Ottawa using AI to review public comments on its national AI strategy

OTTAWA — The federal government is using artificial intelligence to sort through public input on AI policy, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said Thursday.

Solomon said an internally developed AI platform is being used to translate and summarize more than 11,000 comments the government received through its public consultation on an update to its national AI strategy.

The work complies with rules set out by the Treasury Board, and the comments will be made public once the work is finished, Solomon said.

The public consultation ran alongside an expert “task force” that Solomon assigned this fall to guide him on updating the strategy.

Experts, including University of Ottawa law professor Teresa Scassa, have accused the task force of being too skewed toward the perspective of industry and the tech sector.

Scassa said she would be surprised if the government wasn’t using AI to go through the comments.

AI is good at tasks like picking out themes, detecting letter-writing campaigns that result in many people submitting the same comments, or doing a sentiment analysis to figure out whether comments were generally positive or negative, she said.

“Those are, I think, perfectly valid uses of AI in this context,” Scassa said.

There are risks, she said. For instance, AI summaries might miss “key points or nuances depending on how people have expressed themselves in their comments.”

“If you’re getting lots of formal industry submissions written by professionals in the field and you’re getting also more passionate submissions written by people who are concerned about their jobs or concerned about issues with AI, and the system doesn’t process them in the same way, then that could be an issue as well,” Scassa noted.

Solomon said the updated strategy will be released in the new year. It will follow a 30-day time frame the government gave the task force to do its work and a month it allotted for the public consultation.

Scassa said the consultation period was a very short one, which worked against civil society organizations and ordinary citizens.

“Having a one-month consultation period automatically skews the consultation towards big organizations with lots of resources,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press