The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada has taken a keen interest in A.I. Does that mean growth or regulation?

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Canada has taken a keen interest in A.I. Does that mean growth or regulation? with Guest: Mohit Rajhans, Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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conditions apply. See Nissan.ca for details. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and thank you very much for joining us. This is the time of the week that I love talking to our next guest. We're talking all about AI, but specifically AI as it intersects with the federal government. For the first time in our history, and I think this could be a good thing, Mark Carney's government is opening up a brand new ministry. And a lot of times they'll take an old ministry and repackage it a brand new ministry. And a lot of times they they'll take an old ministry and repackage it with a new name. And like the environment, the ministry, the environment of the

ministry, the ministry of the environment became ministry of the environment and climate change. Okay. Six of one, but this is a brand new ministry of artificial intelligence and former journalist, Evan Solomon will be in charge of it. And this could be groundbreaking in a lot of ways. And so here to discuss it, we're joined by Mohit Rajan. He's a mediologist, great friend of the show. He's a consultant with thinkstart.ca. Mohit, welcome.

Ben, thanks for having me. And so I really appreciate you being here today because I was listening to some journalists sort of describing why this could be a very big, very big thing because it's not gonna be, it's not a ministry that's intended to exist in a silo, right, it's going to, it has to work across all ministries. It's about implementing AI in all walks of life

from what I gather. What do you see? Well, specifically it's involved with innovation is going to be the key here is where does Canada stand when it comes down to making innovation accelerate within the country? What does it have as the capacity to facilitate some of the change that we see on the horizon?

And then also how does government stay involved without getting too involved? And I think we both know that Canada doesn't have a great history of adopting fast enough when it comes down to technology. And so what'll be interesting to see Ben, it is whether we are in a situation where this actually is just a placeholder

for the bigger changes that we need to see, or if this is actually going to be leadership. Well, this is gonna be a very big test for Mark Carney. He has said that he is a different kind of liberal, that this will be a different liberal government than what we're used to over the past 10 years. And I don't think it's cynical of me to say, because I've said it before, and I say it in good faith,

that the previous government was addicted to bold pronouncements, big ribbon cutting ceremonies. And then they would fall short. They wanted to be the first to say they were going to do something. And then they would just slow down or crawl and wait for somebody else to lap them. And so for them to take this, this stance, look, we're at a crossroads, they could do something different. And they could actually be bold and be leaders in terms of being a government that that is trying to navigate an entire, an entire country through the landmines of AI

to get us to a place where we are leaders on every file, or they could be the ribbon cutting kind of liberals that just build a new bureaucracy and leave it at that. Ben, we're at an AI arms race right now in the rest of the world. We're watching, we're standing by and watching the US and China daily come out with new products to talk to the rest of the world about why they are the center point for how AI innovation is going to be run across the world. And the truth is other countries are not slowing down either. Canada, unfortunately, can't sit around and wait for us to celebrate the idea that we have one person in this specific role. And instead,

we need to get private industry at the table just as quickly as we have the government interested in this, because we will be left behind. And instead, we will be taken advantage of in this AI arms race. We're still a rich country full of amazing stuff. But if we don't get things in line quick, this isn't about pageantry. So if you had the ear of Evan Solomon, the new Minister of Artificial Intelligence and the Prime Minister, for whom AI is sort of the brass ring, what advice would you give them as they build out this ministry? And what priorities would you hope this government espouses? Well, the biggest priority is figuring out

where we sit in the global landscape. You know, I just mentioned this arms race. The truth is we've had allies when it comes down to technology, and we've had some great innovation within this country. Are we fostering it, or are we just receiving this tech from the rest of the world? The second thing is we have to understand what data sovereignty means to different countries. So there are many places that we're never going to get our AI products from,

or are we going to be able to ship our AI innovation and technology too? So there's rules that are changing on the global front about how we can engage with people from technology right down to bureaucracy. But the key here, Ben, in my opinion, is Canada can't stand by and be a consumer of all of this innovation. And that's what I worry about. You know, we've had these amazing feats in technology. We've had the godfather of AI be considered to come from Canada, but we're still not the star players in this field. And so that's what I'm hoping to see in the next five years. What about the idea that there's a gas pedal and there's a break for everything, right? Especially when it comes to government policy.

