Minister of AI says Canada won't let Silicon Valley set rules for the country
Evan Solomon spoke Wednesday at the University Club about building Canadian AI capacity independent of U.S. tech leaders.
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Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence Evan Solomon said Wednesday he won't allow U.S. tech titans to make the rules for Canada's AI future, even as the country benefits from their innovations.
Speaking at the University Club of Toronto as part of a fireside chat hosted by Ewing Morris and Toronto Life, Solomon responded directly to a question about whether he trusted American oligarchs—such as OpenAI's Sam Altman or Anthropic's Dario Amodei—to shape Canada's AI direction.
"It's not about whether I trust them," Solomon said. "It's about whether I want those guys to make the rules for us. And the answer is absolutely not. They're not elected officials. They have no accountability to citizens."
Solomon clarified that Canada benefits from their continuous innovations but needs to build its own capacity. "My job is to make sure that we are open to opportunities, candid about the future, and create a reliable, safe way to import and build the best innovation in the world, here in Canada."
Throughout the conversation, Solomon returned to the same message: Canada must supercharge its AI infrastructure fast. "We can either build the infrastructure here or rent it from other people," he said. The government's new "AI for All" strategy allocates billions for data centres and computing infrastructure. Solomon pointed out that Canada has Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, the Toronto-based "godfather of AI," among its researchers and is home to roughly 3,500 AI companies employing about 150,000 people. Yet only about 12 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or services between mid-2024 and mid-2025, placing Canada near the bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
