New AI minister says Canada won't ‘over-index' on AI regulation
Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon speaks during the Canada 2020 conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
OTTAWA — Canada's new minister of artificial intelligence says he'll put less emphasis on AI regulation and more on finding ways to harness the technology's economic benefits.
Evan Solomon says Canada will move away from 'over-indexing on warnings and regulation' to make sure the economy benefits from AI.
He says getting AI regulation right is critical to Canada's 'economic destiny.'
In his first speech since becoming Canada's first-ever AI minister, Solomon outlined four priorities for his ministry.
They include scaling up Canada's AI industry, driving adoption and ensuring Canadians have trust in and sovereignty over the technology.
He says his focus with AI regulation will be on data protection and privacy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2025.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Post
14 minutes ago
- National Post
VeriSilicon's AI-ISP Custom Chip Solution Enables Mass Production of Customer's Smartphones
Article content Providing architecture design, software-hardware co-development, and mass production support, and enhancing AI-powered imaging Article content Article content SHANGHAI — VeriSilicon ( recently announced that its AI-ISP custom chip solution has been successfully adopted in a customer's mass-produced smartphones, reaffirming the company's comprehensive one-stop custom silicon service capabilities in AI vision processing. Article content VeriSilicon's AI-ISP custom chip solution can integrate proprietary or third-party Neural Network Processing Unit (NPU) IP and Image Signal Processing (ISP) IP. By combining traditional image processing techniques with AI algorithms, it significantly enhances image and video clarity, dynamic range, and environmental adaptability. The chip solution offers flexible configurations with RISC-V or Arm-based processors, supports MIPI image input/output interfaces, provides LPDDR5/4X memory integration capability, and is compatible with common peripheral interfaces such as UART, I2C, and SDIO. This makes the solution highly adaptable for deployment across various applications including smartphones, surveillance systems, and automotive electronics. Article content For this collaboration, VeriSilicon designed a low-power AI-ISP system-on-chip (SoC) based on the RISC-V architecture, tailored to the customer's specific requirements. It also included a FreeRTOS real-time Software Development Kit (SDK). The customized SoC was fully optimized for seamless interoperability with the customer's main processor platform and has since been successfully deployed in multiple smart devices, achieving large-scale production. This success highlights VeriSilicon's robust capabilities in heterogeneous computing, software-hardware co-optimization, and system-level integration and verification. Article content 'AI-powered imaging has become a key differentiator in the competitive smartphone market, driving increasing demand for high-performance and low-power image processing solutions,' said Wiseway Wang, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Custom Silicon Platform Division at VeriSilicon. 'With full-spectrum capabilities ranging from IP licensing and chip architecture design to system-level software and hardware development, tape-out, packaging and testing, as well as mass production, VeriSilicon offers end-to-end custom silicon services leveraging its extensive design service experience and proven mass production capabilities. The successful mass production of this customer's chip further validates our strength in high-end silicon design services. Moving forward, we will continue to innovate and improve our offerings, empowering customers to accelerate the launch of differentiated products with efficient, high-quality custom chip solutions.' Article content Article content
CTV News
16 minutes ago
- CTV News
Mayor ‘confident' property tax increase will come in below target— and then some
It took some budget wrangling, but Mayor Morgan believes next year's tax increase will be under 5 per cent. CTV London's Daryl Newcombe reports. It took some budget wrangling, but Mayor Morgan believes next year's tax increase will be under 5 per cent. CTV London's Daryl Newcombe reports. Mayor Josh Morgan is now expressing confidence he can get the 2026 property tax increase below 5 per cent, and that doesn't include an additional $8.45 million available from last year's massive surplus. On Wednesday, members of the Budget Committee wrangled over a number of proposals intended to reduce next year's tax increase that currently stands at 7.4 per cent in the multi-year budget. Coun. Susan Stevenson's request for a business case about reducing the size of the Heritage Planning Department sparked a lengthy debate about Civic Administration's internal service review process. 'When it comes to the service review, council doesn't play a role,' argued Stevenson. 'When do we get to look (at department budgets) line by line? When do we get to hear about the departments? What they're doing, what they're focused on, and why the numbers are up?' A number of councillors emphasized that staffing levels are part of Civic Administrations ongoing service review process. 'When they've done the review and when they do it again next year, if they identify that there are some changes needed in the Heritage Department that's the appropriate time for that to come forward,' explained Coun. Skylar Franke. 'I have full confidence and trust in staff to be able to do that in a transparent and regular manner.' But Stevenson suggested the tax relief being demanded by many Londoners will require a deeper dive into municipal spending, 'We are going to have to find areas to cut costs. That is just for sure. What [cuts] are we going to look at if we don't want to look anywhere?' Mayor Josh Morgan Mayor Josh Morgan presenting a report to the Budget Committee on June 11, 2025. (Daryl Newcombe/CTV News London) During 2024-2027 Municipal Budget deliberations, Civic Administration's internal service reviews have provided savings of $14 million in 2024, $6.8 million this year, and $6 million (so far) for 2026. The mayor defends the internal process that includes right-sizing municipal departments and services, 'In 2016, council developed the robust service review process that has returned well over $250 million to Londoners and avoided tax increases. This is the department by department review [and] zero based budgeting.' The Budget Committee meeting also included a presentation by the mayor about mandatory Development Charge (DC) exemptions for affordable housing and other qualifying developments. A letter from Ontario's Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing confirms that the City of London is not required to continue setting aside millions of dollars each year to offset the exemptions. Savings to the property tax supported budget, water budget, and wastewater budget will total $10 million in 2026—and avoid a $32 million projected shortfall in 2027. 'This is very positive! I really appreciate the lobbying work that you (the mayor), the folks at AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario), and our staff have done,' said Coun. Sam Trosow. However, Stevenson said provincial policies have not changed since budget deliberations a few years ago when she tried to convince colleagues that offsetting the DC exemptions was unnecessary. 'The fact that this was available to us, the fact that clarity is coming so late, I think is a little bit concerning,' she asserted. 'You can say this is fact, but those aren't facts,' responded Morgan, who added that the province's clarification was necessary for London and other municipalities to discontinue backfilling the exemptions. 'The only people who can interpret the [Development Charges] Act with the authority that gives us the courage to take these sorts of actions are the people who pass that legislation, which is the provincial government,' he told Stevenson. Achieving the mayor's tax target of below 5 per cent will require about $13 million in new revenue and/or savings. Morgan said his target is now within striking distance, 'We've got boards and commissions who have said they're looking for savings, so with their help, the continued work of our staff, [and] the continued work of this council through the budget process, I'm confident that we can get under five [per cent] now.' In addition, council set aside $16.9 million from last year's massive budget surplus for tax relief purposes in 2026 and 2027. Utilizing $8.45 million each of those years would further reduce the 2026 tax increase by about another 1 per cent. Morgan will release his draft budget Oct. 27. The public will then be asked to provide input prior to budget deliberations by council in late November.
CTV News
17 minutes ago
- CTV News
Fires in Squamish ‘could take weeks' to extinguish
Jeremy Valeriote, the MLA for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, says the greatest concern from the fires in Squamish is the proximity to homes.
