed up the process of building data centres.
France, meanwhile, has invested more than €2.5-billion in AI research and development since 2018.