Carney Is Selling Off Canada's Publicly Owned Tech Gem. Why? Cohere's ties with Build Canada Warnings against the CPFC sale

Leading the charge is Build Canada and a broligarchy of AI boosters. Second in a series. … Article written by Christopher Holcroft.
The Liberal government led by Prime Minister Mark Carney has made policy that reflects, to a remarkable degree, the "memos" pumped out by the upstart pro-tech, anti-regulator advocacy group Build Canada. And Build Canada has plenty more it wants the government to do, some of its vision quite radical, as the first article in this series detailed.
It is unlikely a coincidence that Build Canada's agenda to reform the country, if implemented, would also boost the wealth of its members and the bottom lines of their businesses.
While the organization claims it does not lobby government directly, executives from two companies at the heart of Build Canada have met repeatedly with the Carney Liberals. According to the federal Registry of Lobbyists, Shopify has held 12 meetings with the government since the election. AI firm Cohere, meanwhile, has met with the government 31 times.
Last August, the Carney Liberals contracted Cohere to "transform the public sector" with AI technology. In April, that transformation began to take effect with another government contract for the deployment of Cohere's AI tools within the federal department of innovation to support automation of some tasks. A Cohere spokesperson referred to the deployment as "a technical blueprint for how the rest of the federal government will modernize."
Cohere has come under criticism for ties to U.S. tech companies, including its reported but disputed relationship with Palantir, a company the American Civil Liberties Union accuses of "providing tools to facilitate the violence, lawlessness and human rights violations of President Trump's war on immigrants."
Cohere is also being sued by a group of media companies from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom for copyright infringement via the unauthorized use of news articles to train the tech firm's large language models.
One of Build Canada's earliest backers was Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang. In November, Zhang wrote a memo for Build Canada calling for the government to "commercialize the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre."
Last month, the federal government confirmed plans to do just that, announcing it would be privatizing the CPFC, and along with it control over the centre's publicly built technology.
Established over 20 years ago, the CPFC, an arm of the National Research Council of Canada, is described as being at the forefront of innovation in the country, supporting both research and the private sector. Specifically, the centre makes photonic devices using compound semiconductor materials. These chips allow more energy-efficient, faster movement of data. In addition to aerospace, automotive, defence and telecommunications industry uses, the chips are increasingly vital to AI technology.
The federal government has invested more than $115 million into the centre over the last five years, including to support an ongoing expansion from its current, 40,000-square-foot Ottawa-based facility.
The CPFC is one of only a few of its kind worldwide and the only one in North America, with the centre's website noting, "As the world races to build AI infrastructure and next-generation technologies, the CPFC is driving innovations that enhance national security, reinforce Canada's technological sovereignty and secure our place in the global supply chain."
Prime Minister Carney is on record saying he sees "the effectiveness" of flooding the zone, the crass, MAGA-created euphemism for disorienting political opponents and critics by moving rapidly on a wide variety of issues. That an announcement on the looming sell-off of the CPFC did not generate wide attention among the many recent policy actions and political decisions of the government is therefore both unsurprising and politically convenient for the Carney Liberals.
Still, some people did notice and among them are voices warning abou...