And I have to assume, and you know this better than I, that there are certain policies and there's certain initiatives as they relate to AI where we should just put our foot down and drive as fast as we can. And there are other places where the role of the government should probably be a brake pedal to slow things down. Are we too early in this arms race to distinguish between those two levers

or do we know where we should be careful, where we should be putting guardra we know where we should be careful, where we should be putting guardrails, and where we should just be letting private industry go run amok? You know, you bring up a great point. The same tools that can help us will definitely hinder us in this process from education right down to innovation.

But I also think the risk in that, and what you're saying is that we will lose talent. Yeah. We're not, not everybody wants to make the best AI tools for the most ethically available consumer out there. You know, right now there is a situation where we're going to have brain drain within this country and where we should be worried about losing talent to other countries that are starting to invest a little bit more rapidly. Don't get me wrong.

This isn't a situation where I'm saying we're extremely behind. But what I do fear is that just placing somebody in this position might not be enough. And instead this policy needs to be rolled out very quick so that we understand the different parameters that even other businesses have when they're operating in this country. But there's also immediate applications of AI tools

that exist in the marketplace today that could be beneficial for military procurement, for healthcare, for bringing down inter-provincial trade barriers. I'm assuming a lot of this, but I also, you and I have had enough conversations where I don't think it's a leap to assume that AI could be beneficial in, I don't know,

environmental assessment of natural resource projects. Those are places where I think this new minister of AI could have immediate impact and say, we're gonna change the workflow of a multi-billion dollar ministry that is going to improve outcomes and speed up results. Yes, definitely so. But on the other side of that,

then they have to be accountable to the cybersecurity side. So for example, dairy farmers love the idea of automation and how AI can help them predict what the weather patterns will be for the best output that they could have. But also their machines can be hijacked very easily remotely, and all of a sudden it disrupts their workflow. The government will have to step in at this point and stop and say, well, we are okay with innovation happening at this level. But we also want to be the leaders when it comes to securing our citizens from nefarious attacks.

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at some of the stuff coming out of China. I've heard some worrying things about the World Economic Forum. And look, if you take everything that Pierre Poliev said at his word, back in the election campaign, that he did not win, to be fair, the Canadian people decided they wanted a Mark Carney government, but Pierre Poliev said that this is not, the Liberal Party is not liberal

because they're all about control. The fear would be that this new ministry would be about the application of AI in order to control people online and social media and making sure that they limit people's access to information. At what point, let's assume the worst for just a moment, and not to say it's going to happen, what should we be looking out for as freedom freedom loving Canadians call it as red flags that this government might want to pursue? Well, I think that you bring up a great point in how we are

already advertised to and how people can target and data target and use our data to target us. You know, we see these these swellings happening in these various niches and corners on the internet, where we realize misinformation is going to continue to run rampant the quicker it is for people to create these synthetic versions of media and put it out there. There will be this natural worry that the horses have already left the barn as they say and how can government really pull back and you know for example can they find these tech companies if

they're the victims of synthetic media used for propaganda etc etc. But and how can government really pull back? And, you know, for example, can they find these tech companies if they're the victims of synthetic media used for propaganda, et cetera, et cetera. But the truth is in the title alone, you don't get to cover all of that. And it's not gonna be one person that's gonna solve for all of these problems, Ben. Mohe, we're gonna leave it there.

Thank you very much, my friend. My pleasure, have a great one. To celebrate the days of our lives, My pleasure. Have a great one. VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter. Days of Our Lives. All new Weekdays at One, only on W. Stream on StackTV.