Thank you, Rachel, Minister Solomon, Éric St-Pierre.

This morning, we launched Canada’s national security strategy, the first in over two decades.

The last strategy was written for a different world. Today’s reflects profound new realities.

Most fundamentally, it recognises that the requirements of sovereignty have changed. It is not enough to feed, fuel, and defend ourselves. Sovereignty now requires secure access to semiconductors, critical minerals, payment systems, clean energy technologies, vaccines, space-based communications, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Building these capabilities underpins our economic, foreign policy, and defence strategies.

So we can be sovereign, masters in our own home. So we can live our lives as we choose, in the greatest country in the world.

Sovereignty means strengthening our capabilities here, at home. It also means choosing reliable partners with whom we can build the future.

When we can, we rely on our own capabilities. When our strengths are complementary, we benefit from working together with reliable allies. And when we combine our strengths, that collaboration allows us to think bigger.

It is this mutual benefit that justifies a closer partnership between Canada and Europe.

And it is in this spirit that we welcome President von der Leyen, President Costa, and European leaders here in Montréal for the Canada-European Union Summit.

Our partnership with Europe is built on three pillars.

First, opportunity.

The European Union is the second-largest economy in the world, with over 450 million consumers.

The European Union is already our second-largest trading partner, with trade reaching nearly $180 billion last year.

With our new alliance, we are opening new markets for Canadian businesses, creating new collaborations for our researchers, and providing new opportunities for young people to live, work, and study on both sides of the Atlantic.

Second, affordability.

Together, we will provide families with more choice at a lower cost, in fields ranging from finance to education.

Third, sovereignty.

Our strengths complement each other. Europe stands out for the strength of its market, the excellence of its research, and its industrial might. Canada, for its part, has world-class talent and research capabilities, as well as abundant critical energy and mineral resources.

We share the same values. We have always defended them, and we must continue to protect them.

And we share the conviction that Canada and Europe must ensure their strategic autonomy by strengthening their cooperation across all strategic areas: critical minerals, defence industrial capabilities, energy security, space, payment systems, computing power, and AI.

Last month, before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, President von der Leyen and I proposed a new Alliance for the Future between Canada and Europe, built on shared values and complementary strengths to strengthen our collective resilience.

This week, here in Montréal, we’re delivering.

And this morning, Canada is taking a major step forward in AI.

We’re not waiting for the future of AI to be decided somewhere else by those we don’t know or those we don’t trust. We are building it right here, the right way.

I’m proud to announce that the Government of Canada plans to invest up to $1.6 billion in Cohere.

Cohere was founded in Toronto by some of the pioneers of AI. Today, it is one of the world’s leading providers of secure AI for businesses and governments.

In just seven years, Cohere has grown from a Toronto start-up into a global company. It’s a Canadian success story being written before our eyes. And now, Canada has a stake in it.

We’re investing on a commercial basis, alongside private investors including NVIDIA, Bell, and Germany’s Schwarz Group. Votes of confidence in Cohere, in Canada, and in the future of AI you can control.

Because of the scale and strategic importance of our commitment, we’ve secured strong terms for Canadians who will own a stake in Cohere and share in its growth.

Our commitment – and Cohere’s value offering – is built on the same three pillars as our partnership with Europe.

First, opportunity.

Under this agreement, Cohere will stay Canadian, creating more opportunities for our workers and businesses. Its incorporation and headquarters will remain here, creating good jobs and investing at least $1.7 billion in new computing infrastructure in Canada by 2030.

Cohere will open doors for the next generation of AI leaders, through research partnerships with Canadian institutions and real opportunities for students and recent graduates.

Second, affordability.

Cohere isn’t trying to create the largest AI model in the world. The company develops practical models adapted to the real needs of organisations – whether it’s a hospital, a small business, or a government department.

Thanks to their efficiency, these models can run on an organisation’s own systems. This helps to reduce costs and keep data in-house.

As a result, more organisations can adopt powerful, affordable, and secure AI. And Canadian taxpayers get more for their money when public services use AI to improve efficiency.

Third, sovereignty.

When the AI that runs our economy and public services is built in Canada, Canadians decide how it works and who it answers to.

Canadians will only use AI if they can trust it with their personal information.

Cohere is built for exactly that.

Its technology lets organisations keep their intellectual property and sensitive information secure and under their own control – unlike global tech giants, which share your data with dominant powers.

That is what makes Cohere such a strong choice for companies and countries that value their sovereignty.

That is why Canada’s biggest banks and telecoms trust it, as do global technology leaders.

It’s why the federal public service is already working with Cohere, using AI to better serve Canadians.

And it’s why Cohere will keep working with the Canadian AI Safety Institute, so this technology is safe, secure, and accountable, and earns the trust of the people it serves.

Your government takes your data seriously. We are not going to send it outside this country. With Cohere, we will keep it here in Canada, governed by Canadian law and Canadian values.

Let me step back.

Building the AI of the future requires five things: the energy to power it; the capital to fund it; the compute to run it; the brains to conceive it; and the values to ensure it serves humanity.

Canada has the energy, the brains, the values.

Today, we’re bringing the capital. And that capital will build the compute, here in Canada.

That matters. Because today, the most powerful AI systems are concentrated in a very small number of companies, in a very small number of countries. That concentration carries risks: to cost, to resilience, and to sovereignty. 

As we’ve learned, supposedly global companies too often prove national in the breach.

Canada is one of only a handful of countries with a company that can build its own advanced AI.

That is extraordinary. And it is no accident. It is the result of decades of Canadian ingenuity and talent.

Governments can fund research. But it takes businesses to transform the results of this research into products, jobs, and exports. Businesses are a key driver of this transformation, and Cohere is one of them.

The opportunities do not stop at our borders.

Countries and businesses around the world are looking for exactly what Cohere is offering: powerful AI that they can master. And we are able to meet that demand.

It’s a team effort. Cohere has partnered with the German company Aleph Alpha to bring together the best that Canada and Europe have to offer in AI. This partnership opens the doors to a whole new market in Europe and strengthens transatlantic cooperation in AI.

And it gives us extraordinary opportunities to export our know-how all over the world, to partners who share our values.

It’s a concrete example of what Canada and Europe can build together.

The building blocks of AI were conceived in this country. Deep learning, neural language models, GANs, reinforcement learning, transformers.

Geoffrey Hinton in Toronto. Richard Sutton in Edmonton. Yoshua Bengio, who founded Mila, this remarkable institute, here in Montréal.

And Aidan Gomez, who, as a student at the University of Toronto, helped write the paper behind today’s large language models, then came home to co-found Cohere.

For decades, Canadians backed that research. But too often, the companies, and the value they created, grew somewhere else.

It could be said that we didn’t pay enough attention.

Today is different. This marks a watershed, as part of our broader AI strategy, that will mean Canadian AI companies can grow here, that Canadians will share in what they build, and that AI will serve Canadians to make their lives better.

Cohere is a Canadian success story. And now, that success is benefiting all Canadians.

Episodically, a new technology changes how the world works. The personal computer. The internet. The smartphone.

AI is the next great transformation, but on a potentially different level. Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis has described its potential as the equivalent of 100 Industrial Revolutions. Ten times as big, 10 times as fast.

This is the moment that will decide where AI is built, how it is governed, and whom it serves.

That’s why we’re investing in Cohere now. For affordable, secure, sovereign AI. Built in Canada for the benefit of all Canadians.

Thank you.