Canada
Get AI working in a Canadian business.
Your work mapped, the rules that keep people in the decisions that need them, the system built on top, and managers who can supervise it without us in the room. Calgary based, working across Canada.
Where adoption sits
One in five Canadian businesses is using AI
Adoption tripled in two years. The businesses that moved are concentrated in a few industries and in cities, which leaves most of the country deciding whether this applies to them at all.
19.2%
of Canadian businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services in the year to spring 2026.
6.1%
said the same two years earlier. Adoption tripled between the two surveys.
40.0%
say AI is not relevant to their business, which is the largest single group.
9.9%
adoption among rural businesses, against 21.0% in urban ones.
Statistics Canada, Canadian Survey on Business Conditions, second quarter 2026, collected 1 April to 6 May 2026. Read the release. The same survey puts information and cultural industries at 42.3%, finance and insurance at 40.4% and professional, scientific and technical services at 32.4%, against construction at 9.2%, wholesale trade at 7.9% and agriculture at 4.5%.
What stops it
Four reasons Canadian projects stall
Each of these is measured in the same survey, and each one has an answer that comes before the build rather than after it.
-
Nobody has shown you where it fits
Two in five businesses report that AI is not relevant to what they do. Relevance is a mapping question. Name the work that repeats every week, price what it costs to run by hand, and the answer stops being a matter of opinion.
Process mapping and roadmap -
Privacy and security decide it
Cybersecurity and privacy concerns are the most cited limit on AI use, at 13.4%. This is the barrier that stops a project after somebody senior asks where the client data goes. Answer it in writing before you build, and it stops being the reason to stop.
AI governance setup -
Cost with nothing to weigh it against
Cost is the second barrier, at 10.6%. A price is only high next to a return, and most Canadian businesses are quoting the first without having measured the second. The baseline comes before the build for exactly this reason.
Systems and AI build -
Your managers cannot supervise it yet
More than two in five businesses changed training or staffing because of AI. A third put employees through AI training and one in five trained executives. The gap that stalls the work is a manager who cannot tell a good output from a confident one.
Capability and enablement
What already applies
The rules that govern AI in Canada today
Obligations already sit on any Canadian organization putting AI near a customer, an employee or a credit decision. They come from laws written before the technology arrived.
- Canada has no AI statute in force. AIDA died on the order paper in January 2025 and has not been reintroduced. Decisions made on the assumption that a Canadian AI act governs your systems are being made against a law that does not exist.
- Privacy law governs the data. PIPEDA applies federally, with provincial equivalents in Alberta and British Columbia. The personal information inside an AI system is regulated whether or not the system is.
- Quebec Law 25 covers automated decisions. It carries transparency rights for people affected by a decision made by automated means, which reaches any organization serving Quebec residents.
- OSFI Guideline E-23 covers model risk. Federally regulated financial institutions are held to model risk management expectations that cover AI models the same way they cover any other.
- Human rights law applies to the outcome. A discriminatory result is a discriminatory result whether a person or an algorithm produced it.
Current as of August 2026. This is a summary of the landscape and it is not legal advice. Where a decision turns on it, take advice from counsel qualified in your province.
How the work runs
Start with the process, then decide on AI
Digital adoption is the whole job and AI is one route through it. Most Canadian engagements start at the map, because the cheapest way to find out whether AI belongs in a process is to price the process first.
Start here
Find out where you stand
Twelve questions across four dimensions, answered in about three minutes. You get a score out of 48, the tier it puts you in, and the one thing worth fixing first.