Montreal hosts G7 ministers to talk about artificial intelligence, quantum

OTTAWA — Artificial intelligence is likely to take up much of the agenda as industry, digital and technology ministers from the world’s most powerful Western countries meet in Montreal this week.

The two-day event is part of a series of ministerial meetings as Canada held the presidency of the G7 nations groups this year, a role that also included hosting the G7 leaders’ summit in June in Kananaskis, Alta. That’s where Prime Minister Mark Carney hosted leaders from the United States and the European Union, as well as France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Mark Daley, professor and chief AI officer at Western University, said co-operation on AI is essential.

“The faster the world moves, the more important co-operation is, and the digital world moves at the speed of light and seems to continue to accelerate,” Daley said.

“So having this opportunity for the digital ministers specifically to focus on the digital world and AI and all of the impacts this (has) on our society, I think is really critical from a co-ordination and collaboration standpoint.”

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon predicted it would be a “productive” G7 meeting in brief remarks to the Canadian Press.

“We have a shared series of values building on previous work on AI, on quantum and some key issues,” he said.

Solomon said Canadian priorities include broadening trade routes and partnerships and driving investment in Canada, and ensuring those partnerships help “strengthen our sovereign AI and our sovereign quantum.”

The meeting isn’t entirely about digital and tech issues, as Industry Minister Melanie Joly will also host.

Paul Samson, president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which put together advice from various think tanks ahead of the leaders’ June meeting, said the Montreal meeting will have both an industrial policy agenda and a tech policy agenda.

Samson, who will be attending, predicted digital technology issues will take up a large part of the conversation, because they’re linked to broader issues like economic competitiveness and resilience.

“They’ll tend to gravitate towards AI in particular. And so I expect that will probably dominate fifty per cent of the total conversations,” he said.

Heidi Tworek, a professor of history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, said that as host, Canada has an opportunity to have an influence, including through the choice of location and which priorities to set on the table. The government has opted to convene the ministers in Montreal, which has global strength in AI.

At the leaders’ meeting in June, the G7 countries pledged to increase their adoption of artificial intelligence, including in the public sector and among smaller businesses, while also promising to promote investment in emerging quantum technologies.

Samson said normally the leaders’ meeting comes after the ministers’ meeting, but that was flipped around this year because of the timing of the spring election. That means the ministers will “absolutely” be following up on the issues raised by the leaders, he said.

The meeting also sets up Canada to navigate between the European Union, a proponent of AI regulation, and the United States, which has opposed regulation under the Trump administration.

When it comes to the question of how much the meeting could cover and accomplish, “a lot of that is going to obviously hang on the American priorities and presence and so on, because we know there are of course some tensions” over the E.U.’s AI and digital regulation legislation, Tworek said.

But there are areas where the G7 countries are on the same page.

“One base level thing is that actually all of these countries seem to agree that AI is going to be really integral moving forward, right? Which isn’t necessarily to be taken as a given,” she said.

“That’s actually not the case that everybody thinks that AI should be as embedded within public services as G7 countries seem to be agreeing on at the moment.”

A June joint statement on AI said the G7 countries would work “together to accelerate adoption of AI in the public sector to enhance the quality of public services for both citizens and businesses and increase government efficiency.”

Daley said there are some issues “where you just have to accept we’re not going to agree … but I think there’s still a ton of work that can be done.”

Global AI governance isn’t something that’s going to solved at the meeting, but understanding what the various parties are doing is important, Daley said.

“It’s also important for Canada to be part of that conversation so we can see where our closest partners and friends are heading and with whom we want to co-operate more in the future,” he said.

One important area is interoperability of AI technology, Daley said.

“They’re not glamorous, they’re not glorious, but standards actually can change the world. And Canada as a middle power, this is one of the levers we have traditionally used in technology domains to have outsized influence, positive influence on the world.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2025.