Canada’s ‘AI for All’ strategy has ambitious growth targets, but it falls short on workers and the environment

Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled Canada’s AI for All strategy on June 4, committing over $2 billion in new spending and targeting $200 billion in additional GDP growth and 250,000 new jobs by 2031.

The plan is organized around several pillars: sovereign AI infrastructure, skills and talent, business and public-sector adoption, support for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), and commitments around responsible AI, trust and cybersecurity. Canada currently lags behind most G7 peers in AI uptake; this strategy plans to change that.

But the strategy’s growth targets are much clearer than its accountability measures. Canada now has numerical goals for adoption, jobs and GDP growth, but fewer concrete commitments for measuring displacement, auditing workplace AI, protecting affected workers, governing data or reporting the environmental footprint of the infrastructure needed to power it.

What the strategy says about workers

Labour organizations criticized the strategy for prioritizing business interests over workers. There is good reason for the concern. In a survey of 306 executives, 59 per cent said AI agents are already changing how they hire entry-level workers, and 63 per cent said the same for experienced hires.