Canadian groups seek copyright clarity after AI strategy

A June 25, 2026 report by The Canadian Press (Anja Karadeglija) finds news and cultural industry groups calling on the government to address how AI systems use copyrighted content, after Canada's national AI strategy: AI for All - a roughly 50-page plan released on June 4 - made no mention of copyright. The federal strategy includes $2.3 billion in new and expanded funding aimed at increasing AI adoption and creating 250,000 jobs over five years.

Paul Deegan, CEO of News Media Canada, told The Canadian Press: "You've got basically a 50-page document that came out and the word 'copyright' didn't appear once, which is troubling to news publishers but it's also troubling to music publishers, book publishers and others." Deegan said the government should leverage procurement policy to require companies on its supplier list pledge they won't use content without permission, citing Canadian AI company Cohere as an example.

Marie-Julie Desrochers, executive director of the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, told The Canadian Press creators are still seeing their work used by tech firms to train AI platforms without authorization or compensation. "That needs to change because it's the foundation of our ecosystem. If creators don't get paid for creating, then it's a huge problem," she said. The coalition represents more than 50 organizations across book publishing, film, television and music.

Taylor Owen, founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University, called the copyright omission "conspicuous" (The Canadian Press). His centre released a March 2026 report finding AI systems depend on Canadian journalism for information but provide no compensation or attribution in return. BetaKit also reports the strategy was similarly silent on new privacy regulation details.

Global News reports parliamentary secretary Taleeb Noormohamed said the strategy is a "living document" not meant to be "a catch-all for everything" and that stakeholders should "stay tuned," noting ongoing consultations between AI Minister Evan Solomon and Culture Minister Marc Miller. Miller said in March that current copyright law "does and should protect those that have created material and people need to be compensated properly," but his office said it has no updates on plans for a text-and-data-mining statement.

A coalition of Canadian news outlets - including The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada - is pursuing a lawsuit against OpenAI in Ontario over claims their content was used to train ChatGPT without consent, launched in 2024.

For AI researchers and ML engineers, the absence of explicit statutory guidance means teams sourcing training data from Canadian content must weigh litigation risk, licensing costs, and contested fair-use interpretations. Both industry groups are asking the government to state it will not introduce a broad text-and-data-mining exemption - the opposite of positions taken by Google and Cohere during 2024 consultations.

• •Whether federal follow-on legislation or guidance explicitly addresses copyright and text-and-data-mining exceptions.
• •Outcomes from the Canadian news coalition lawsuit against OpenAI, and whether precedents shift industry norms on consent and compensation.
• •Industry positioning on licensed datasets and provenance workflows as legal uncertainty persists.