Introduction
U15 Canada appreciates the opportunity to provide input to the committee’s important study on artificial intelligence and welcomes the committee’s attention to the needs and challenges of research universities as part of the study. This comes at an important moment for Canada. As the federal government engages with the research community through the AI Strategy Task Force on the development of Phase 3 of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, now is the moment to build on Canada’s deep research excellence, expand its pipeline of highly qualified talent, and strengthen the innovation ecosystems that enable discovery, deployment, and commercialization—areas where Canada’s leading research universities play an indispensable role.
Artificial intelligence represents one of the most significant technological transformations of our lifetimes. The OECD estimates that widespread AI adoption could raise productivity growth by 1.1% annually over the next decade, reshaping every sector of the economy and driving new sources of social and economic value. To succeed through this transformation and to remain internationally competitive, Canada’s leading research universities can play a crucial role in driving innovation, supporting the adoption of AI tools by Canadian industry and developing talent trained in the responsible, ethical and appropriate use of AI.
Across the country, leading research universities anchor Canada’s most advanced AI research and talent development capacity. These institutions serve as engines of discovery and innovation—producing tens of thousands of publications, filing more than 18,000 invention disclosures and 11,000 patent applications, and launching over 1,100 research-based startups since 2010, including nearly 120 in 2023 alone. At the same time, universities are training the next generation of AI professionals, supporting commercialization through industry partnerships, and working closely with government and civil society to ensure that AI is developed and deployed responsibly.
Canada’s early global leadership in AI was built in university labs. The pioneering research of Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Richard Sutton—supported by federal funding and anchored in strong university research environments—laid the scientific foundations for modern machine learning and positioned Canada as a world leader in neural networks and reinforcement learning. Federal investments through phases one and two of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy accelerated this momentum, enabling research universities to develop and attract top global talent, scale training programs, and strengthen Canada’s three national AI institutes.
Together, these efforts established a strong foundation for Canadian leadership. The next phase represents a defining opportunity to move to coordinated national impact—ensuring that advances in AI translate into productivity growth, public-sector capacity, social well-being, and resilient sovereign capability. Leading research universities will be central to that transition. . . .