Abstract

Based on a three-year investigation into national and provincial AI governance, the report’s major findings include:
Canadian AI governance focuses on economic and industrial policy. National symbolic investment in AI – the promotion of AI’s Canadian-ness – impedes critical discussion about the technology and its risks.
AI governance is uncoordinated and lacks clear mandates for consultation and effective mechanisms of feedback, which impedes good governance and public participation.
AI policy is marked by notable silences on key issues, including Indigenous rights and data sovereignty, the creative and cultural sectors, and the environmental impact of AI.
The Government of Canada is a key site of AI development and deployment that remains understudied in current legislation.

We reached these findings based on investigations into a range of topics, including the development of the Canadian government’s algorithmic impact assessment, the way ethical concerns over AI are circumnavigated during the procurement process, flawed public consultations on the use of facial recognition technologies, the history of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s involvement in AI research and the administration of national AI policy, and the controversial use of racially biased AI technology by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

The views of each chapter are of the authors themselves. Collectively, the report foregrounds the need to improve AI consultation and public participation in AI governance. The chapters also throw into question the assumptions and efforts that led to the development of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and its inclusion in the larger implementation of Bill C-27. The passage of this act raises concerns not just about AI but about digital policy development and, indeed, the fragile state of democratic governance, accountability, and oversight in Canada.

Shaping AI is part of a multinational and multidisciplinary social research project that examines the global trajectories of public discourse on AI in four countries (Germany, UK, Canada, and France) over a ten-year period, 2012-2021. Funded by the European Open Research Area initiative for a period of three years (February 2021 – February 2024), Shaping AI brings together leading research teams from each of the four countries under scrutiny.

Research from this report was coordinated by Dr. Sophie Toupin and Dr. Fenwick McKelvey. This report compiles research conducted as part of the Shaping AI Canadian policy research activities that ran from 2021 to 2023.

Thanks to Blair Attard-Frost and Aaron Tucker for providing peer review of the report.

This edited collection draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.