A few hours before Taleeb Noormohamed walked onto our stage in August, a 17-year-old schooled him on the way out the door. The kid is the son of his wife's best friend, and he was staying at their place that week. Taleeb told him where he was headed that night. The answer, more or less: you don't understand, most people my age hate AI. They hate what it does to their brains and their personal lives. They worry about what the chatbots are doing to their friends. They're scared for their jobs.
Taleeb is the MP for Vancouver Granville and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. That's about as close to the federal AI file as you get without being the minister. He spent the drive over wondering what else he could possibly talk about. Forty minutes into the conversation, answering a question about social media, he came back to the kid on his couch and said it plainly: he's right.
This one took us longer to get online than we wanted. It's up now: the whole hour, no slides, no notes, every question from the room. He's back with us at Futureproof next week, so here's the hour and where to jump in.
Where to jump in
Who he is, and where Canada sits
- 1:38, the origin story. Architects for parents, tracing paper everywhere, doctoral studies at Oxford, and a first startup he says couldn't raise a dollar in Canada. Then the 2010 Games, a run of tech companies, and a decision to run because the people making technology policy mostly hadn't built any.
- 5:47, three models and a middle. The Americans innovate at all costs, the Chinese do whatever it takes, and the Europeans regulated until the innovation left. Canada has to find the middle, while raising capital here stays, in his word, awful.
- 11:37, what thousands of submissions said. Do this right and do it in a Canadian way. Keep young people talking to each other instead of a chatbot. Give the builders compute. Trade winning at all costs for winning the right way.
Data centres and social license
- 16:25, the question I care about most. I'm pro data centre, built clean, green, just, Indigenous-owned and hydro-powered. So how do we keep the social license? His answer surprised me: we're losing it, and in some cases that's justified.
- 19:23, culture and a share of the tokens. Instead of a compensation fight that could take years, I pitched giving the guilds and cultural producers a share of the tokens coming out of the TELUS data centre. He didn't say no.
- 34:40, the pitch nobody says yes to. Free water, free power and a low hum in your backyard won't get a yes from anyone. Closed water loops, heat going back into the neighbourhood and a public share of the compute might. A minute later he agreed people would pay a premium for clean, green, just tokens.
The West Coast centre
- 23:56, kill it or give me the path. Many of us have wanted a West Coast centre of AI excellence for years, a fourth node beside Vector, Amii and Mila. I asked him to kill the idea or show me the way. He gave me the best line of the night.
There are things I cannot say to you about this matter, and that should give you hope.
Your questions
- 28:48, water, sovereignty and Palantir. Liz Marshall, who is making a film about AI and water, asked what sovereignty means when American companies are this entangled here. He gave two definitions and kept his views on Palantir to "very real personal concerns."
- 36:29, health data that can't cross a border. Hospitals still running outbreaks on spreadsheets, and a story from a 2011 review he did for the province.
- 40:05, a tax credit for AI learning. A member asked him to back a tax credit for the AI subscriptions people pay for to retrain themselves. Taleeb pointed at the upskilling coming in the budget.
- 41:44, what social media taught us. This is where the kid comes back, and where he asked rooms like this one to show up when the online safety hearings start.
- 45:16, a mother and her 13-year-old. He came because he wanted to know what government is doing to protect kids like him.
- 48:59, jobs, and a Bond movie. A parent of twin 17-year-olds asked about work. I stacked a wild card on top. He asked how honest he was allowed to be.
- 55:49, one allegiance. Catherine Warren on China, the United States and the trade war. His answer: one allegiance, and it's Canada.
- 61:01, put your money where your mouth is. Why do we copy the American venture model? He wants something like Singapore's Temasek, and he has a message for Canadian investors about sovereignty.
Since August
- Guidelines, both ways. He told us federal guidelines for building data centres were coming. Ottawa published Canada's Responsible Data Centre Development Principles on September 3. He asked for ours, too, and we sent him the BC Public Compute Project.
- The teacher training is out. He described programs for teachers rolling out this fall. The first chapter of Essentials for Educators, built for K-12 teachers, opened September 21 as part of the federal National AI Literacy Initiative.
- Online safety is moving. Bill C-34 began second reading on October 21. Committee hearings haven't started. When they do, he asked me to bring people, and we will.
- The budget he was helping put together lands November 5.
- The West Coast centre: nothing announced yet. He said stay tuned. We're tuned.
We've kept doing our side of the work, too. In September we filed our response to the federal AI transparency consultation, built from a room of community members who sat down and argued it through.
See him again at Futureproof
Taleeb is back on the Space Centre stage on Thursday, October 29, for "What the country decides," a conversation with me and questions from the floor at the Futureproof Festival of AI. He sits at the federal AI policy table. We sit where it lands. In August he told us rooms like ours should keep pushing him, so come ready.
Start with his speaker page, then the program and tickets.
Watch, look, link
- The video page: the conversation with all 23 chapters.
- The long version: our Meetup #32 recap, with Data for Good Vancouver and every exchange from the night.
- The archive: Vancouver AI Meetup #32, August 26, 2026, with the full show and twenty curated photographs.
- The photos: all 304 frames by Michelle Diamond.
- Join us: become a BC + AI member and come to the next one.
Thank you to Michelle Diamond for the photographs and Allan Baedak for the sound and the recording. Thank you, Taleeb, for showing up with nothing but a microphone. See you on the 29th.