Between the wild U.S. and Europe’s regulatory choke, Canada must find a third path on AI
Between the wild U.S. and Europe’s regulatory choke, Canada must find a third path on AI
Publish Date: 2026-05-11 16:00:00
Source Domain: www.theglobeandmail.com
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A copy of ‘The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act’ during the AI & Big Data Expo 2025 at the Olympia in London, England in February, 2025.Isabel Infantes/Reuters
Jaxson Khan is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, where he is co-director of the AI Competitiveness Project. He is the co-author of the recent report Sovereign by Design. Mr. Khan also serves as chief executive of Aperture AI.
As a middle power, Canada must make strategic bets. We can’t do everything. Given how quickly artificial intelligence is developing and reshaping the global economy, it is particularly important that we determine our strategy and path forward. But that doesn’t mean we should fall into the binary trap.
On the technology stack, it is rapidly becoming clear that U.S. models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and Chinese models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi) are dominant on frontier capabilities and market share. These advances are heavily supported by state-driven subsidies, government and defence contracts, and national security strategies.
On AI governance, there is political pressure for Canada to move toward a more U.S.-style, light-touch approach or a European-Union-style, highly regulated market. Neither the U.S.–China tech binary nor choosing between U.S.–EU regulatory alignment will work well for Canada.
Instead, we need a third path that strengthens Canada’s competitiveness while protecting our economic and digital sovereignty.
Other middle powers – including Britain, Australia, Japan and South Korea – are grappling with the same challenges. There is no perfect solution, but some common patterns are emerging.
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The first is that no country, particularly a middle power, can own the entire AI stack. The current Canadian discourse on AI sovereignty conflates five very different things: compute, model, data,…
