Budget Trepidation for the Nation? Are We Flailing or Even Failing on AI?

HAL - 2001

As I wait in trepidation for the November 4, 2025 Federal Budget, I wonder what it will say about AI – the inevitable topic “du jour”.

The copyright cabal, or at least two of its least credible but most whiny and vocal members,  have made it clear that they want the Government to:

 … amend the Copyright Act to clarify fair dealing for education, make tariffs set by the Copyright Board of Canada mandatory and enforceable, and ensure statutory damages are available to all collectives.

No doubt Access Copyright & COPIBEC would be thrilled to attempt to monetize the ingestion of the billions or more copyrighted works in which they have ZERO legal interest. No doubt Canada’s Copyright Board would struggle to enable them, if given the scintilla of an opportunity.

Copyright is the unavoidable elephant in the room in any serious discussion of AI.

There are many other indications of copyright lobbying activity from the usual suspects aimed at Ottawa – e.g. here’s what’s on the record just from January 1, 2025.

For those who are curious and have time on their hands, I urge you to respond to the Government's online AI survey by today’s October 31, 2025 Halloween deadline. It may not inspire much confidence. As I said on Twitter recently:

This consultation survey on AI from ISED with a response due by Oct 31 is long, repetitive, suggestive as to responses, & confusing. It feels as if it was generated by AI & maybe it will be tabulated by AI. It's anonymous, for better or worse.

Canada still needs to learn the necessary lessons from our very sad tech catastrophes from the not so distant past, e.g. AVRO Arrow, RIM/Blackberry, Corel, JDS, & Nortel. It seems that we are collectivity unwilling to do the necessary postmortems on these disasters.

And last but not least, throwing $2.4 BILLION dollars up in the air and into the wind on AI is a very reflexive "Canadian" response and will no doubt be welcomed by countless consultants and other potential beneficiaries  - but may not help and could well cause harm. The government is NOT always sufficiently competent at procurement. On the optimistic side, there are some very smart people in the new AI ministry under Evan Solomon. Hopefully, they will proceed wisely. OTOH, there are many other places in the Government that could get involved and spend money for better or for worse. In the worst case, could we see more “Arrivescam” and Laith Marouf fiascos possibly magnified exponentially?

Canada may have contributed Geoffrey Hinton – a Nobel Prize winning pioneer in AI. But we are now nowhere and flailing and possibly failing fast.

HPK