House of Commons: Standing Committee on Industry and Technology

Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, University of Ottawa, cited a survey: "A recent KPMG survey indicated that 92% of Canadians believe Canada has no AI regulation." She then said: "In reality, there's a considerable amount of AI regulation in Canada. However, it's more sectoral and context specific. It's also more fragmented, less obvious and less transparent."

She proposed: "A national coordinating body that ensures coherence, enables greater transparency and promotes federal-provincial harmonization would be valuable. Such a role could also support public trust by serving an ombuds function."

Carole Piovesan, Managing Partner, INQ Law, proposed "accredited auditors, testing labs and certification bodies that assess AI systems before and after deployment in high-impact contexts."

"It is also essential for the advancement of responsible AI, because governance without verification is aspiration. We can write rules, but unless there is an independent mechanism to test whether AI meets those rules in practice, in real-world deployments and not just lab benchmarks, the rules are largely symbolic."

Parm Bains, Member of Parliament for Richmond East—Steveston, asked about accountability measures and raised Tumbler Ridge. The Honourable Evan Solomon answered: "Immediately after we found out the shooter's behaviour had been flagged eight months before by the technical side of OpenAI—in other words, the AI itself brought it up—and it was not escalated, I not only summoned the entire senior team to Ottawa but I spoke to the CEO, Sam Altman."

He said he demanded that the company "work with the Canadian AI safety institute to review all other past incidents to make sure they had escalated them with police and that they have a presence here in Canada with Canadian local law enforcement as opposed to just talking to U.S. enforcement, and that they have mental health experts."