Seventeen Countries Backed an AI Science Plan. Canada Didn’t
Matthew Leo · Published October 9, 2026 · AI
Seventeen countries have endorsed the Kyoto Vision, a joint statement that puts artificial intelligence, automated laboratories and access to computing infrastructure at the centre of science policy.
Canada is not among them.
The endorsing countries are Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Canada's absence is a fact; the reason is not public. Ottawa has not said whether it was invited, declined to endorse the statement or plans to join later.
What the Kyoto Vision actually proposes
The official declaration is a policy framework rather than a treaty or a funded multinational program. It calls for broader access to data, computing, scientific instruments and other research infrastructure. It also promotes automated experimentation and AI systems that can help generate hypotheses, plan experiments and analyse results.
The funding ideas are notable. The declaration points to longer-duration awards, rapid grants, prizes and challenges as alternatives to relying entirely on conventional project-by-project grants.
That could change who gets to do advanced research. A well-funded laboratory may be able to combine robotics, proprietary datasets and large amounts of compute. Smaller universities and startups may struggle unless governments treat access to those tools as shared infrastructure.
Why Canadian researchers should care
Canada has strong AI research institutions and a large public research system, but it faces the same bottleneck as other countries: models alone do not produce scientific discoveries. Researchers also need clean data, laboratory equipment, compute, technicians and repeatable workflows.
The Kyoto Vision offers a useful checklist for Canada's own policy:
- Compute access: can researchers outside the largest institutions obtain enough capacity for competitive work?
- Automated labs: will robotics and measurement systems be shared infrastructure or remain concentrated in a few facilities?
- Research data: can public-interest projects use valuable datasets under clear privacy, security and intellectual-property rules?
- Funding design: do grant timelines support risky, multi-year work as well as short projects with predictable milestones?
- Commercialization: can discoveries move into Canadian companies without requiring teams to relocate for capital and infrastructure?
Canada is building a separate AI agenda
Prime Minister Mark Carney launched a National Council on Artificial Intelligence on October 2. Ottawa has also backed 10,000 paid AI work placements through Mitacs. Those initiatives cover advice and talent, but they do not answer every infrastructure question raised by the Kyoto statement.
TNW's independent account also highlights the declaration's emphasis on automated laboratories and international competition. That competitive framing deserves caution: scientific collaboration can be weakened if access to data, instruments and results is treated only as a national race.
The immediate question for Ottawa is narrower. Does Canada support the declaration's priorities, and if so, why is it missing from the endorsement list? Until the government answers, it would be speculation to call the absence either a rejection or an exclusion.
Tags: Kyoto Vision, AI for science, research policy, scientific infrastructure, Canada