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2 min readLeet Consulting

Canada's AI strategy and the 12 percent

Ottawa's new national AI strategy puts adoption by small and mid-sized businesses on the agenda, alongside new privacy legislation. What a Toronto AI shop thinks Canadian firms should do next.

  • Canada
  • Regulation
  • Strategy

Canada now has a national AI strategy. Announced on June 4 under the name "AI for All," it is built on three priorities (trust, opportunity and sovereignty) and six pillars, including updating privacy and online-safety laws, encouraging AI adoption by small and medium-sized businesses, and sovereign compute.

The number that frames it came from the Prime Minister: only 12 per cent of Canadian businesses use AI, as The Logic reported. The same report notes that AI Minister Evan Solomon has tabled a private-sector data protection bill with stiff fines, that the government has proposed four bills on AI privacy and safety, and that he has promised not to reintroduce the earlier "high-impact" AI systems bill.

What this means in practice

For mid-sized Canadian firms (the insurers, brokers, clinics and service companies we work with), we read three signals:

  1. Adoption is now policy, not just opportunity. Expect programs that fund or encourage SMB adoption. The firms with a clear first use case will be ready to use them.
  2. Privacy will tighten before it loosens. Any automation that touches personal information should be designed for a stricter regime: data minimisation, retention limits, clear purposes and audit logs.
  3. Sovereignty matters to buyers. Where data lives and which providers process it is becoming a procurement question, not just a technical one.

A practical starting point

The 88% of Canadian businesses not yet using AI do not need a strategy deck. They need one workflow that is high-volume, rule-bound and painful: intake of a standard form, a weekly status-chasing routine, a reconciliation that eats a day a month.

Automate that one, with:

  • data that stays in a Canadian or otherwise approved region,
  • an evaluation set that proves it works on your cases,
  • a person approving anything that affects a customer,
  • a log that would satisfy a privacy regulator reading it cold.

Then do the next one. That is how 12% becomes 50%.

Sources

  1. Minister Solomon highlights Canada's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, June 5, 2026.
  2. Solomon says new laws will address Canada's AI trust deficit, The Logic, June 16, 2026.