Al Vigier: Canada's AI strategy shouldn't include secret Palantir bills

https://www.readtheline.ca/p/al-vigier-canadas-ai-strategy-shouldnt

by ClearwayLaw • 17 days ago

166 82 17 days ago

Instead, buy domestic product, and out in the open.

autoexec2• 17 days ago

Better yet, build a domestic product for government use and tightly regulate and oversee it so that you can be sure it's being used lawfully, only when needed for government use, and only when necessary. Democratic nations have power over their government but not over corporations. I know which one I'd rather have ruling over me and spying on my every move.

Exoristos• 17 days ago

... build a domestic product for government use and tightly regulate and oversee it ...

Government to tightly regulate and oversee itself, I perceive.

Democratic nations have power over their government but not over corporations.

Democratic governments and corporations have been around about as many centuries, and both have long ago perfected techniques to make sure the people have no direct power over either of them, often in tandem. That said, it seems remarkable that you're less anxious about the partner in this age-old dance that has the warplanes and myriads of armed enforcers.

altmanaltman• 17 days ago

I mean no public strategy should include secret bills, Palantir or no Palantir.

If you're idealogically opposed to Palantir, how will a home-grown Palantir help? It would likely do the same things Palantir does but with a Canadian Alex Karp

gpm• 17 days ago

Well there's a clear difference between a creepy company spying on you and a creepy company closely aligned with a government that has threatened to annex you spying on you.

Neither are great, but one is worse.

dreambuffer2• 17 days ago

There likely isn't a Canadian Alex Karp. Karp is a unique byproduct of American culture. The specific brand of arrogance, hunger for war, and callous disregard for human life, all in service of a right wing ideological project, is simply not as present in Canada because Canada is a middle power with more liberal values who prefer diplomacy over war.

bluefirebrand2• 17 days ago

I appreciate that you think so highly of Canada, but no. There are still plenty of people that fit that description born in Canada.

I think the main thing is they all move to California or New York as soon as they can, because they can't achieve their sociopath ambitions as easily here.

somenameforme• 17 days ago

I think you can't really measure a country's approach to war unless that country is already quite powerful. This is the reason that it's said that power corrupts. It's easy to have good values when it's difficult to have bad values, or there is minimal benefit to such. But give a man (or country) tremendous power, and suddenly having bad values can be immensely rewarding on short to medium time scales.

constantius• 16 days ago

He fills a niche, particularly successfully ,but the required substrate exists in every society. In societies that superficially reward other qualities, these people mold themselves to fill other niches that provide power: politics, tech, press. When the niche appears in Canada, or Germany, or the UK, these people will come out of the woodworks wearing whatever face they need to at the time.

Granted, America's been leading on encouraging the worse angels of our nature for the last, what, 70 years? But these personalities exist everywhere.

userbinator• 17 days ago

What a title. I misread and thought an "AI Vigier" was an official tasked with being vigilant about AI.

jschrf• 17 days ago

Canada shouldn't include Palantir at all.

gatvol• 17 days ago

Why not?

free_bip• 17 days ago

It's pretty obvious this comment didn't come from a Canadian. Because if it was, you'd know that Palantir is elbow-deep in the Trump administration, the same one that has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada. That is not a threat to be taken lightly, and the Canadian public agrees, which is why the trump-opposing Liberal party is currently enjoying a parliamentary majority. A more relevant question would be "Why would anyone with Canada's interests in mind even consider Palantir in the first place?"

toomuchtodo• 17 days ago

They’re arguably a US based technoauthoritarian think tank masquerading as an enterprise software and data analytics firm.

https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/palantir-posted-a-manifest...

https://www.newsweek.com/us-draft-update-major-tech-company-...

France, Germany, Spain, and Britain have or are in the process of disassociating from them.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/16/france-ai-data...

https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-offices-snub-us-ba...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/andy-burnham-drop-spy-tec...

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/spain-tells-state-backed-fir...

ronsor3• 17 days ago

America shouldn't even include Palantir.

antonvs2• 17 days ago

Because it’s a company with no ethics beyond “might makes right,” owned by a person of dubious sanity who travels around the world to warn anyone who’ll listen about how the Antichrist is bad for their business.

Why would anyone in their right minds do business with a company like that?

maxdo4• 17 days ago

Canada and domestic product simply not possible The only two countries who can run domestic products of this kind are USA and China . The rest is just gimmick or a lie.

bigyabai2• 17 days ago

Palantir's software stack is not really that complex, and their FDE workforce is famously... undereducated. Canada should be able to pull it off, there's much to improve on.

ihsw• 17 days ago

You overestimate the willingness of Canadian software engineer employers to pay anything beyond peanuts.

