Province unveils innovation, productivity task force with eye on AI, IP
By the end of the year, Manitoba should have a strategy on artificial intelligence, data security and future innovation.
The provincial government unveiled an innovation and productivity task force — comprised of industry members — to oversee the strategic plan's creation.
'The world has changed seismically over the last 30 years from a traditional production economy to one that's based on intangibles of intellectual property and artificial intelligence and data,' said Jim Balsillie, who will co-chair the new group with provincial Innovation Minister Mike Moroz.
Balsillie chairs the Council of Canadian Innovators and is former co-chief executive of BlackBerry Ltd.
The task force, which includes seven more members, will provide a swath of recommendations to government.
Balsillie said he was tapped by Premier Wab Kinew months ago to spearhead a plan ensuring Manitoba's economy is 'prosperous and secure and safe' in the changing world.
He and peers will look at potential protections as artificial intelligence use grows and the infrastructure needed to foster AI use. The group will delve into intellectual property and sovereignty within Manitoba.
'Being more sovereign, being more value-add, has been a priority for decades,' Balsillie said. 'But it's been laid bare in the last couple months.'
The task force will meet every couple weeks over the next six months. The team held its first meeting Wednesday. Determining who to reach out to, and what, exactly, they need to research to fulfill the premier's vision is a journey they're just beginning, Balsillie relayed.
The province listed government agencies, industry experts, researchers and Indigenous communities as groups that'll be involved in the strategy's creation.
A plan should be completed by November, Balsillie confirmed. 'I have every confidence the everybody's stepping up and going to meet the deadline.'
Gautam Srivastava, a Brandon University computer science professor, is one of the task force members. He researches artificial intelligence and data security and privacy.
Srivastava considers it a 'strategic time' to be building such a report.
'Everyone wants a piece of this artificial intelligence and data analytics pie,' he said. 'I think our agility here in Manitoba, to create an ecosystem to provide that, could be really prosperous.'
If Manitoba can offer computation and infrastructure for computation, it'll draw entrepreneurs, Srivastava said.
He plans to research education opportunities — like additive post-secondary programs — in his task force position.
Other task force members include Adam Herstein, a partner at Pitblado Law; Clara Buelow, Manitoba Chambers of Commerce communications director and previous lead of the Digital Manitoba Policy Initiative; Jacqueline Keena, managing director of Enterprise Machine Intelligence Learning Initiative (EMILI); Gerry Price, president of Price Industries; Debra Jonasson-Young, executive director of entrepreneurship at the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship in the University of Manitoba; and Ernest Cholakis, founder of Cholakis Dental Group.
The province launched its department of innovation and new technology in November.
gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com
Gabrielle PichéReporter
Gabrielle Piché reports on business for the Free Press. She interned at the Free Press and worked for its sister outlet, Canstar Community News, before entering the business beat in 2021. Read more about Gabrielle.
Every piece of reporting Gabrielle produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Cision Canada
6 hours ago
- Cision Canada
Prime Minister Carney convenes the Incident Response Group Français
OTTAWA, ON, June 8, 2025 /CNW/ - Today, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, convened the Incident Response Group with ministers and senior officials to address the ongoing 2025 wildfire situation affecting many parts of the country. The group was briefed on efforts to respond to the fires and support evacuations. This includes the mobilization of Canadian Armed Forces personnel to assist with the evacuation of Sandy Lake First Nation in Ontario. The Prime Minister emphasized the close contact between various arms of the federal government, premiers, and the Canadian Armed Forces. All orders of government remain engaged, including with Indigenous leadership. Prime Minister Carney and the group thanked all first responders and officials on the ground, and reiterated that the federal government stands ready to mobilize additional support wherever needed and in all aspects.
