Canada's AI Strategy Can Deliver More for Black Canadians. Here Is How.
Canada's new AI strategy starts from a simple claim: trust drives adoption, adoption drives benefit. The government must support Canadians with learning to use AI and believing in its benefits.
We read the plan closely and take it at its word. It is ambitious on sovereignty, on free literacy for every Canadian and on keeping companies here at home. We want this plan to be successful. That is why identifying a key gap matters. Black Canadians are barely present in the plan and that should change in the implementation phase.
During the consultation phase, the government heard from more than 11,000 people. The strategy names who participated: Indigenous, Métis and Inuit leaders, labour, arts and environmental organizations, researchers, students and community leaders. Black organizations are not on the list. Neither are Black founders or Black technology leaders. When the plan mentions equity, Black Canadians are implicitly included in a broad phrase about racialized communities. Indigenous Peoples, Francophone communities and women are each mentioned specifically. Black communities are not. That is a striking omission in a country that both recognizes the distinct experiences of Black communities (e.g. Canada’s Black Justice Strategy) and funds Black entrepreneurship as a federal priority.
We want to be clear about one thing. As mentioned, the strategy names Indigenous Peoples and backs Indigenous-led work on language and data. It commits to Indigenous self-determination over how AI is built and used. We support that fully. Naming Black communities is a connected claim. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty have long been bound together. The systems that lock one community out tend to lock out the other.
Trust grows when people see themselves consulted, represented and governing. People who cannot see themselves in the plan adopt more slowly. AI already shapes hiring, lending, housing and public services. These are areas where Black Canadians face documented gaps. Build the strategies and systems without us and you risk increasing those gaps. By not identifying anti-Black racism, the strategy works against the very targets it is chasing.
We are not discouraged, however. Much of the work is already happening. Across the country, Black-led, Black-founded and Black-serving groups are creating AI literacy programs and running workforce training, entrepreneurship support and applied ethics work. The delivery capacity the strategy wants is partly built. It does not need to be invented. It needs to be seen and funded.
The strategy hands us the tools to fix this. Each move below rests on a commitment the plan already made.
Start with literacy. The National AI Literacy Initiative already names public libraries and community organizations as delivery partners for rural, remote and northern regions. Put Black-serving institutions, faith organizations, chambers of commerce and youth groups in that same tier. Trust travels through the institutions people already know.
Then adoption and capital. The Regional AI Initiative, BDC's LIFT financing and the SME supports should reach Black-owned businesses directly, tied to the existing Black Entrepreneurship Program. The strategy calls slow adoption a translation problem, a case of firms not yet seeing how AI helps them. Trusted advisors who know the sector and the community solve that. Universal programs rarely deliver equal results when starting points are not equal.
On talent, open the 90,000 job placements and the Workforce Alliances to Black youth. The next generation should show up as builders of Canada's AI economy, not only as its users.
On governance and data, put Black representation on the advisory bodies and inside the AI Safety Institute and provide the space for these representatives to contribute meaningfully. Make race-based data governance part of the GBA Plus commitment and the new health data platforms. A system is only as fair as its data and the people at the table.
None of this means starting over. The strategy calls itself dynamic. It commits to updating the plan as the technology moves. That is the opening. The clean way to honour AI for All is to bring Black communities in as co-designers now, while the vehicles are still being built. In practice that means a seat in program design and a hand in shaping the literacy, adoption and governance work before the decisions harden.
The strategy is strong on ambition, sovereignty and literacy. A few deliberate moves would make it stronger on inclusion too. AI for All is a good goal. If Canada genuinely intends to build an AI economy that works for everyone, future implementation should include meaningful partnerships with Black-led organizations, entrepreneurs, researchers, educators, and civil society from the outset - not as an afterthought, but as co-designers of Canada's AI ecosystem.