Dr. Jonthan Roberge and Dr. Fenwick McKelvey, our pleased to launch the second Shaping AI Report on AI Governance in Canada from 2011 to 2022.
Based on a three-year investigation into national and provincial AI governance, the report’s major findings include:
- Canadian AI governance focuses on economic and industrial policy. National symbolic investment in AI – the promotion of AI’s Canadian-ness – impedes critical discussion about the technology and its risks.
- AI governance is uncoordinated and lacks clear mandates for consultation and effective mechanisms of feedback, which impedes good governance and public participation.
- AI policy is marked by notable silences on key issues, including Indigenous rights and data sovereignty, the creative and cultural sectors, and the environmental impact of AI.
- The Government of Canada is a key site of AI development and deployment that remains understudied in current legislation.
We reached these findings based on investigations into a range of topics, including the development of the Canadian government’s algorithmic impact assessment, the way ethical concerns over AI are circumnavigated during the procurement process, flawed public consultations on the use of facial recognition technologies, the history of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s involvement in AI research and the administration of national AI policy, and the controversial use of racially biased AI technology by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
The views of each chapter are of the authors themselves. Collectively, the report foregrounds the need to improve AI consultation and public participation in AI governance. The chapters also throw into question the assumptions and efforts that led to the development of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and its inclusion in the larger implementation of Bill C-27. The passage of this act raises concerns not just about AI but about digital policy development and, indeed, the fragile state of democratic governance, accountability, and oversight in Canada.
Shaping AI is part of a multinational and multidisciplinary social research project that examines the global trajectories of public discourse on AI in four countries (Germany, UK, Canada, and France) over a ten-year period, 2012-2021. Funded by the European Open Research Area initiative for a period of three years (February 2021 – February 2024), Shaping AI brings together leading research teams from each of the four countries under scrutiny.
Research from this report was coordinated by Dr. Sophie Toupin and Dr. Fenwick McKelvey. This report compiles research conducted as part of the Shaping AI Canadian policy research activities that ran from 2021 to 2023.
Thanks to Blair Attard-Frost and Aaron Tucker for providing peer review of the report.
This edited collection draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Suggested citation:
McKelvey, F., Toupin, S. & Roberge, J. (eds.) (2024) Northern Lights and Silicon Dreams: AI Governance in Canada (2011-2022). Shaping AI. Montreal, CanadaResearch Team
The Canadian research team is led by:
Fenwick McKelvey is Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy at Concordia University. He is the author of Internet Daemons (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), winner of the Canadian Communication Association’s 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize.
Jonathan Roberge is Full Professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Montréal. He funded the Nenic Lab as part of the Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture, which he has held since 2012. His most recent edited volumes include Algorithmic Culture (Routledge, 2016) and The Cultural Life of Machine Learning (Palgrave, 2020).
Sophie Toupin is assistant professor in the Department of Information and Communication at Université Laval in Quebec City. From 2021 to 2023, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Concordia University (Horizon program) where she examined critical perspectives on artificial intelligence.
Guillaume Dandurand is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, in Montréal. He is coeditor of Les économies de la promesse (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2022). His doctoral research was awarded York University’s Dissertation Prize (2019) and was included on the shortlist for the International Convention of Asia Scholars Social Sciences Dissertation competition (2021).
The team includes (in alphabetical order):
Marek Blottiere is a research assistant for the Shaping AI research project. As part of his FRQSC-funded master’s degree in cultural studies at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Blottiere investigates Montréal’s media ecosystem and how it shapes the cultural politics of AI.
Nicolas Chartier-Edwards est étudiant au Doctorat Sur Mesure à l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) et détient une maitrise en sociologie de l’Université Laval. Ses travaux portent principalement sur l’intégration des technologies d’intelligence artificielle dans la production du social et plus précisément, dans le cadre de sa thèse, sur la transformation de la gouvernance canadienne par le déploiement de ces mêmes technologies dans les fonctions administratives des différents paliers étatiques, sois municipaux, provinciaux et fédéraux.
Nick Gertler recently earned his master’s degree in media studies from Concordia University. Funded by scholarships from SSHRC and FRQSC, his thesis focuses on algorithmic impact assessments and algorithmic governance in Canada.
Etienne Grenier is an artist and researcher working in the field of digital cultures. Currently a PhD candidate at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Montréal, he studies the impacts of datafication on cultural production. Maintaining an active creative practice in digital arts, his installations and performances have been presented in leading institutions and major festivals in Europe and the Americas.
Robert Hunt is a PhD candidate in communication at Concordia University, Montréal. His SSHRC-funded doctoral research investigates the implementation of artificial intelligence in human resources and human capital management. His work has been published in Social Media + Society, the Journal of Information Policy, and the edited collection Affective Politics of Digital Media (Routledge, 2021).
Maurice Jones is a curator and critical AI researcher based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal and Tokyo. He is a PhD candidate at Concordia University in Montréal, associated researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin, and the Artistic Director of the MUTEK.JP festival of digital creativity in Tokyo. His research interest lies in critical investigations of technology policy, crosscultural perceptions of artificial intelligence, and curatorial practice as research-creation.
Robert Marinov is a PhD student in communication at Concordia University with an MA in political science from the University of Ottawa, where his thesis won the Commission on Graduate Studies in Humanities Thesis Prize. His research focuses on the use of emerging Digital Twin platforms for governance and sustainability purposes, as well as their intersections with artificial intelligence. His work has been published in journals including the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Communication Review, Politics & Policy, and Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Meaghan Wester holds a SSHRC-funded MA in media studies from Concordia University; her thesis analyzed AI governance through public procurement. Wester is the winner of the 2022 CRTC Prize for Excellence in Policy Research. She uses the lenses of feminist infrastructure studies and feminist STS across her different research endeavours.
