The Weekly Brief — Issue 14

Ottawa is preparing federal systems for a cyber threat that can move faster than the people defending them.

A new federal direction tells departments to identify their most critical services, assume attackers may already have a foothold, tighten access controls and prepare for AI-assisted attacks that can find vulnerabilities and move through systems at machine speed.

Plus: the Prime Minister is taking an active role in a new national AI council, AI-generated “journalists” are making it harder to know who is really behind online information, and Bell’s Saskatchewan AI campus is moving from plans into visible construction.

Here’s the week.

What happened

On October 1, the federal government issued new direction on cyber security readiness in the frontier AI era telling departments and agencies to strengthen their cyber readiness for a threat environment increasingly shaped by frontier AI.

The direction asks organizations to identify and prioritize the services Canadians rely on most and submit an initial list to the Treasury Board Secretariat by November 30.

It also tells departments to work from an “assume breach” mindset: strengthen monitoring, remediate vulnerabilities faster, map potential attack paths, tighten identity controls and make sure compromised systems can be contained and recovered.

One part is especially notable.

The direction explicitly addresses machine identities and accounts used by AI agents — systems that can act, access information or carry out tasks without a person clicking every step.

That same week, researchers at Transluce published findings from activity involving Library and Archives Canada.

They identified 899 requests made against one of its public collection-search systems on two days in May and June. Thirteen carried rudimentary attack payloads. The attempts appear to have been unsuccessful, and there is no evidence that government systems were compromised.

The researchers also said they could not confidently attribute the activity to OpenAI or another specific company.

Why it matters

The cybersecurity conversation around AI is changing.

For the past few years, much of the public discussion has focused on AI helping people write phishing emails, generate malware or create convincing scams.

The newer concern is what happens when AI systems can take actions themselves.

An agent can search, test, retry and move through a task far faster than a person. That does not make every AI agent dangerous, and it does not mean autonomous systems are suddenly breaking into government networks.

It does mean the speed and scale of certain kinds of cyber activity can change.

For government, the stakes are practical. A compromised system can affect benefits, records, public services or the ability of departments to operate.

Ottawa’s October 1 direction is not a new cybersecurity law, and it is not evidence that the federal government has suffered an AI-driven breach. It largely strengthens and prioritizes security obligations that already existed for a threat environment where AI may make attacks faster and more automated.

The Library and Archives activity is useful context precisely because it should not be overstated.

There is no established causal link between those requests and Ottawa’s new direction. But the two developments point toward the same operational question: how do you secure systems when some of the activity touching them may increasingly come from software acting with more autonomy?

Your move

If your workplace is beginning to use AI agents, ask three questions before focusing on what the agent can accomplish:

What can it access?

Which accounts or credentials can it use?

And how would you know if it started doing something it should not?

Those questions matter whether the agent is writing emails, searching files, working inside business software or automating a more complex process.

Giving an AI system permission to act also means deciding where its permissions stop.

Prime Minister Mark Carney launched a 13-member National Council on Artificial Intelligence on October 2 to advise on the implementation and evolution of Canada’s AI for All strategy.

Its remit is broad: adoption by Canadian businesses, domestic AI companies, sovereign infrastructure, research and talent, government transformation and AI safety.

The council will be supported by a small team in the Privy Council Office, and the Prime Minister’s Office says Carney intends to play an active role in setting its agenda.

That does not make the council a regulator or decision-making authority. Ministers and departments remain responsible for actual policy.

Canada also already has an AI advisory council housed through Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Ottawa has not said the new council replaces it.

Why it matters: the more interesting change is where AI advice is sitting. A council supported through the Privy Council Office and involving the Prime Minister directly puts AI implementation closer to the centre of government as Ottawa tries to turn AI for All from a strategy document into actual policy and programs.

Canadian Press found AI-generated journalist personas publishing stories aimed at Canadian communities through a network called We News.

The personas are labelled as AI-generated, but CP found examples of material based on reporting originally produced by established Canadian news organizations.

A separate case raised another version of the same problem.

Policy Options withdrew an article after it could not independently verify the identity or biography of a contributor who published under the name Daniel Robson. The publication also found signs that AI had been used in correspondence and submissions.

Those cases are not the same, and there is no evidence establishing that “Daniel Robson” was itself an AI-generated identity.

Why it matters: AI makes it cheaper to produce convincing articles, author biographies, photographs and entire publishing identities. That makes provenance — knowing who created something and where the information originally came from — more important, not less.

Bell’s 300-megawatt AI data-centre campus near Regina is visibly taking shape.

More than 500 people are now working at the Sherwood site, all four first-phase building shells are under construction and preparations are underway for interior work on the first building.

More than 30 local firms and partners are involved in the project, and Bell continues to target the first half of 2027 for the first data hall to begin operating.

This is separate from the additional 900 megawatts Bell and Saskatchewan proposed in September. That expansion remains subject to customers, commercial agreements and approvals.

Why it matters: Canada’s AI-infrastructure story is beginning to move from announcements into execution. Once projects are actually being built, claims about jobs, electricity demand, local benefits, Indigenous participation and domestic computing capacity can increasingly be judged against what happens on the ground.

It does not mean assuming your organization has definitely been hacked.

It means designing security around the possibility that an attacker could eventually get through one layer of defence.

Instead of relying only on keeping everyone outside, you also ask:

If someone gets in, what can they reach?

How quickly would we notice?

How far could they move?

What could we shut down?

And how quickly could we recover?

Think of it as the difference between locking the front door and also having locks, alarms and fire doors inside the building.

Pick one AI tool you use regularly and check what you have connected to it.

Look for access to email, cloud storage, calendars, documents or other apps.

Remove anything you no longer use.

Then ask one simple question:

What can this tool do with my information without asking me again?

The useful part of an AI agent is that it can act for you.

That is also why its permissions deserve attention.

A calm, practical briefing on the AI developments that matter in Canada—delivered every Tuesday.

That’s the week. See you next Tuesday.

— Padge T.

AI Brief Canada is an editorially independent publication published by Groundshift Advisory Inc. and written by Padge T.

Groundshift Advisory helps Canadian organizations adopt AI responsibly. Sponsored, affiliated, or commercially connected content will always be clearly disclosed.

Issue disclosure: Nothing in this issue is sponsored, affiliated, paid, or commercially connected.

AI use: AI tools supported research, source discovery, outlining and drafting for this issue. All material was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by Padge T. before publication. Read our AI Use Disclosure.

Not affiliated with the Government of Canada.

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