OTTAWA — Artificial intelligence is likely to take up much of the agenda as industry, digital and technology ministers from the world’s most powerful Western countries meet in Montreal this week.
The two-day event is part of a series of ministerial meetings being held as Canada holds the presidency of the G7 group of nations this year.
Prime Minister Mark Carney hosted the G7 leaders’ summit in June, welcoming leaders from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, along with the European Union, to Kananaskis, Alta.
“The decisions that we’ll make here together will shape the nature of our technological progress in our democratic world, and it’s happening at unprecedented speeds,” Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said in his opening remarks on Monday.
“For the first time in history … we have many tools that will augment human capability at extraordinary scale. We have made intelligence abundant for the first time in human history, and that’s having a profound impact on everything.”
He said Canada’s G7 presidency will focus on “giving business leaders the tools and the confidence to use the AI technologies that we have, especially small and medium-sized businesses.”
Mark Daley, professor and chief AI officer at Western University, said co-operation on AI policy is essential.
“The faster the world moves, the more important co-operation is, and the digital world moves at the speed of light and seems to continue to accelerate,” Daley said.
“So having this opportunity for the digital ministers specifically to focus on the digital world and AI and all of the impacts this (has) on our society, I think is really critical from a co-ordination and collaboration standpoint.”
Solomon predicted a “productive” G7 meeting last week in brief remarks to The Canadian Press.
“We have a shared series of values building on previous work on AI, on quantum and some key issues,” he said.
Solomon said Canadian priorities include broadening trade routes and partnerships, driving investment in Canada and ensuring those partnerships help “strengthen our sovereign AI and our sovereign quantum.”
The meeting isn’t entirely about digital and tech issues, as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is also hosting.
Paul Samson is president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which put together advice from various think tanks ahead of the leaders’ June meeting. He said the Montreal meeting will have both an industrial policy agenda and a tech policy agenda.
Samson, who is attending, predicted digital technology issues will take up a large part of the conversation, because they’re linked to broader issues like economic competitiveness and resilience.
“They’ll tend to gravitate towards AI in particular. And so I expect that will probably dominate fifty per cent of the total conversations,” he said.
Heidi Tworek, a professor of history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, said that as host, Canada has an opportunity to wield influence through the choice of location and priority topics. The government has opted to convene the ministers in Montreal, which has global strength in AI.
At the leaders’ meeting in June, the G7 countries pledged to increase their adoption of artificial intelligence in the public sector and among smaller businesses, and promised to promote investment in emerging quantum technologies.
Samson said normally the leaders’ meeting comes after the ministers’ meeting, but that was flipped around this year because of the timing of the spring election. That means the ministers will “absolutely” be following up on the issues raised by the leaders, he said.
The meeting also sets Canada up to navigate between the European Union, a proponent of AI regulation, and the United States, which has opposed regulation under the Trump administration.
Asked how much the meeting could accomplish, Tworek said “a lot of that is going to obviously hang on the American priorities and presence and so on, because we know there are of course some tensions” over the EU’s AI and digital regulation legislation.
On Monday, Solomon announced a partnership with Germany, meant to increase collaboration on AI, quantum, and digital sovereignty and infrastructure. During the press conference, he was asked about the EU and U.S.
“Canada and Europe have both very much been aligned on finding a place where we have the balance between privacy, safety, and AI safety, not just with AI, whether it’s with deep fakes and other issues, but also making sure we don’t constrain innovation,” Solomon said.
He said he was “delighted” the U.S. was taking part.
“They’re talking about aligning and working together, which we encourage. We all want to encourage the fact that the G7 and organizations and collaborations like this continue to act as ways to find coherence and find alignment on these foundational issues,” Solomon said.
“So this is actually a very important day for that. But look, every country is going to chart its own path.”
There are areas where the G7 countries are on the same page, Tworek said.
“One base level thing is that actually all of these countries seem to agree that AI is going to be really integral moving forward, right? Which isn’t necessarily to be taken as a given,” she said.
“That’s actually not the case that everybody thinks that AI should be as embedded within public services, as G7 countries seem to be agreeing on at the moment.”
A June joint statement on AI said the G7 countries would work “together to accelerate adoption of AI in the public sector to enhance the quality of public services for both citizens and businesses and increase government efficiency.”
Daley said there are some issues “where you just have to accept we’re not going to agree … but I think there’s still a ton of work that can be done.”
While Global AI governance isn’t going to solved at this meeting, understanding what the various parties are doing is important, Daley said.
“It’s also important for Canada to be part of that conversation so we can see where our closest partners and friends are heading and with whom we want to co-operate more in the future,” he said.
One important area is interoperability of AI technology, Daley said.
“They’re not glamorous, they’re not glorious, but standards actually can change the world. And Canada as a middle power, this is one of the levers we have traditionally used in technology domains to have outsized influence, positive influence on the world.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2025.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press
