The plan aims to lift business AI adoption from 12% to 60% by 2034
Canada expects artificial intelligence to add nearly $200bn to its economy and create 250,000 jobs over five years, even as one forecast warns the same technology could wipe out more than half a million jobs first.
Prime Minister Mark Carney set out those stakes Thursday in Toronto when he launched a national strategy called AI for All, according to the prime minister's office.
The government expects the plan to lift gross domestic product by 3 percent as AI adoption raises labour productivity, Reuters reported, and to push business AI uptake from just over 12 percent to 60 percent by 2034.
To close the capital gap with US tech giants, Ottawa will set up a $500m Canadian Tech Growth Fund that lets the federal government take equity stakes in Canadian AI firms.
The Business Development Bank of Canada will run a separate $500m initiative to finance AI tools for small and medium-sized businesses, while a $700m Compute Access Fund will widen their access further, CTV News reported.
The country is starting from a thin base.
Only 12 percent of Canadian businesses used AI in 2024 to 2025, and a KPMG and University of Melbourne study ranks Canada 44th of 47 countries on AI training and literacy.
The digital sector employs about 800,000 workers and contributes more than $140bn to GDP, with 150,000 jobs tied directly to AI, Reuters reported.
The job-creation math drew immediate skepticism.
Signal49 Research, formerly the Conference Board of Canada, projected in January that AI and automation could cause an initial loss of 550,000 jobs by 2030, CTV News reported.
Government officials said they would not contest the figure but would monitor potential displacements.
The Conservative deputy leader, Melissa Lantsman, rejected the projections outright.
She said she does not believe the Liberals' claim that they will create 90,000 jobs, pointing to "more than 112,000 jobs" lost since January.
A longer-running risk to the thesis is talent flight.
The New York Times reported the 250,000-job target faces a persistent "brain drain," in which Canada trains skilled workers who then leave for the United States.
Cohere chief executive Aidan Gomez said in a statement that Canada "has seen too many big ideas grow elsewhere," adding that "AI should be where that changes."
Carney framed much of the plan around reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.
The Associated Press reported that the strategy describes Canada as overexposed, noting that researchers train models on foreign cloud platforms and companies store sensitive data in foreign jurisdictions.
Ottawa will follow a "build-partner-buy" approach, building sovereign capability where possible, and will fund a world-leading public AI supercomputer.
"Prosperity and sovereignty in the age of AI belong to nations that can build, adopt and govern AI on their own terms," Carney said, according to the New York Times, describing adoption as "prudent, pragmatic and pro-worker."
The same report noted the United States is absent from Canada's vision, though Carney pointed to Anthropic, which has given Ottawa access to its Mythos model.
On regulation, the government will spend $50m to track AI risks and evaluate models, and will introduce consumer privacy legislation covering children's information and deepfakes, Reuters reported, though it set no timeline.
CTV News reported the artificial intelligence minister, Evan Solomon, called the plan a "pro-worker job strategy" while acknowledging the technology can be "disruptive."
The strategy lands as a wave of data centre investment tests public patience.
New facilities carry 10 times the capacity of earlier ones, and Alberta could host 90 percent of the country's data centres if all proposed projects proceed, drawn by cheap power and fast-tracked approvals, CBC News reported.
Polling by Angus Reid found 68 percent of respondents would oppose a large data centre near their home, fuelling protests in Vancouver and rural Alberta even as operators promise to cap local energy costs.
