Statistics Canada put AI adoption in Canada at 19.2% of businesses in the second quarter of 2026, three times the rate of two years earlier, and the sector spread is enormous.
AI adoption in Canada reached one business in five. Statistics Canada reported on June 11, 2026, that 19.2% of businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services over the preceding 12 months, up from 12.2% in the second quarter of 2025 and 6.1% in the second quarter of 2024. Tripling in two years is a real move, but it is a poor thing to build a plan on. The average hides a spread from 42.3% in one sector to 4.5% in another, and that spread is the number that tells you whether your industry is behind. The headline is a forecast waiting to embarrass someone who treats it as a benchmark. A year earlier, Statistics Canada’s second-quarter 2025 analysis put the share at 12.2%, up from 6.1% in 2024.
Key points
- 19.2% of Canadian businesses used AI in the second quarter of 2026, against 12.2% in 2025 and 6.1% in 2024.
- Information and cultural industries lead at 42.3%, finance and insurance at 40.4%, professional and technical services at 32.4%.
- Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sits at 4.5%, wholesale trade at 7.9%, construction at 9.2%.
- Firms with 100 or more employees run at 27.8%, against 19.9% for firms with 1 to 4 employees.
- 40% of businesses said AI adoption was not relevant to their operations.
Where is AI adoption in Canada actually happening
The Statistics Canada analysis breaks the 19.2% apart, and the breakdown tells you more than the total.
Information and cultural industries run at 42.3%. Finance and insurance, 40.4%. Professional, scientific and technical services, 32.4%. At the other end, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sits at 4.5%, wholesale trade at 7.9% and construction at 9.2%.
Size matters less than most people assume. Firms with 100 or more employees report 27.8% and firms with 1 to 4 employees report 19.9%, a gap of eight points rather than the chasm the coverage usually implies.
What people use it for stays narrow. Data analytics at 36.6% of AI-using firms, text analytics at 34.5%, virtual agents and chatbots at 28.2%.
What the relevance number is really telling you
40% of businesses said AI was not relevant to their operations. Among micro-businesses that rises to 41.4%, against 21.3% at larger firms.
Some of that is accurate. A two-person excavation contractor is not obviously short of a language model. Much of it is untested. A company that has never mapped a process cannot know whether a model would help with it, and “not relevant” is often just “not looked at”.
The barriers data points to a more careful reading. Cybersecurity and privacy concerns limited expansion for 13.4% of businesses and cost for 10.6%. In information and cultural industries, the sector with the highest adoption, privacy concern jumps to 30.9%. The firms furthest in are the ones most worried. That is usually what competence looks like, and worry that rises with use is a better sign than calm that comes from not having started. A forecast on this point: the sector sitting at 4.5% will not close the gap quickly. What would prove that wrong is a Statistics Canada release showing that sector doubling within a year.
What should leaders do next
- Find your own sector’s rate in the Statistics Canada table before deciding you are behind. Being at 15% in construction is a different position from 15% in finance.
- Test the relevance assumption on one process rather than on the business as a whole.
- Look at the three common uses, data analytics, text analytics and chat agents, and ask which of the three you already do by hand.
- If you are in a high-privacy sector, budget the governance work at the same time as the tool, not after it.
Has AI adoption raised productivity in Canadian firms?
Not on its own, according to a Statistics Canada and ISED study released April 22, 2026. AI adopters showed 16.8% higher labour productivity at first glance, but the gap shrank to 10.2% after accounting for how productive firms were before adopting, and to 5.1%, no longer statistically significant, once R&D, cloud, data analytics and training were counted.
| What the model controls for | AI productivity premium |
|---|---|
| Industry, size, age and other basics | 16.8% |
| Plus productivity before adoption | 10.2% |
| Plus R&D, cloud, analytics, robotics, ICT training | 5.1% (not significant) |
Source: Statistics Canada, Economic and Social Reports, April 2026.
Our reading: buying a tool is a feature, and rebuilding the work around it is the investment that shows up in output. A chatbot that writes emails faster does little if the bottleneck is three approvals and data spread across four systems. Pick one workflow, map it, point AI at the hand-offs between people and systems, and measure cycle time in hours or days before and after.
FAQ
What share of Canadian businesses use AI?
19.2% used AI to produce goods or deliver services in the second quarter of 2026, according to Statistics Canada, up from 6.1% two years earlier.
Which sectors in Canada use AI most?
Information and cultural industries at 42.3%, finance and insurance at 40.4%, and professional, scientific and technical services at 32.4%.
Do large Canadian firms use AI much more than small ones?
Somewhat. 27.8% of firms with 100 or more employees against 19.9% of firms with 1 to 4 employees.
Related reading
- AI Implementation in Canada Needs Repeatable Workflows
- AI Was Supposed to Save Us Time. Why Are We Working Longer?
- AI Tool Fatigue and the Business AI Switchboard
Disclosure
The author has no relevant financial, advisory, or board relationships with any party named in this brief.
This piece sits inside our reference on AI for business in Canada, which we keep current.
