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AI for All: Canada Bets on Education, and So Do We

Bysteve
Steve Alcorn

by BrainStream CEO Steve Alcorn

On June 4th, Prime Minister Mark Carney stood in Toronto and launched AI for All, Canada’s first national artificial intelligence strategy. The headline numbers are big: $200 billion in targeted economic growth, 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years, and a push to lift national AI adoption from just over 12% to 60% by 2034.

But read past the economics and you find something that should matter to every parent, student, and teacher in the country. The heart of the strategy isn’t data centres or trade alliances. It’s education.

The opportunity pillar is an education plan

Of the strategy’s three pillars — building trust, creating opportunity, and reinforcing sovereignty — the “opportunity” pillar reads almost entirely as a plan for learning:

  • A National AI Literacy Initiative offering entry-level AI training to all Canadians.
  • AI literacy reaching one million post-secondary students.
  • More than 3,000 educators equipped with AI learning kits for their classrooms.
  • Trusted AI agents for every post-secondary student — from the arts and commerce to science, engineering, and medicine.
  • Training and upskilling for workers, from mid-career professionals to frontline staff.

That is a remarkable bet. Canada is saying, in effect, that the way it wins the AI race is not by out-spending larger nations on hardware, but by making sure its people actually know how to use these tools — safely, confidently, and well.

Why this is the right bet

The strategy is honest about an uncomfortable fact: Canada has world-class AI talent and one of the fastest-growing digital sectors in the G7, yet it is among the slowest countries to adopt AI at scale. The technology exists. The talent exists. What’s missing is the bridge between them — the literacy that turns a powerful tool into a useful one in ordinary hands.

You don’t close that gap with infrastructure alone. You close it with teaching. And teaching is precisely where AI, applied carefully, can do its most democratizing work: a patient tutor available at any hour, in any subject, that meets each learner where they are.

This is the work BrainStream is built for

At BrainStream, this is exactly the mission we set out to advance: applying AI to make education better, more personal, and more accessible. Not AI as a gimmick bolted onto a classroom, but AI as a genuine teaching partner — one that adapts to the individual learner, supports the educator rather than replacing them, and earns trust through transparency.

The AI for All strategy names the same priorities we organize our work around. It wants learners to have trusted AI agents; we build trusted AI for learners. It wants educators equipped rather than sidelined; we design our tools to put teachers in control. It wants AI adopted responsibly, with confidence that it reflects Canadian values of safety and fairness; that responsibility is the standard we hold ourselves to.

A national strategy can set the direction and provide the funding. But strategies don’t teach anyone — tools and teachers do. The promise of AI for All will be kept in millions of small moments: a student in a small town finally understanding a concept that never clicked, an educator freed from busywork to spend more time with the kids who need it, a mid-career worker retraining without having to start from zero.

That is the Canada this strategy imagines. It’s the same one we get up every morning to help build. We’re glad to see the country aiming at it — and we intend to help get it there.

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