The federal government is providing $24 million to expand artificial intelligence (AI) research across Canada, most of it to people located in Edmonton.
Evan Solomon, the minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, announced the funding for 42 Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) 2026 AI chairs on Thursday during the Upper Bound Conference at the Edmonton Convention Centre.
Of the 42 chairs receiving new funding across the country, 32 are based out of Edmonton’s Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII), host of the fourth-annual conference, with 24 of them from the University of Alberta.
Solomon said federal investment into the fast-growing AI and digital sectors is “pragmatic.”
“We’ve got to build right and be open to the opportunities that AI will change how we deliver health care, change how we deliver service, change how agriculture, mining, everything’s done, but be candid about the concerns,” he told media Thursday afternoon at the convention centre. “We’ve got to make sure people’s privacy is protected, people’s data is protected, their jobs are protected, our water is protected. We’ve got to do it right, and if you do that, we’ll get the benefit.”
The announcement of the federal funding comes on the heels of news that the U of A had finished a $30-million recruitment campaign funded by AMII, first announced three years ago, to bring 25 researchers to the school, some of them who are among the newly appointed CIFAR AI Chairs.
Cam Linke, AMII’s chief executive officer, said the funding support “allows us to continue to drive our world-leading research, bring some of the top minds in the world here to solve some of the biggest problems, and continue our work with companies to actually make that impact realized in the real world.”
“We were very intentional about both investing in the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, but also investing in people who I call bilingual, who speak a domain like medicine or biology and AI at the same time,” Linke told CTV News Edmonton on Thursday. “We’re really excited in the coming years of these people that we’ve brought here, who are at that intersection, are going to be driving forward core things in health and drug discovery, and materials discovery, driving those things forward with their expertise in both of those areas.”
The Canada CIFAR AI Chairs program, which was established in 2017, supports 143 researchers. Each is affiliated with one of three national AI institutes: AMII, Mila (Montreal) and the Vector Institute (Toronto).
The program provides long-term funding flexibility, supports the training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and enhances opportunities for researchers to collaborate.
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Curtis Goodrum
