AI adoption in Canada 2026: the numbers behind the hype

According to Statistics Canada, 25.2% of Canadian businesses surveyed in the third quarter of 2026 planned to use artificial intelligence to produce goods or deliver services over the following 12 months. That compares with 14.5% in 2025 and 10.6% in 2024. Planned adoption has more than doubled in two years.

The more useful question for an owner is not how many companies plan to use AI. It is how many are finding practical reasons to, and what separates the businesses that are from the ones that are not.

Plans are rising, and use is keeping up

Statistics Canada asks two different questions in two different surveys: in the third quarter, whether a business plans to use AI over the next year; in the second quarter, whether it has used AI over the past year. Both lines are climbing fast.

Because the two questions cover different periods, they are not a simple scorecard of promises against delivery. But Statistics Canada does line them up, and the result runs against the usual story about AI hype: more businesses reported using AI than had planned to. In the third quarter of 2024, 10.6% planned to use AI; by the second quarter of 2025, 12.2% had. In the third quarter of 2025, 14.5% planned to; by the second quarter of 2026, 19.2% had.

Use is also uneven. In the second quarter of 2026, 21.0% of urban businesses had used AI, against 9.9% of rural ones, and four in ten businesses said AI was not relevant to them at all.

Not every industry is moving at the same speed

Professional, scientific and technical services, information and cultural industries, and finance and insurance have led planned AI use in each of the last three years. Other sectors are catching up quickly.

Construction is the clearest example. The share of construction businesses planning to use AI rose from 3.2% in the third quarter of 2024 to 18.3% in the third quarter of 2026. That does not mean contractors are replacing crews with autonomous systems. It means more of them are exploring where the technology might fit: handling incoming enquiries, preparing quotes, organizing job documentation or improving follow-up.

Size matters, but not the way you might expect

The smallest businesses, with one to four employees, plan to use AI at about the national average. The jump comes at 20 or more employees, where plans more than doubled in a year, from 15.0% to 32.8%. Small businesses are also the most likely to say AI is not relevant: 41.4% of businesses with one to four employees, against 21.3% of those with 100 or more.

The support gap is wider still. Among businesses using AI, 30.2% of those with 100 or more employees had used external consultants or vendors, and 32.8% had hired people with AI skills. Among businesses with one to four employees, those figures were 10.7% and 8.2%. Most small businesses are working it out on their own.

What businesses are planning to use

Large language models, the technology behind tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, grew fastest: planned use more than quadrupled, from 9.3% of AI-planning businesses in 2024 to 39.3% in 2026. These are categories of intended use, not measured productivity gains. They tell us what businesses are considering. They do not tell us whether those implementations pay off.

What holds businesses back

Among all businesses, the most cited barrier to using AI was cybersecurity or privacy concerns (13.4%), followed by cost (10.6%). The concern is sharper in sensitive industries: 30.9% of businesses in information and cultural industries and 26.4% in health care and social assistance named it. For small businesses handling customer information, our guide to AI and data privacy for Canadian businesses covers what to check first.

Adoption also changes how people work. Among businesses using AI, 44.4% made changes to training or staffing because of it, most often training existing employees (32.0%).

The business case should come before the software

Consider a local plumbing company. It receives enquiries through its website, phone calls and its Google Business Profile. The owner could invest in an AI receptionist, an automated quoting tool or a more sophisticated CRM integration. Which one should come first depends on where the company is losing money.

• If calls are answered reliably but quotes are not followed up, a new AI receptionist solves the wrong problem.
• If quotes go out quickly but there are not enough qualified enquiries, the priority may be search visibility rather than automation. Our lead calculator shows what those enquiries typically cost to buy.
• If there is plenty of work but scheduling and administration are the bottleneck, operational improvements may be worth more than more marketing.

The technology should follow the diagnosis.

Five numbers to measure before investing

• Current workload: how many staff hours does the process consume?
• Failure rate: how often are enquiries, tasks or handoffs missed?
• Implementation cost: what will the system cost to build, operate and maintain?
• Quality: does automation improve the result without introducing unacceptable errors?
• Business impact: is there evidence of lower costs, more completed jobs, better retention or higher gross profit?

Without these measurements, an AI project can look successful simply because it produces more activity. More automated messages do not necessarily mean more customers. More generated content does not necessarily mean more qualified traffic. And more sophisticated software does not necessarily mean a more profitable business. We cover how to test a workflow before it goes live in how to evaluate an AI workflow before deployment.

What happens next

AI adoption in Canada is growing, and the federal survey data makes the direction clear. What remains uncertain is how consistently those investments produce measurable returns across industries and business sizes. Statistics Canada says its new TechStat program will begin publishing business statistics on AI use, benefits and challenges in 2027.

For an owner, the next step is practical: identify one bottleneck, put a number on what it costs today, and only then ask whether AI can improve it. That is how we approach AI implementation, websites and marketing systems at MOST AI Labs: understand the business problem before recommending the technology.

If you are considering AI for your business, start with the process that costs you the most time, money or missed opportunities. Our free 7-day audit is a good place to find it.

Sources

• Statistics Canada: Analysis on planned use of artificial intelligence by businesses in Canada, third quarter of 2026 (released 1 October 2026)
• Statistics Canada: Analysis on artificial intelligence use by businesses in Canada, second quarter of 2026 (released 11 June 2026)

Editorial note: all figures are shares of businesses responding to the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions (9,601 responses in the third quarter of 2026 and 9,251 in the second quarter). They describe plans and reported use, not the revenue or productivity benefits of AI. Last reviewed: 24 October 2026.