AI and the Regions: Not Just for Montreal

There’s a perception you hear a lot: AI is a Montreal thing, a Toronto thing, a Silicon Valley thing. The regions just have to step aside and wait for the tech bros to decide what’s good for them. That’s bullshit. AI can be liberating for the regions. We just need to put it in the right hands.

AI can stop the exodus

Think about a talented young person in a small region. She wants to code, do design, make videos. Historically, she had one option: move to Montreal. That’s fine. But with AI, she can do professional-level work right from her region. An AI that amplifies her capabilities, that makes her work faster, that makes her competitive with someone in Montreal.

Result? She stays in her region. She grows her local community. She attracts other talent. That’s how you build a decentralized economy.

Regional sectors are going to explode

Take agriculture. A farmer in Beauce can use AI to analyze his land, optimize his crops, reduce waste. No need to go take a course in Montreal. No need for crazy money. Just the right AI, accessible.

Tourism in Gaspésie? AI can personalize the visitor experience. Forestry in the North? AI can analyze forest health. Craftsmanship? AI can help design and produce faster. The regions have powerful economic sectors. We just need to connect them to AI.

The trap: if AI is controlled from elsewhere

But here’s the problem: if the AI you use in your region is controlled by an American company, the money goes there. The data from your land, your tourists, your clients? It gets sucked up by a corporation. And you have no control over how the AI evolves. That’s not liberation, that’s a new form of dependency.

The real solution? Build a Quebec AI infrastructure, a regional one. Not just in Montreal. Small AI hubs in the regions. CEGEPs that train people on AI locally. Data that the regions control themselves.

What needs to happen

Invest in regional training. Help regional SMEs and nonprofits use AI. Create open source infrastructure that can run locally, not on a server in San Francisco. Support regional developers building tools adapted to their local economies.

Montreal? It’ll always be a tech hub. But the real power of AI is to distribute capability. To make a person in Abitibi as productive as one in Toronto. That’s what we should be pursuing.

That’s exactly the vision we carry at Laeka Research — an AI rooted in our communities, not imposed from outside. To better understand how AI impacts regions and how we can use it to our advantage, check out Sherpa, free and accessible.