Trudeau Unveils $1.8B Plan to Boost AI Sector in Canada | Hacker News Reader

Trudeau Unveils $1.8B Plan to Boost AI Sector in Canada

bloomberg.com

26 pointsthm45 comments

Really all they need to do is build more housing.

Housing is a provincial responsibility. All Trudeau can do is give the provinces money to spend on housing. And he's given tens of billions. But it's undone when Ford doesn't allow fourplexes etc.

So tired of seeing this half-baked take that ignores history and policy of several successive federal governments for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Mortgage_and_Housing_Co...

Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge the failings of the federal government when it comes to housing?

Probably because Canada’s central government is weak because it’s a confederation and not a federation. Their provincial governors have more power yet less blame. Another issue is rampant NIMBYism just like the US.

It's hard to see incompetence in the guy you like and easy to see incompetence in the guy you don't like. Housing is pretty clearly all levels of government fault. Cities are trapped by nimbies, provinces aren't using their clear power to overrule the cities and stuff massive residential upzoning through, feds are clearly funding rampant house appreciation through easy CMHC money and driving excess demand through a half baked immigration policy that ups the population numbers without enough heed to the skills we actually need to alleviate our problems. I could go on but that's the big picture failure at each level.

Summed well.

it drives me bonkers so I'm following it semi closely. The obvious solution is the provinces stuff something like a simplification of residential zoning to 2 zones, one which lets you build everything up to some story (lets say six) and have some high lot coverage (say 80%) and a zone for everything else. Everything within the spec in the first zone gets a mandated approval in some short time period (say 2 weeks) everything in the second gets a mandated approval in a longer time but still fairly short (say 2 months). Have the list of allowed no's be very restrictive and approve everything else. Feds should phase out new CMHC lending over some reasonably long time period (say 20 years) and do a better job of matching immigration to skills shortages and limiting immigration to a smaller number outside the skills shortage areas until the shortages are addressed. Just get it done already guys!

It's easy to say "less immigration". But when faced with somebody whose choice is to immigrate or to die, are you willing to say "die"?

You're talking about asylum seekers, that's not representative of the problem. It was a matter of strict policy to target a 3%+ growth rate. That was reached with economic migrants, refugees and the others are in addition to the targets. That's not counting TFWs and students who'd go to work full-time instead of attending to their studies

I think another good way to attract industry would be to give clear IP exemptions for model training. Having t&d exemptions like in Japan or Israel would be huge for legal certainty imo

Unfortunately the federal government doesn’t have as much to say about that as municipalities. All they can really do is reduce immigration (done) and provide incentives for municipalities to build housing (done) but the effects of both on the housing market will take well beyond next year’s election to be felt.

Trudeau seems obsessed with spending $1b / day in new programs until the election, in a vain attempt to secure his legacy.

> reduce immigration (done)

Lol.

They cut the number in 1/2, no?

The usual number for Canada is 200,000-300,000.

They increased this to >1,000,000. Then after outcry decreased the number by 50%.

But this still means they are still roughly 100% higher then the normal numbers.

You notice the trick they played.

Reduce immigration done? are you serious?

>Trudeau seems obsessed with spending $1b / day in new programs until the election, in a vain attempt to secure his legacy.

We agree here, his time is done and he is leaving a mess behind.

Not sure how the govt plans to retain talent when said talent can go to the US and get easily paid double or triple the salary.

Funny enough not everyone wants to live in America just for a paycheck

They do when the alternative is living with parents until marriage

And taxed less. And get better services (depending on jurisdiction, of course).

Indeed. For example, health care outcomes are way better in the US. That’s why Americans live longer than Canadians.

But seriously, it’s true that since health care costs aren’t classified as a tax in the US, the taxes in the US appear to be lower.

>But seriously, it’s true that since health care costs aren’t classified as a tax in the US, the taxes in the US appear to be lower.

At $51,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD <http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/>, where "disposable income" <https://web.archive.org/web/20220520114512/http://stats.oecd...> accounts for both healthcare and government benefits and taxes. Canada is $34,421. <http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/canada/>

On average, you're right. But we're not quibbling about the average person here. We're talking highly skilled, highly educated professionals can expect at least a 50% gain in gross salary (nominal + exchange rate), face lower costs of living for goods and services, the aforementioned lower taxes and, critically, expect excellent private health care coverage that will likely cost less than whatever taxes are removed from Canadian paychecks.

If the choice is between very good private US healthcare vs. any Canadian public system, the outcomes and general healthcare service in the US are much preferable under most circumstances

1.8B isn’t much, given that it can cost 100M to train one large model.

Also the more significant issues are the housing crisis, low wages, and poor high tech economy.

Oh good more ways to bill the taxpayers $10,000 CAD/hr to make a basic mobile app with just enough "AI" sprinkled throughout its API

This government just does not learn after ArriveCan and the perils of government led funding outside the military.

Exactly. If they really wanted to help the AI sector, it would be to reduce taxes lol. These socialist governments are _crazy_.

Reducing taxes would definitely go a long way in Canada but they decided they want to "appoint" people closer to its political circle via affiliation or perceived affliction (for political ammo against conservatives).

It makes no sense that a billionaires/specified groups can "own" salmons in BC, just like it was one billionaire that was "allowed" to own a gaming license.

Canadians love to look down on other countries with oligarchs they dont even realize or admit they live in far worse system: housing serfdom + oligarchs

Outside the military? Is military spending a beacon of efficiency and results/clam now?

no but the end product is very clear and the only buyer in town knows exactly what they want. sure there are inflated billing/poor efficiencies but at the end of the day, its national security we are talking about here, there's more tolerance there.

How do you know go they will disburse the money?

People seems to be forgetting that to poach talent, talent has to exist.

The only way a US company would even know the person exists is if they were doing amazing work in the respective country, meaning they, by definition, did amazing work in their country (breakthrough, papers, etc) all then pointing to benefit for said country because, again by definition, they haven't left yet.

Once that happens, if it happens, the person can choose to go to the US, or not. Not everyone desires to live here, regardless of money.

If you believe AI will create a ton of value, 1.8B into developing an ecosystem should get paid back relatively easy over some period of time.

Value capture doesn't happen ONLY at the end point.

Lots of talents from Canada. Hinton is from canada.

I think he is from England. Born in England, English family.

Smart people can’t afford to take risks when the english speaking tech industry only exists in cities where a 1 bedroom condo costs $700k. This is a big waste of money

$1.8B for a national AI plan… wow… That will buy 1/5th of the GPUs that Meta bought this year.

What's worse is that the Liberals have a tendency to promise money for all sorts of programs and they are very slow to deliver that money to many of them.

And yet that money seems to disappear to somewhere. Definitely not in any politician's pocket's since they've been giving themselves raises, every year, for the last few years.

You're not going to get top talent in AI unless you pay more than your US counterparts.

65K in CAD isn’t going to cut it?

Hire in India

I don’t know if you have to.

At a job not too long ago, we hired an AI/ML guy for that full time and in office.

I can't find info I like, but PayScale has 63-110K listed as the salary range for “ Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialist”. Maybe a better job title in the search makes the numbers better.

Everybody leaves Canada for a reason. You go to school, you get a PhD, and you make what you could have managing a McDonalds.

The next leg up for Nvidia is sovereign funding for national AI efforts

Just wait until all these new companies get acquired by American big tech

Unless they get 'supply managed', to protect the fabric of Canada.

Paywall link…

https://archive.is/0p1bt

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