New national partnership with Amii will provide free, practical AI learning for students, educators, workers and communities across Canada
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how Canadians learn, work and access services. Canadians need the knowledge and skills to benefit from these technologies, understand their risks and make informed choices about how AI fits into their lives.
Today, the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, launched Canada's National AI Literacy Initiative, a new national partnership with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). The initiative will provide free, practical learning opportunities to help Canadians understand AI, use it responsibly and benefit from the opportunities it creates.
A key initiative under Canada's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy: AI for All, the program will be delivered through three learning streams:
- AI for All: Essentials for Students
- AI for All: Essentials for Educators
- AI for All: Essentials for Canadians
The initiative is built around a simple progression: understand AI, use AI and, for those who choose, build with AI. It will give Canadians practical knowledge to assess AI-generated information, recognize risks such as bias, misinformation and privacy loss, and decide how to use these technologies confidently and responsibly.
Through Amii-led programming, the initiative is expected to reach up to one million post-secondary students and more than 50,000 kindergarten-to-Grade-12 (K-12) educators. The free learning opportunities will provide practical, foundational knowledge that students and educators can apply in classrooms, workplaces and their daily lives.
Essentials for Students
Post-secondary institutions participating in the National Student AI Literacy Initiative consortium can offer students a free, three-hour AI literacy course that helps them understand AI and use it confidently and responsibly while building foundational AI knowledge and workplace readiness skills. Beginning September 21, 2026, post-secondary institutions across Canada will be able to join the consortium and offer the course to their students.
Essentials for Educators
To further support these efforts, the first complete chapter of Essentials for Educators will be made openly available starting September 21, 2026. It will provide K-12 educators with practical training and classroom-ready resources, with five additional chapters to be released throughout the fall.
Essentials for Canadians
Later this year, the first complete version of Essentials for Canadians will launch nationally through participating community partners. Organizations serving Canadians in urban, rural and remote communities will begin offering the course and provide feedback to support its development toward direct, open access for all Canadians.
Workers and job seekers can access short-duration AI training through Employment and Social Development Canada's national Training Finder on Job Bank. The courses will help Canadians understand and adapt to AI as their jobs, tools and workplaces change.
Together, these learning opportunities will give Canadians the confidence to use AI where it serves them, the judgment to question it where it does not and the knowledge to make informed choices about its place in their lives.