Any competent developer already immediately flees to the US to triple their take-home pay at first chance and Canadian employers are fully aware of this.

nradov2• 17 days ago

If that's true then why hasn't Canada managed to produce a credible competitor already? What are they missing? Will the opportunity to win domestic government contracts change that situation or are there other obstacles?

tamimio3• 17 days ago

The sovereign initiative in Canada is laughable, most if not all critical infrastructure are 100% relying on US cloud products, from the usuals like MS and google all the way to cybersecurity and other products, and we are not even talking about supply chains and the likes. So practically speaking, the US can in a click, turn off Canada’s grid and banking, in minutes without a single bullet, the country will collapse. That’s why whenever I see all that buzz words of “sovereign xyz” I know it’s a just a way to funnel tax money back to some companies or programs, without having so much questions about it.

Waterluvian• 17 days ago

Step by step we need to de-Americanize, for sure. Can’t just happen overnight.

tamimio3• 17 days ago

There’re no steps taken, when I brought it to different managers in both utilities and banking, they laughed and some even rolled their eyes, because everything (and I mean everything from operations to hr to all) is built on top of these products, no way to rebuild the multi billions company from scratch and train the employees on a whole new systems only to find out they are not reliable or at least not how they used to do their work.

For example in some power utility companies, to install few auxiliary sensors to monitor xyz only in a pilot project is a 3 years work.. upgrading old 3G modems is done in stages over years just not to interrupt the operations, and all of these are terminal devices, not core or servers where a tiny mistake in that foundation migration will send the city into dark ages.

jmyeet• 17 days ago

I don't think there's a government in the world, including the US, that should allow Palantir anywhere near their data or systems. I consider Palantir a national security threat. I also feel this way about McKinsey (and Bain, BCG, etc).

I also think any form of platform AI usage to be a national security threat in the absence of stringent controls over that data and the platform. At some point I think governments and companies will wake up to this and demand local LLMs or, in the very least, a cloud platform within their jurisdiction, ownership and control.

The 1980s and 1990s ushered in this idea of "small government", privatization and public-private partnerships that I think was a huge mistake with catastrophic consequences. It's simply letting the foxes into the hen house. It leads to regulatory capture, a revolving door and a massive government-to-private wealth transfer.

What's funny is that a lot of this stems from a now throughly debunked idea of the "tragedy of the commons" [1].

[1] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/03...

tomComb• 17 days ago

I don’t know the specifics of this case, but in Canada, calls like this (all wrapped up in the flag), usually come from Canadian companies hoping for some sort of sole sourced contract that they have no business getting.

So so perhaps we should be excluding American companies at this time, but in the name of competition and openness, we should allow bids from our real allies, such as the Europeans or the Asians.

soupbowl5• 17 days ago

Excluding China, I hope.

singpolyma3• 17 days ago

Why?

ronsor3• 17 days ago

"America or not" is a red herring. Palantir is the specific problem.

The kind of people running these companies don't have true allegiance to anything but their own objectives. If necessary, they'd move all operations to Europe or East Asia in a month, and you'd have "Palantir 2" under a different name with no better ethics or privacy.

Increased emphasis has to be on running things domestically with on-premises hardware. As long as the vendor is elsewhere and not subject to oversight, the risks remain.

thesmtsolver2• 17 days ago

Canada and Europe call for banning American companies in their the name of sovereignty: upvoted and praised as necessary

America tries that for valid reasons (unfair subsidies, human or labor rights violations, BYD): get called fascist or stupid

protocolture3• 17 days ago

Canada and Europe call for banning American companies in their the name of America Threatening to go apeshit and do stupid stuff: upvoted and praised as necessary.

America tries that for stupid xenophobic reasons, gets called stupid or xenophobic.

brookst2• 17 days ago

Yes, intent matters. Call the police on the crack house next door, neighbors celebrate you. Call the police to harass the Black people door, neighbors shun you.

This shouldn’t be surprising.

freakynit• 17 days ago

Palantir is giving me "Samaritan" vibes from the show: "Person of Interest".

For the ones who haven't watched this amazing show, here is a small Google AI summary:

Samaritan is the primary antagonist of the later seasons of the sci-fi series Person of Interest. It is a fictional, totalitarian artificial superintelligence created by Arthur Claypool. Unlike its counterpart, the Machine, Samaritan has no moral constraints, viewing human free will as a flaw requiring aggressive control and mass surveillance

nickdothutton• 17 days ago

I don't think the Canadian government is dropping a big contract on a company that is 24 months old vs one 24 years old, more or less.

another_twist• 17 days ago

Wtf does Palantir have to do with AI. Nobody at Palantir can train an LLM from scratch or even fine tune.

crimsoneer• 16 days ago

The idea we're going to stop people like special forces and intelligence buying the software they want to run on on prem, air gapped stacks that they control in the name of sovereignty is silly.

Al Vigier: Canada's AI strategy shouldn't include secret Palantir bills

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