Chandra Arya

Artificial Intelligence & Knowledge Based Economy

February 1, 2022

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Nickel Belt.

I would like to thank the people of Nepean for electing me for the third time to this chamber. I promise to continue to work hard in delivering services with the help of my staff, and will continue to represent them here in this august chamber.

I would also like to use this opportunity to thank my family. First is my wife Sangeetha. I have been married to her for 31 years and knew her four years before that. For 35 years, she has been a friend and equal partner in everything I have done. She is a solid rock for me. I would also like to thank and recognize my son, our only son, Siddanth, who is a chartered accountant. He is a sounding board for many of the ideas and thoughts I have in my work as a member of Parliament. Many times he is a partner in very in-depth intellectual discussions, whether related to the crypto economy, to MMT, modern monetary theory, or to historical accords and linking historical facts to current geopolitical events. I thank my family, who have been with me throughout these years.

I would also like to thank the great group of volunteers who helped me win this election, the third one in a row. One distinguishing feature of this campaign with this group of volunteers is that 80% of them were students. These young Canadians worked hard and helped me get elected. It is these young Canadians, our children and grandchildren, who were the focus when I first entered politics.

I entered politics with three main objectives, one of which was that I wanted to ensure Canadian society and the economy remained robust and competitive in the global knowledge-based economy, thus securing prosperity for our children and grandchildren. Today, we are rich. Canada is prosperous because of the natural advantage we have from our natural resources. With our oil, gas, minerals, metals and forestry products, combined with the hard work done by several generations of Canadians, we enjoy prosperity and a high standard of living today. However, five or 10 years down the road these natural advantages will not be sufficient to ensure our continued prosperity. The global economy is going toward a knowledge-based economy, and I want to work hard so that Canada is at the forefront of this knowledge-based economy.

Let me quickly go through some of the technologies that dominate this knowledge-based economy. They include artificial intelligence, energy storage, quantum computing, robotics, genome sequencing and blockchain technologies. These technologies in the knowledge-based economy do not just affect the businesses, the corporate sector and the economy. They have a big impact on the entire Canadian society and our way of life. It is therefore very important for us to recognize this now and take action so that we continue to be at the front end of these technologies.

In this knowledge-based economy, the natural advantages we have will not ensure prosperity because there is a flat world out there. Our children and Canadians today have to compete with students from different parts of the world, whether from Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Shanghai, China; Frankfurt, Germany; or Mumbai, India. Everywhere there is competition in this knowledge-based economy because everybody has a level playing field. We therefore need to empower our children to be quite competitive in that world.

Let me quickly go through some of the specific examples and how they affect us.

On artificial intelligence, three of the world's most accomplished and deep thinkers, former Google executive Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher, have recently written a book on artificial intelligence, the way it is transforming human society and what this technology means for all of us. Today, artificial intelligence has learned to win chess by making moves that human grandmasters had never conceived. Another AI discovered a new antibiotic analyzing molecular properties that human scientists did not understand. Now, artificial intelligence-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. Artificial intelligence is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education and many other fields, and in doing so, it is transforming how humans are experiencing reality.

The second quick point is on genomics. To sequence the first whole human genome in 2000, the human genome project cost over $3.7 billion and took 13 years of computing power. Today, the same thing costs less than $1,000 and takes a few hours.

Third, the trillion-dollar transportation sector is actually changing dramatically today. Battery-powered vehicles are a reality. This may not be true so much in Canada, but it is a big reality in China, some parts of Europe and the United States. We have to invest to make it possible. We need to be at the forefront of those technologies.

On the issue of the batteries, Canada has the natural advantage of having the rare minerals that are required in the manufacture of battery cells. What we need is a comprehensive plan to develop the mines, process the minerals, manufacture the batteries, pack the battery cells and obviously get into vehicle production. We need to do that, and we are still very far away from it.

For the knowledge-based economy, we have made significant investments in the last budget: about $440 million for the pan-Canadian artificial intelligence strategy, $360 million to launch a national quantum strategy, $90 million for the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre and $400 million in support of a pan-Canadian genomics strategy. We have made these investments. Also, for a clean and green future for a transition from internal combustion engines to battery-operated electric vehicles, we have established the critical battery minerals centre of excellence.

I have called for the immediate establishment of a task force to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy for the development of mines and technology for battery manufacturing in Canada. We need a team Canada approach to understand the impact of these new technologies on the new knowledge-based economies, and the impact they are having not just on the economic sector, but also in Canadian society in our day-to-day lives. We must be ready for that. We need to keep Canada at the forefront of these new technologies in the knowledge-based economy to ensure that we continue to remain prosperous and that the standard of living we enjoy today is available to our children and grandchildren too.