Calgary Herald
7 hours ago
- Calgary Herald
Chris Selley: Earth to Liberals — First Nations are not an anti-development monolith
Article content Sean Fraser — the federal Liberals' supposed master communicator who did a bad job as immigration minister, and then a bad job as housing minister, and then said he wasn't running again to spend time with his family, and then opportunistically changed his mind and was rewarded with the justice and attorney general portfolio — laid his first dog's egg of the Mark Carney era this week. Article content Article content Fraser said Indigenous groups don't have a 'complete veto' over natural-resource projects or any other government decisions — but that wasn't the turd in question, because it was absolutely true. Article content Article content The turd came later, apparently after getting his ears boxed by Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse: Fraser disavowed his entirely truthful statement. Article content 'I think even accepting the premise of the question that was put to me (about a 'veto') really made people feel like there may be an attempt by the government to work unilaterally, not in partnership (with First Nations),' Fraser told reporters in a public apology. Article content 'Despite innocent intentions, I think my comments actually caused hurt and potentially eroded a very precarious trust that has been built up over many years to respect the rights of Indigenous people in this country,' he said. Article content Article content Coming up on 500 years since Jacques Cartier first set foot here and named it Canada, and 150-plus years after the Crown concluded the first treaties with First Nations, and with President Donald Trump suddenly bringing our crippling dependence on the United States into very sharp focus, if we can't even speak the plain truth to each other in plain language, we might be in even bigger trouble than we realized. Article content Article content But I think we can speak the plain truth to each other in plain language, so long as we rightly marginalize fringe and unreasonable voices. While apologizing for speaking the truth, Fraser also accurately pointed to 'a frankly dangerous trope that paints a false picture of Indigenous peoples as being anti-development.' Article content The 2021 Census recorded 1.8 million Indigenous Canadians — five per cent of the Canadian population, give or take. No one would ascribe monolithic opinions like 'supports/doesn't support resource development' to any other ethnic five per cent of the Canadian population. Yet most Canadian media reliably frame these issues as 'First Nations versus the colonialist menace.'
Canada Standard
21 hours ago
- Canada Standard
The quiet killing of the Canadian giantess forests and urgent reminder to push the climate change agenda
On Friday, almost the entire country is under an Environment Canada air quality warning as wildfires continue to rage across the Prairies. As world leaders prepare to gather in Alberta in Kananaskis for the G7 summit next week, some activist groups across Canada say they are planning protests. The Group of G7 is consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. But as of Saturday afternoon, there were 59 fires burning in the province, with 23 of them classified as out of control. Since mid-May more than 580,000 hectares have burned in Alberta so far. A wildfire burning in northern Alberta is not only threatening the homes of hundreds of residents in various communities, but also major oil and gas companies with operations in the area. Security officials at the G7 leaders summit in Kananaskis say plans are in place, including the possibility of evacuations, if wildfires become a serious threat. Kananaskis, located at the foothills and front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Its western edge borders Banff National Park and the Alberta-B.C. boundary. More than 30,000 people in the prairies have been forced to leave their homes due to the numerous fires that have broken out in recent days. According to government data, the fires are caused by campfires of humans. But, several environmental groups are denouncing the oil companies' practices of extracting tar sands. In fact, Alberta's oil companies have been draining the prairies for decades. Despite promises from industry and government to reduce water use in oil sands operations and restore wetlands that have been mined to a depth of more than 200 meters, the delta's ecosystem of the Athabasca River declined. It will become irreversible if oil companies actually triple their production in Alberta, as they have announced, by 2030. Extracting oil from the tar sands requires enormous quantities of water. For every barrel of oil produced, at least 2.6 barrels of water must be extracted from the Athabasca River or local groundwater. For so-called "in situ" operations, which use steam to separate the oil from the sand underground and then pump the bitumen to the surface, freshwater consumption is less, but still significant. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) forecasts that production of crude bitumen-the thick, sticky oil found in Alberta's oil sands region-will reach four million barrels per day in 2033, up from 3.4 million barrels per day last year. If we do the math, that's more or less 10 million barrels of freshwater water per day being pumped to produce the petrolium. The quiet killing of the Canadian giantess forests and its various animal species is the urgent reminder for the Canadian population to push the climate change agenda. During the G7 summit, environmentalists, anti-imperialist coalitions and Indigenous advocates, among many other groups most raise their voices. They must demand that Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime minister, legislate quickly to stop the devastation of the canadian forest even at the risk of displeasing some governments in Western Canada. ( Pressenza, Montreal ) Source: Pressenza
