Open Letter to the Minister of AI: A Student Perspective on Responsible Innovation

Dear Minister Solomon,

We are writing on behalf of the uOttawa Legal Hackers Club, a multidisciplinary group of University of Ottawa students. We are providing this submission for the “30-Day National Sprint” consultation on Canada’s AI Strategy. As students at the intersection of technology and policy, we are the generation preparing to enter a workforce and society that will be fundamentally reshaped.

Before addressing the consultation’s themes, we must clarify our terms. The term “Artificial Intelligence” is often used as a vague marketing umbrella, grouping everything from beneficial predictive models used in science to the specific technologies causing public concern. Our submission is not a critique of all AI; we support models that assist in scientific discovery or complex data analysis. Our concern is focused on the reckless, large-scale deployment of generative Large Language Models (LLMs) and related technologies that replace human workers, devalue creative industries, and threaten our democratic processes.

While we commend the government’s focus on economic growth and commercialization, we are concerned that the consultation document underemphasizes the foundational pillars of safety, public education, democratic accountability, and national security. These are not secondary considerations; they are the prerequisites for achieving any sustainable prosperity from AI.

Our submission is structured to respond directly to the themes outlined in your consultation document.

Building Safe AI Systems and Strengthening Public Trust

Your consultation asks, “What are the most important things to do to build confidence?”. The answer is a demonstrable, unwavering commitment to safety and ethical grounding as the strategy’s primary objective.

• The most responsible action Canada can take is to treat the potential for long-term, large-scale harm from AI not as a fringe theory, but as a central planning scenario. A strategy that does not explicitly address the existential risk posed with concrete alignment and safety efforts remains incomplete.
• We must address the immediate threat to our democratic integrity. AI-driven deepfakes and mass disinformation campaigns are a direct vector for eroding public trust in our institutions and democratic processes. We are acutely aware that this technology also threatens the very concept of evidence. We are entering a world where any video of a crime could be plausibly dismissed in court as a “deepfake,” undermining our justice system.
• Answering the call for “educational and literacy strategies” must go beyond simple skills training. We need a national AI literacy campaign for all ages that teaches Canadians not just how to use it, but how to think about it critically. This includes education on its limitations, inherent biases, the manipulative nature of generative outputs, and the psychological importance of not anthropomorphizing these systems.
• Trust cannot be built on a foundation of human exploitation. Our research highlighted the severe human cost of moderation, where underpaid workers in countries like Kenya suffer extreme psychological trauma to filter content for major models. Our strategy must explicitly reject and refuse to be complicit in this exploitative supply chain.

Security of Canadian Infrastructure and Capacity

Your consultation asks about “emerging security risks”. From a technical and geopolitical standpoint, we believe the most underestimated threat is the corruption of our supply chain.

• We are deeply concerned about the national security threat of data poisoning. Foreign states and malicious actors are actively “poisoning” open-source datasets and code repositories with hidden vulnerabilities. When models train on this public data, they inherit these backdoors. This turns the entire ecosystem into a new vector for cyber warfare and espionage, directly threatening our critical infrastructure and data.
• We must be realistic: Canada cannot win a capital-intensive “arms race” against the vast investments of the U.S. and China. Our strategic advantage lies in our role as a trusted diplomatic middle power. Canada should lead international efforts to create global governance bodies and treaties, championing robust safety standards, alignment protocols, and universally recognized safeguards (“kill switches”). This is our most powerful lever for influencing the global trajectory of this technology.

Accelerating Adoption by Government & Building Infrastructure

The adoption of AI in the public service must be driven by the goal of improving services for citizens, not simply cutting costs or headcount.

• The Government of Canada faces a crisis of service delivery in many areas. AI should be a tool for retooling and augmenting public servants to do more for Canadians, not a justification for layoffs that would further degrade service.
• We are deeply concerned with the “black box” problem posed by the lack of explainability. If a Canadian’s application is denied, if they are audited by the CRA, or if they are flagged by a predictive policing algorithm, that decision must be fully transparent, explainable, and appealable to a human. In a democracy, unexplainable state decisions are illegitimate. This raises a critical legal and policy question: who is liable for the harm caused by these systems? A national strategy must include a clear legal liability framework. When an unexplainable AI’s decision causes quantifiable harm, Canadians deserve to know who is accountable: the government agency that deployed it, or the private vendor that supplied it?
• We support building sovereign compute capacity, but it must adhere to Canadian values. This means all public AI infrastructure must be powered by renewable energy, use water-efficient cooling, and prioritize energy-efficient models. True sovereignty is not merely hosting data centers within our borders; it requires Canadian ownership and control over the core compute and models. Furthermore, any data centre project must proceed only with the free, prior, and informed consent of the Indigenous nations on whose land it is built.

Commercialization, Education, and the Student Job Market

The consultation’s focus on “scaling champions” feels disconnected from the immense anxiety students feel about our future careers. The impact on the job market is not a future problem; it is here now, and it is exacerbating a pre-existing youth unemployment crisis.

• We are seeing the entry-level career pipeline collapsing from both ends. We have friends whose jobs (e.g., receptionists) are being cut right now to make way for AI. Simultaneously, AI-powered hiring filters and Applicant Tracking Systems (ASTs) are creating an invisible wall, automatically rejecting countless qualified student resumes. This disappearance of vital junior roles is creating a structural barrier for an entire generation, leading to serious concerns about future workforce gaps when experienced professionals retire and there are no skilled individuals to take over.
• We have members in tech co-ops where code reviews are outsourced to AI, denying them crucial human mentorship. This active deskilling of professionals who learn to generate code but not to understand or maintain it creates a significant, long-term liability for the very companies the government hopes to “scale,” directly threatening Canada’s future technical integrity.
• The consultation asks “what skills are required”. The answer is that the very nature of work itself is changing. Rote learning is becoming obsolete. Our education system must rapidly pivot to teaching critical thinking, problem-framing, and the ability to work with AI as a complex tool, not just preparing us for jobs that an algorithm can already do faster.
• The theme of “Commercialization” must be balanced with the unresolved question of Intellectual Property. AI models are being trained on the entire corpus of Canadian news, art, academic research, and public data, often without consent or compensation. A national strategy must address how Canadian creators and knowledge producers will be protected in this new economy.

We are eager to contribute to an innovative future for Canada. However, that future must be built on a foundation of responsibility, safety, and democratic values. We urge you to place these principles at the very heart of Canada’s National AI Strategy.

Thank you for your time and for considering the student perspective. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these points further.

Sincerely,

Daniel Thorp

President, uOttawa Legal Hackers Club