Hi {{first_name}} ,

We went to Stampede in Calgary last week expecting pancakes, handshakes and the usual circuit of networking receptions. Somewhere in the middle of it, our team ended up covering a couple of big announcements for tech in Alberta. 

The first was Meta's $13 billion data centre in Sturgeon County, which the province is calling one of the largest private investments in Canadian history. We'd love to share this news with Canadians on Facebook or Instagram, but the Online News Act (Bill C-18) means Meta blocks Canadian news on its own platforms. So Meta builds its biggest campus outside the United States on Alberta soil, and we're not allowed to post about it on Meta. Anyway.

Later that day, at an event a few blocks over at Platform Calgary, the province announced $50 million in continued funding for Amii, the Edmonton institute that's been working on reinforcement learning since 2002. Amii's chief scientific adviser, Richard Sutton, shared the 2024 Turing Award, often called computing's Nobel, so the province is backing a known quantity. 

Technology and innovation minister Nate Glubish led the announcement, with his department and Advanced Education each putting in $15 million and health, social services and education making up the balance. That the money came from five ministry budgets at once is a sign of how broadly Alberta expects AI to reach. I can only imagine the kitten herding required to get five ministries aligned. 

Federal AI minister Evan Solomon was there too, a sign of Ottawa lining up behind the province and tying the provincial money to its own national AI strategy. He made the sovereignty case that runs through the federal government’s AI for All strategy. 

"If we don't build the infrastructure here, we're going to have to rent it from someone else," said Solomon.

Ottawa launched AI for All to get more companies using AI, then 11 days later introduced Bill C-36 to tighten the rules on the data those systems required.

My colleague Jennifer Kervin spoke with Ale Brown of Kirke Consulting on what that means for the technology leader who has to make AI pay off and keep it legal at the same time.

 "Giving bad data to an AI system is like teaching a five-year-old bad words," says Ale Brown, founder and CEO of Kirke Consulting. The kid grows out of it.

The thing to watch, she says, is the deals. Mergers, contracts and partnerships fall apart when a company can't prove it handles data properly. 

Some light reading for when the Stampede winds down and you're back at your desk.

Canadian mining's green turn: Real progress, hard limits, and the risk of over-claiming Canada's miners are repositioning as cleaner suppliers for the batteries, EVs and grids everyone wants, and some of that progress is genuine. The piece weighs it against the parts that don't clean up so easily, like tailings and diesel, and makes the case that a green claim now needs site-specific numbers behind it. Canada's new anti-greenwashing rules mean adjectives on their own carry legal risk. 

When AI gets it wrong: Why transcription errors could become healthcare and justice's next big risk An audit of 1,000 hours of court and medical recordings found AI transcripts carried a critical error in about 18% of documents, including dropped words like "not" that flip a sentence into its opposite. In a courtroom or a hospital, a missing "not" can change a diagnosis or a verdict.

Canada and the quantum future: From ultra-precise sensors to unbreakable communications If you want a breather from AI headlines, Canada's quantum sector has a genuine head start, with D-Wave and Xanadu among the names the rest of the world knows. The piece separates the parts that work today, like quantum sensors, from the parts still fighting the physics, like general-purpose quantum computers. A useful map if quantum is anywhere on your five-year horizon.

My colleagues and I were shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Shaun Guthrie, president and chair of the CIO Association of Canada, at 47. Digital Journal has been CIOCAN's media partner for the past year and a half, and it was a genuine pleasure to work with Shaun over that time.

Chris wrote a remembrance that I'd point you to whether or not you ever met him. It's a great piece about a good person, and it says far more than I could here. He'll be missed.

A GoFundMe has been set up to support his family.

Shaun's passing is a reminder that as much as these announcements matter, and as much as everything we cover in this newsletter matters, none of it is the most important thing.

I’m heading off on holiday with my family. Chris will step in on next week's issue. You should read them, even if he’ll gloat if his open rate and click through rates are higher.

See you in a couple of weeks.

— David