On May 11, the Ivey Business School is convening a half‑day workshop in Toronto that cuts directly to the heart of these questions: AI Governance: New Tradeoffs for Sovereignty, Trust and Sustainability. It’s the latest in a long‑running series of telecom and digital policy workshops that have become important convening opportunities for Canada’s policy, academic, and industry communities.
Canada is entering a decisive moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence. The conversation is no longer just about models, innovation, or regulation in isolation. AI is becoming infrastructure—built on data, compute, networks, and energy systems—and the choices we make now will shape our economic resilience, our competitiveness, and our sovereignty for decades.
Three forces are converging in ways that demand fresh thinking:
- AI Sovereignty — As AI systems consolidate around global platforms, Canada must decide what it needs to control—data, compute, models, or something else—to remain a credible middle power in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
- AI Trust — With agentic AI accelerating, business models and regulatory frameworks must evolve to ensure transparency, accountability, and public confidence.
- AI Sustainability — AI’s energy and carbon footprint is rising fast. Grid resilience, climate alignment, and sustainable infrastructure design are no longer side issues—they’re core to long‑term viability.
These are the new fault lines shaping investment, innovation, and Canada’s national AI strategy.
The workshop will explore issues that telecom and digital policy leaders are already grappling with:
- How should Canada translate AI governance principles into practical levers for sovereignty, trust, and sustainability?
- What does a “Canadian profile” in AI governance look like between the U.S.’s industry‑driven approach and the EU’s risk‑management model?
- How should business models adapt as trust becomes a competitive differentiator?
- What are the real risks of an AI‑driven productivity paradox—and how do we avoid locking in the wrong infrastructure choices?
- How should we measure sovereignty, trust, and sustainability in the AI stack?
These are just some of the questions that could define the next decade of telecom, digital infrastructure, and national competitiveness. This workshop provides an opportunity to hear global perspectives through a Canadian lens and shape the conversation on AI governance.
It is worth noting that the White House released its National AI Legislative Framework last Friday. This framework addresses six key objectives:
- Protecting Children and Empowering Parents: Parents are best equipped to manage their children’s digital environment and upbringing. The Administration is calling on Congress to give parents tools to effectively do that, such as account controls to protect their children’s privacy and manage their device use. The Administration also believes that AI platforms likely to be accessed by minors should implement features to reduce potential sexual exploitation of children or encouragement of self-harm.
- Safeguarding and Strengthening American Communities: AI development should strengthen American communities and small businesses through economic growth and energy dominance. The Administration believes that ratepayers should not foot the bill for data centers, and is calling on Congress to streamline permitting so that data centers can generate power on site, enhancing grid reliability. Congress should also augment Federal government ability to combat AI-enabled scams and address AI national security concerns.
- Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and Supporting Creators: The creative works and unique identities of American innovators, creators, and publishers must be respected in the age of AI. Yet, for AI to improve it must be able to make fair use of what it learns from the world it inhabits. The Administration is proposing an approach that achieves both of these objectives, enabling AI to thrive while ensuring Americans’ creativity continues propelling our country’s greatness.
- Preventing Censorship and Protecting Free Speech: The Federal government must defend free speech and First Amendment protections, while preventing AI systems from being used to silence or censor lawful political expression or dissent. AI cannot become a vehicle for government to dictate right and wrong-think. The Administration is proposing guardrails to ensure that AI can pursue truth and accuracy without limitation.
- Enabling Innovation and Ensuring American AI Dominance: The Administration is calling on Congress to take steps to remove outdated or unnecessary barriers to innovation, accelerate the deployment of AI across industry sectors, and facilitate broad access to the testing environments needed to build and deploy world-class AI systems.
- Educating Americans and Developing an AI-Ready Workforce: The Administration wants American workers to participate in and reap the rewards of AI-driven growth, encouraging Congress to further workforce development and skills training programs, expanding opportunities across sectors and creating new jobs in an AI-powered economy.
Kristian Stout of the International Center for Law & Economics released a commentary on the Truth on the Market blog, calling it “a welcome set of guidelines … a light-touch federal approach, grounded in existing legal doctrines, and focused on harms rather than speculative risks. Whether Congress can translate that posture into durable legislation remains an open question. But as a statement of direction, the framework gets more right than wrong.”
Join me for AI Governance: New Tradeoffs for Sovereignty, Trust and Sustainability, on the afternoon of Monday May 11, 2026 at Ivey’s Donald K. Johnson Centre in downtown Toronto. Registration is open now.