The government’s national AI strategy is largely framed around the notion that Canada has an AI adoption problem. At the launch last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that “only 12% of Canadian businesses are using AI today” and presented the strategy as a plan to address concerns that Canada lags behind other countries. AI Minister Evan Solomon echoed the same issue and put a specific number on it, targeting an increase from 12 per cent to 60 per cent. The AI adoption issue helped justify billions in spending and the suite of new legislative reforms. I’m supportive of many of the measures, but a closer look at the statistics and comparisons the government used shows that it relied on outdated data and dubious comparisons. In fact, Statistics Canada had actually released new data on business adoption of AI days before the strategy’s release that placed it at 19.2%, yet the government instead pointed to the older figure of 12 per cent, which made a stronger case that adoption was lagging and that new government support was needed.

Read more ›