RE: LeoThread 2026-06-05 15-02

Canada is not aiming for gold with this strategy

On the consumer front, the strategy gets many things right and the government deserves credit for that

From a digital and economic sovereignty perspective it falls short. The AI sector most needs governments to create free-market conditions for companies to start, scale and thrive domestically

Important elements appear in the plan: sovereign compute, a public supercomputer, AI Missions beginning in health care, a fund to scale national champions, commercialization of the Photonics Fabrication Centre, and the government acting as an anchor customer. Many of these ideas have been advocated publicly and it is good to see them included

It is important to be honest about what this strategy is — and what it is not

Primarily, it is a strategy to help Canada use artificial intelligence, with government playing a central role in shaping public perception

It is not a strategy to make Canada the best place on earth to build AI. Its organizing goal — adoption, raising Canadian business uptake from 12% to 60% — is necessary but not sufficient to make Canada a global AI leader

The strategy claims to want national champions. Champions are not built with government cheques and deferred studies — they are built by making the country the best place to start and scale companies

Using AI and building AI are different goals and require different instincts

The companies that will define this century will be built where four conditions hold:

1. founders and engineers keep what they create

1. capital is deep enough to write billion-dollar cheques
2. energy and compute are cheap and fast to deploy
3. rules are light enough to move at the speed of the technology

Measured against those conditions, the pattern is clear:

On founder and employee economics — the single biggest reason talent leaves Canada — the strategy does nothing now. The one capital-gains idea it mentions, a reinvestment rollover, has been deferred to a study due by Budget 2026

On capital, the plan positions the government as the venture capitalist instead of unleashing private capital to back national companies

On energy, it promises to double grid capacity by 2050. The build is needed this decade — and the strategy offers no permitting reform to make that possible

On regulation, it layers new requirements — a trusted-AI certification program, watermarking, plus new privacy and online-safety laws — and compliance typically hits startups least able to bear the burden

It also adds many new programs atop the roughly 130 innovation programs founders already struggle to navigate. The answer should be fewer and faster, not more

Prosperity cannot be spent into existence by the state. Prosperity happens when the runway is cleared and the free market can operate. No government can subsidize its way past the friction it created

Playing to win would look different. Examples include:

• Allowing deferral of capital gains reinvested in Canadian companies and fixing how employee equity is taxed — immediately, not in a future budget

• Treating energy and permitting as the emergencies they are: approve power and data centres in months rather than years and accelerate construction

• Imposing strict timelines on regulation: apply existing laws and expedite approvals for new products
• Consolidating the roughly 130 innovation programs into fewer than ten and reducing friction founders face at every step

Canada invented modern AI. The country has the talent, one of the cleanest grids in the world, and the research base to win. The opportunity is theirs to lose

This strategy is a genuine start — but a nation that wants to win should not aim to be the world's best customer. It should aim to build the companies the world cannot live without