This workshop focuses on AI sovereignty, AI trust, and AI sustainability as three linked dimensions of the emerging AI infrastructure stack. It treats AI systems—built on data, compute, models, and networks— as evolving towards a richer dimensionality.
What should a country like Canada do to ensure trusted and climate-aligned AI? What should Canada control as a middle-power country, considering the massive changes in artificial intelligence in the past few years, and the new geopolitical landscape? With the United States emphasizing industry and the European Union’s AI governance laws emphasizing risk management, what should the Canadian profile be? And how should Canadian industry innovate and build infrastructures when business models are changing quickly, and where trust and sustainability take increasingly important roles? What risks are embedded in the current AI trajectory for a productivity paradox? How should the AI ecosystem, metrics, strategies and mandates evolve before today’s choices become tomorrow’s lock-in?
What are the international learnings and implications? This workshop brings together experts from government, academia and industry to address these questions in a global perspective.
Topics to be explored:
- How should AI governance policies be translated into sovereignty, trust and sustainability?
- How should business models evolve, considering trust, with the growing importance of agentic AI?
- What is the role of jurisdiction and control over data, compute, and models in the AI stack?
- What are the critical concerns with AI’s energy and carbon footprint and for grid resilience?
- What are working regulatory designs for trustworthy AI infrastructure?
- How should AI sovereignty, trust, and sustainability be measured?
- How should business models develop to facilitate a rich AI infrastructure and AI stack?
- What are sustainable business models with a potential AI productivity paradox?
Join us on Monday, May 11 at Ivey's Donald K. Johnson Centre in downtown Toronto for this half-day workshop!
This will be the sixth workshop in a series of biannual events organized by Ivey Business School, addressing pressing issues in telecommunications and digital policy. Explore our former workshops via the links below:
- December 2025 | Measuring the Digital Economy: Reimagining a Digital and AI-Driven World
- May 2025 | Innovation and Telecommunications Policy: Shaping Tech, Markets & Networks
- October 2024 | New Frontiers for Broadband and Resilience in Telecommunications: Satellites and Beyond
- May 2024 | Building Resilience in Telecommunications - In Canada and Beyond
- October 2023 | Comparative Perspectives on Broadband Regulation and Access
Confirmed Speakers
Johannes Bauer
Professor and Director, Quello Center, Michigan State University; and former Chief Economist, Federal Communications Commission
Erik Bohlin
Professor, Ivey Business School, and Ivey Chair in Telecommunication Economics, Policy and Regulation, Canada
Vass Bednar
Managing Director, Canadian SHIELD Institute
Martin Cave
OBE, former Chair of OFGEM and CMA; and Visiting Professor, London School of Economics
Philippe Lefebvre
FIPRA, Brussels
Romel Mostafa
Director, Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management, Ivey Business School
Marc Rotenberg
Executive Director and Founder, Center for AI and Digital Policy, and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Law, Washington D.C.
Nathalie Smuha
Professor, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
This event is funded in part by the Ivey Chair in Telecommunication Economics, Policy and Regulation, as well as the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at the Ivey Business School.