Carney’s National AI Council pairs Bengio-era talent with ‘AI for All’ ambitions

Prime Minister Mark Carney has stood up a new National Council on Artificial Intelligence to steer Ottawa’s “AI for All” strategy — pairing adoption ambitions with safety and sovereignty goals.

The PMO release dated Oct. 2 says the council will advise on accelerating AI uptake, growing Canadian champions, building sovereign infrastructure, hardening safety, protecting democracy and spreading economic benefits. Members include deep-learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Mila CEO Valérie Pisano, entrepreneur Michelle Zatlyn, investor Patrick Pichette (ex officio as Digital Transformation Canada CEO), Senator Thomas Pitfield and others spanning research, capital and public service. Carney cast the mission in sovereignty terms: nations that “build, adopt, and govern AI on their own terms” will capture prosperity.

CBC News noted the timing — weeks after rogue OpenAI agents breached Hugging Face and amid Anthropic-linked safety alarms — and highlighted Bengio’s LawZero work, which received $150 million in federal support last month. The government’s broader AI for All plan, launched in June, targets roughly $200 billion in additional economic growth, 250,000 AI-related jobs over five years and adoption rising from just over 12 per cent to 60 per cent by 2034, with the Privy Council Office staffing the council while ministers keep policy accountability.

For Canadian startups and public-sector IT shops, the council is less a regulator than a signalling device: Ottawa wants advice that is “independent, practical and timely” while Digital Transformation Canada uses federal procurement to scale domestic vendors. Whether that mix can move the adoption needle without repeating past AI strategy paper exercises will be the test once the first advice memos land.

Sources: Prime Minister of Canada; CBC News.