On March 9th 2026 the CAIS Director, James Elder attended the meeting of the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Industry and Technology: Opportunities, Risks, and Regulation of AI in Canada’s Strategic Industries. The opening statement presented by the CAIS director is shown below.
Opportunities, Risks, and Regulation of AI in Canada’s Strategic Industries
Witness:
Dr. James Elder
Professor & 91ÑÇÉ« Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision
Director, Centre for AI & Society
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Lassonde School of Engineering
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health
91ÑÇÉ«
Toronto, ON
Opening Statement:
INTRODUCTION:
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee. My expertise is in computational neuroscience, computer vision, AI and robotics. I have been a professor at 91ÑÇÉ« for 30 years and have led many collaborative research projects with industry and public sector partners. I am now serving as Director of the 91ÑÇÉ« Centre for AI & Society (CAIS), which unites 74 research faculty members across 7 different university faculties engaged in all dimensions of AI research.
OPPORTUNITIES:
AI offers enormous opportunities for Canadian industry. Canadian researchers have been leaders in developing core principles underpinning current AI technologies. In the last several years, attention has shifted to large language models (LLMs) developed by hyperscalers like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. We are now in a new phase in which these AI models, including LLMs, can transform a myriad of industry processes and create new businesses. Importantly, these opportunities to businesses at all scales from small to large.
Promising applications include:
- Drone-based AI for construction process management
- Robotics for healthcare and senior care
- Computer vision and AI for urban mobility
- Business process automation
The Government of Canada can help Canadians to seize these opportunities in a number of ways:
- Lead by example: Use Canadian AI technologies to improve processes in all branches of government.
- Support post-secondary AI application research and training: Establish capital programs in partnership with provincial governments to establish new high-profile facilities for collaborative research on AI applications and training.
- Catalyze collaborative research: Establish pan-Canadian pre-competitive collaborative applied research networks focused on the application of AI in specific domains, e.g., healthcare, robotics, mobility, business processes.
- Dual and civilian use. Support R&D for both dual-use and civilian applications of AI
RISKS:
As a disruptive technology, AI poses many risks.
- Missing out. If Canada does not rapidly embrace the efficiencies and novel opportunities of AI, we risk becoming uncompetitive in global markets and less able to provide the services that Canadians cherish.
- Employment shifts. There will be large shifts in labour markets, including contractions in some areas and expansions in others. Workers will need to adapt their skillsets and workflow to make productive use of AI tools.
- Education & cognitive development. We have already seen negative impacts of social media technology on cognitive development. AI poses an even larger risk. It is still unknown how outsourcing of fundamentals like math, logic and prose to AI may stunt cognitive development. On the other hand, use of AI tools can in potentially stimulate creativity and accelerate learning and providing students access to AI tools will improve their facility with these tools and thus opportunities for employment.
- Data security. AI feeds on data – we should therefore see Canadian data as one of our most valuable natural resources. Data insecurity means not only infringements of privacy but loss of valuable intellectual property.
- Political risk. We have already seen impact of AI on politics through social media chatbots and deepfakes. These impacts will increase with improvements to generative AI for language, voice, images and video.
Beyond regulation there are some things the Government of Canada can do to mitigate these risks. We need to support research on labour market shifts and then act on this research to invest in retraining. We also need to invest in education research on how AI can be most effectively integrated into our education systems, with a particular focus on the development of fundamental human intellectual capacities, including logic, memory, analysis, communication and creativity.
REGULATION:
There is concern regarding the potential for agentic AI to run amok. I do not think there needs to be regulation specific to AI to mitigate this risk. Rather, I think we should rely upon our existing system of laws, introducing new ones where specifically needed. For example, a motor vehicle should be safe whether or not it is driven by a human or an AI. Our children should be protected from addictive social media patterns whether they include real or AI content.
Mitigating political risk may entail stronger legislation requiring clear watermarking of AI content and significant penalties for infractions.
We need to protect valuable personal data of Canadians, particularly from foreign actors, and protecting creative content from plagiarism and copyright infringement. The Government of Canada can mitigate risks through data sovereignty programs and assistance to individuals and organizations in enforcement of copyright law.