Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Honourable senators, let me start by welcoming all colleagues back to the chamber after the summer recess. Some of the big issues that have been blowing up over the summer have been around artificial intelligence, data centres and digital sovereignty.

I want to talk about the need for a Canadian public digital infrastructure. Let me repeat those four words: Canadian public digital infrastructure.

For this new ubiquitous and overwhelming technology, we stand to lose out if we don’t remain in the race to grow artificial intelligence, or AI, and yet, given the potential dangers and tremendous geopolitical uncertainty at this critical juncture of this technology, we need to be in control, masters in our own home. This is an urgent objective.

While we are rightly spending some big money and much attention on Canadian-owned companies, we should also be wary that private sector companies can, over time, have overextended partnerships, be bought out or can sell out to interests beyond Canada.

There have been suggestions to advance a public, government-funded player in the field that is at arm’s length from the government. One strong option is to use the tried-and-true Canadian instrument, namely a Crown corporation, to do this by using an existing one or creating a new Crown corporation.

Here are some of the issues that I believe we need to advance through a Canadian public digital infrastructure: to be a driver and catalyst for digital advancement in Canada, working alongside private sector companies; focus on artificial intelligence, large language models, sovereign compute capacity and secure cloud services; build Canadian-owned data centres in full consultation with communities, governments and the private sector; contribute to the development of clear standards and guardrails; regularly convene academics, experts and start-ups as well as interested people to share expertise; address and promote the benefits of artificial intelligence; address the shortcomings and dangers of artificial intelligence; and reflect the realities of Canada, including our bilingualism, our diversity and truth and reconciliation.

In the end, it must be a consolidated initiative to advance Canadian interests in a successful, safe and urgent manner. Thank you.