Toronto Public Library and others to benefit from Google Canada AI fund

Google Canada has announced a new AI Opportunity Fund, providing $13 million to four organizations to help develop AI skills and training nationwide. The fund will support the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, the First Nations Technology Council, Skills for Change, and the Toronto Public Library.

These organizations will be able to reach and teach more than two million Canadians with AI training to ensure they are equipped to deal with this AI economy.

The Google Blog offers more details about how these organizations will provide AI skills to various Canadians:

• “Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute will provide post-secondary students across Canada with foundational AI skills to better adapt to emerging technologies and address the growing AI skills gap in Canada’s workforce.” 

Schools from around the country have already started reaching out to AMII so they can learn about how to implement AI in their programs. This includes schools from varying backgrounds, such as Arts and Tech-focused post-secondary schools.

• “First Nations Technology Council will train Indigenous students and provide AI resources to Indigenous community members, with the goal of increasing the number of Indigenous workers in technology.”

While the First Nations Technology Council focuses on students, anyone in the Indigenous community can reach out and learn about AI and gain resources. I was told that they even had an 87-year-old elder come to the sessions so they could learn about AI.

• “Skills for Change will develop AI skills programs to train individuals from communities facing high unemployment. This initiative will equip participants with foundational AI literacy through hands-on, industry-relevant curriculum, creating pathways to meaningful employment.”

Skills for Change is also helping newcomers to the country with new AI literacy skills and pairing them with others in their industries so that they can learn about AI and possibly make networking connections, or even make a friend. Skills for Change serves people with varying degrees of knowledge about AI, so if you’re worried about not knowing enough, you’re in company with others who don’t know a lot about AI.

• “Toronto Public Library will address the digital divide by launching a city-wide AI upskilling initiative to provide community members access to free tools, AI skills training and programming to support employment, boost productivity and encourage safe, informed use of AI.”

The Toronto Public Library also provides free access to an online course that you can complete with other learners in a study group guided by staff. You can register for it at tpl.ca/aiessentials. The TPL will also provide an innovation learning workshop in 2026 to teach other libraries around Canada and the world how it implemented its AI Learning Circles so that they can integrate AI learning in their libraries as well.