Recently, the federal government released its new national AI strategy, AI for All. I downloaded it, printed all the pages, and sat down with a highlighter. What interested me wasn’t just the policy itself. It was the story Canada is trying to tell about AI. The strategy is built around words like trust, literacy, adoption, and sovereignty. It assumes that AI will become part of our lives, our workplaces, our schools, and our economy. But as I read, I kept coming back to a few simple questions: * Trust for whom? * Literacy for what? * And adoption on whose terms? To help unpack it, I invited Joe Castaldo onto the podcast. Joe is a business journalist at the Globe and Mail who has spent the last several years covering artificial intelligence, including Canada’s emerging AI policy. What I appreciate about Joe’s reporting is that he doesn’t approach AI as either magic or doom. He’s interested in what is actually happening: where the technology is useful, where it’s falling short, and what questions still remain unanswered. In this conversation, we discuss: * Canada’s new AI strategy and its focus on adoption * Whether AI literacy automatically leads to trust * The government’s $50 million creative technology fund * Copyright, consent, and training data * What meaningful support for artists and creators might look like * Why AI feels inevitable to some people, and why others resist that framing One line from the conversation is lingering with me: Joe notes that the strategy assumes Canadians should be using AI, but never fully explains why. That question sits at the centre of this episode. If AI is becoming infrastructure, then understanding it isn’t just about learning a tool. It’s about understanding the values, assumptions, and tradeoffs being built into the future around us. I hope you enjoy the conversation and please share your thoughts in the comments. Links to stuff we talk about: * AI for All: Canada’s new AI strategy [ISED Canada] * Ottawa’s new AI strategy includes more than $2.3-billion for training, adoption and startups [Joe Castaldo, The Globe and Mail, gift article] * Joe Castaldo, The Globe and Mail [Reporter profile] Subscribe to support THE GRAIN Listen, like, comment, and share THE GRAIN to join the conversation we need to be having about the pleasure and peril of AI and the future of creativity. You can watch this and other video episodes of THE GRAIN Podcast on YouTube. Subscribe to THE GRAIN Newsletter, for deep dives on how AI is impacting creative industries right now. Read more about THE GRAIN and our upcoming live events at thegrain.ai Reach me at ronit@thegrain.ai Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok Get full access to THE GRAIN with Ronit Novak at thegrainai.substack.com/subscribe
