Caroline Mulroney: Ontario needs to become a global leader in artificial intelligence

Our future-proof plan involves prioritizing energy and building capacity for more high-performance data centres

Published Dec 21, 2024  •  Last updated 4 hours ago  •  4 minute read

A worker walks next to the new supercomputer, the MareNostrum5, at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain, on Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. Photo by Emilio Morenatti/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

In my role as president of Ontario’s Treasury Board, I am often reminded of a line my father liked to repeat: “Leadership is the capacity to look around the corner of history, just a little bit.” What lies around that corner today is the most significant technological revolution of our time: artificial intelligence, or AI.

As a central agency of the provincial government, the Treasury Board’s role can sometimes be underestimated. Yet along with my colleague Todd McCarthy, the minister of public and business service delivery and procurement, we are preparing Ontario for the AI revolution that is at our doorstep.

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Governments at all levels cannot afford to ignore the benefits of digital tools like AI for enhancing the public sector and improving outcomes for the communities we serve. Ontario has a generational opportunity to become a global leader in AI and now is the time to seize it.

We are already leveraging AI in multiple ways to increase efficiency and improve services. At the Ministry of Finance, AI is being used to detect fraud, improve compliance and aid economic forecasting. In immigration, it streamlines visa processing. At the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, AI monitors air and water quality to predict ecological risks. In my former portfolio of transportation, AI stands to revolutionize Toronto’s traffic management, making commutes smoother and reducing emissions.

Our government is rapidly developing an AI strategy across the Ontario public service. By collaborating with world-class Ontario-based organizations like the Vector Institute and the University of Toronto, we are shaping an innovative and responsible AI future. Our approach focuses on high-value, low-risk and pragmatic use cases, investing where it matters and building enterprise capabilities with forward-thinking infrastructure.

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Through Ontario’s Bill 194, the Strengthening Cyber Security and Building Trust in the Public Sector Act, our government is laying the foundation for Ontario’s AI future by establishing AI governance within the broader public sector and ensuring data security and trust in digital tools. These efforts protect critical government services while supporting innovation.

Over the past year, I have also been working to better understand how AI is already increasing productivity and improving the services that are relied on by people across the province. Some notable examples from Ontario’s health-care sector stood out: Humber River Health has transformed patient care with an AI-equipped centralized command centre, adding additional capacity equivalent to 35 hospital beds, nearly eliminating medication errors and decreasing the amount of time patients have to wait for diagnostic imaging, as well as length of stays, admissions and more.

Our government will be a maker of the future, not a taker, with innovation like AI at the core of improving people’s lives and driving economic growth. To that end, Ontario’s success in AI hinges on leveraging our unique strengths: infrastructure, energy and talent. We must provide advanced, secure facilities for AI development and ensure we have the energy resources to support this rapidly advancing sector.

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We are already home to the second-largest tech cluster in North America, with more than 420,000 workers at 25,000 firms. According to CBRE’s 2024 Scoring Tech Talent Report, Toronto added more tech jobs between 2018 and 2023 than San Francisco’s Bay Area. By prioritizing and supporting the right investments, we can build on this momentum. Part of our strategy is working, with global leaders like Unilever establishing the Horizon3 AI Lab in Toronto and Roche investing $130 million to expand its global informatics hub, backed by Invest Ontario.

As increasing computing power and high-performance data centres are the foundation of AI development, Ontario must provide advanced, secure facilities capable of housing the sophisticated systems that drive and support AI innovation. That is why our government is future-proofing our plan to maintain our competitive edge.

Energy resources are equally important, as high-performance data centres require substantial power to operate at scale. Our government’s energy strategy is clear: The world needs more reliable and affordable energy to power AI and Ontario is ready to deliver it.

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Ontario’s minister of energy, Stephen Lecce, recently announced that our government is leading the largest expansion of electricity generation in more than 30 years. By investing in enhanced power generation, we are positioning Ontario to meet the soaring demand for energy here at home, throughout Canada and across an increasingly digital world.

With a solid governance framework, a comprehensive enterprise AI strategy and the right investments, we are on the cusp of achieving our objective of being the most AI-enabled government in Canada.

Ontario’s economic future is bright. By becoming a global leader in AI, we will signal to the world that we are the heart of innovation and advancement, which will improve the quality of life for the people we serve — every day.

National Post

Caroline Mulroney is president of the Treasury Board of Ontario.

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