Presented by Calgary Economic Development
What's in this issue, before you scroll: what Canada should control in AI, why TD says governance speeds up AI agents, and what three CIO finalists are paying to learn.
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Rushmi Hasham, Michael Pelosi and John Weigelt discuss AI sovereignty on stage at Nrth Festival. – Photo by Digital Journal
Hi {{first_name}},
Sovereignty is having a moment, particularly in AI. So much so that I think I’ve finally learned to spell it on the first try.
At Nrth, the Toronto innovation event formerly known as Elevate, Microsoft Canada's John Weigelt and Cohere's Michael Pelosi got into what AI sovereignty can realistically mean for Canada.
Weigelt traced the supply chain behind a single AI response, from the infrastructure underneath it to the model producing the answer. Along the way, that response can cross several borders.
"The concept is let's pick those spots where we need those elements," said Weigelt.
That makes sovereignty less about building an entirely Canadian AI system and more about deciding which parts Canada needs to control, and which dependencies companies are prepared to accept.
For more, including Statistics Canada's latest figure for the share of Canadian businesses using AI and why Pelosi says regulated industries can't rush it:
Kirsti Racine, right, TD’s vice-president of AI platform, and Yarik Chinskiy, left, the bank’s head of data and AI architecture, discuss agentic AI at Nrth Festival in Toronto. – Photo by Digital Journal
How TD plans to reach $1 billion in AI value without losing track of its agents
Also at Nrth (guess where I was last week), two people from TD made the case that governance is what lets AI agents move faster, not what slows them down.
Yarik Chinskiy, the bank's head of data and AI architecture, called it "that grease that greases the wheels."
Kirsti Racine, vice-president of AI platform, was just as direct about what happens once more people across the bank start building agents.
"Is there going to be agent sprawl? A hundred percent," Racine said.
Her test for whether one gets to stick around is pretty simple.
"If your agent is more expensive than the value you've achieved, then you should be retiring that agent," she said.
That is a CFO's test applied to software.
For more, including the $1 billion value target behind TD's push, what the bank means by "executable architecture" and how it plans to limit vendor lock-in:
We cover Canada's tech and innovation events
Conferences, summits, roundtables and forums across the country. The Nrth festival and CanadianCIO Awards featured this week are two of dozens of events we cover each year. If you're hosting something this fall and you want the leaders who weren't there to read about it, let's talk.
Brigitte Larivière of Bombardier (top right), Cecilia Carbonelli of Haventree Bank (bottom left) and John Comacchio of Teknion (bottom right) speak with Digital Journal’s David Potter.
Three CIO finalists are paying to find out what AI returns
I sat down with the three private sector finalists for the CanadianCIO of the Year Awards, presented by the CIO Association of Canada, as part of our roundtable series with this year’s finalists. You can watch all of them on Digital Journal’s YouTube channel.
All three are spending money on AI before they can say exactly what it will return.
"I think it's one of those necessary evils where we have to spend the money to learn, and we have to hit the wall to understand," says John Comacchio, who switched on the AI inside Teknion's software and then watched the token bill.
Brigitte Larivière has a plan for making those costs visible at Bombardier. Departments see their AI usage and cost in 2027, and get charged for it in 2028, or sooner if costs climb.
"I want them to first see the bill, and after that pay for it. So if you see value, you'll be okay to pay," says Larivière.
The third finalist, Haventree Bank's Cecilia Carbonelli, says some hyperscalers "still to this day can't answer us on projected costs."
The winner will be announced Thursday in Toronto.
For more, including the call Teknion's agent trials keep finding and how Bombardier is saving millions with RPA before its AI work even gets going:
→ Read: Humans might be cheaper than the robots after all
→ Watch: the full conversation on YouTube
→ Profiles: Brigitte Larivière, Bombardier and John Comacchio, Teknion
Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Know a technology leader we should feature?
We hear from tech leaders how much they want to hear from each other. Building the thing and then explaining it to a C-suite that just discovered AI exists is a lot, and there's real value in seeing how your peers are handling the same job.
That's the community we want to put in front of each other. So if you know someone doing interesting work in tech who'd share it openly- the wins and the lessons - those are the people we love writing about.
The Watercooler
Some light reading for when the 9 a.m. gets moved to 4 p.m.
Everything-to-grid could redefine Canada's electricity future Everything-to-grid would let electric vehicles, heat pumps and building batteries send power back to the grid, turning potentially millions of parked cars into a virtual power plant. Bidirectional chargers cost more and the rules differ by province and utility. Utilities that want car batteries on call should expect to pay for them.
BlackBerry's next act: Can security, software and specialized devices drive a new era? By 2016 BlackBerry had announced it would stop developing smartphones, and it now sells software, including the QNX operating system used in cars and industrial equipment. The rumoured KEY3 5G keyboard phone has not been announced. Keyboard loyalists have a rumour to work with, but BlackBerry hasn’t announced a phone.
Four Canadian tech and innovation events happening in October Toast Summit is Oct. 1 in Calgary, Edmonton Startup Week runs Oct. 5 to 9, Source Canada is Oct. 22 in Toronto and the Agentic AI Forum is Oct. 30 in Toronto. Toast's program includes a "Men in Tech" panel in its Dad Edition.
Final shots
AI may be getting more autonomous, but the humans around it are still asking some basic questions.
Who controls it? What does it cost? What do we own? What are we renting? And when the bill shows up, can anyone explain it?
The future may be autonomous. The budget approval process is not.
— David
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This issue is presented by Calgary Economic Development.
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