The plan aims to lift business AI adoption from 12% to 60% by 2034
Canada is betting that artificial intelligence will create up to 250,000 jobs by 2031, even as one research body warns the same technology could eliminate more than twice that number first.
BNN Bloomberg reported that Prime Minister Mark Carney launched the AI for All national strategy in Toronto on Thursday. It sets a target of 60 percent AI adoption among businesses by 2034, up from just over 12 percent.
The Prime Minister's Office said the plan would deliver up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and placements for young Canadians.
The strategy leans heavily on the workforce.
It offers training and upskilling for workers from mid-career professionals to frontline staff, including employer-led programs, and launches a National AI Literacy Initiative to reach 1m post-secondary students and train more than 3,000 educators.
AI Minister Evan Solomon called it a "pro-worker job strategy" on CTV's Power Play and, pressed on losses, acknowledged the technology can be "disruptive" while stressing investment in training and education.
That framing collides with outside projections.
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 as businesses restructure, according to BNN Bloomberg.
Government officials said they neither contest nor agree with the report and would "monitor the impacts of potential displacements," and one said they modelled a high-adoption scenario.
Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman, CTV News reported, rejected the projection in Ottawa.
She said she does not believe the Liberals' claim of 90,000 new jobs, citing "more than 112,000 jobs" lost since January.
The government frames the payoff in productivity terms.
Reuters reported it expects the strategy to lift gross domestic product by 3 percent, unlocking nearly $200bn as AI use raises productivity.
Canada's digital sector already employs about 800,000 workers and contributes more than $140bn to GDP, with 150,000 jobs tied directly to AI.
The push targets a wide gap in uptake.
Just 12 percent of Canadian businesses used AI between 2024 and 2025, a figure that reached 14.5 percent by mid-2026, CTV News reported.
A separate KPMG-University of Melbourne study placed Canada 44th of 47 countries on AI training and literacy.
Carney said the country sits near the bottom on AI training, literacy, and trust, AP News reported.
Health is the first priority sector.
The strategy, the Prime Minister's Office said, launches an AI Missions Program with a flagship health mission to speed adoption in diagnostics, patient care, and system efficiency.
It also helps small and medium-sized businesses take up AI across fields including health, energy, and manufacturing.
To finance that, Reuters reported a $500m Canadian Tech Growth Fund to close the capital gap with US tech giants, plus a separate $500m Business Development Bank of Canada initiative to fund AI tools for smaller firms.
On safeguards, the plan drew criticism for vagueness.
It promises consumer privacy legislation to protect children's information, combat deepfakes, and strengthen control over personal data, with $50m to track AI risks, but disclosed no timeline.
BNN Bloomberg reported that the strategy says little about protecting people from AI's harms.
Lantsman went further, telling CTV News the promised safety measures were "nowhere to be found in the documents."
Carney also centred the launch on sovereignty, warning that Canada relies too heavily on foreign suppliers and that most AI data crosses the border, according to AP News.
The strategy commits to a world-leading public AI supercomputer and a "build-partner-buy" approach, with Canada aligning with middle powers such as Australia, France, and Germany, The New York Times reported.
The 250,000-job target still faces Canada's long-running brain drain, in which skilled workers leave for the United States.
Aidan Gomez, chief executive of Cohere, said in a statement that "Canada has seen too many big ideas grow elsewhere," adding, "AI should be where that changes."
