2026 is the year AI goes from theory to deployment in Canada

Naim Antaki, co-leader of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Group at Gowling WLG, joins BNN Bloomberg to provide a year in review of AI in Canada.

The new year will mark a turning point for how Canadian businesses and governments use AI, according to a leading AI expert.

“AI will finally go from theory to deployment, and Canada’s need for productivity will be a key factor in pushing AI,” Naim Antaki, co-leader of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Group at Gowling WLG, told BNN Bloomberg.

“When you think about the budget and where we need to go as a country, productivity has always been an issue,” said Antaki.

“I think that’s where we really need to bridge the gap.”

Canada’s strengths and remaining gaps

Antaki said Canada continues to be a leader in the AI space, with its strong talent pool and emphasis on responsible AI development.

However, he said Canada still needs to catch up when it comes to AI compute capacity and commercial deployment.

“Thankfully, there are major investments coming online in 2026 that will help to close that gap, we hope,” said Antaki.

Antaki said businesses and consumers have already moved past the fears of adopting AI into their lives. Customers are now using AI agents and businesses are focusing on AI deployment for operational use.

“It (Canadian industry) needs to continue to do more, but it’s definitely advancing and accelerating,” said Antaki.

Policy is the key to scaling

Antaki said clearer federal rules would help companies adopt AI more confidently, particularly around privacy and governance.

“Companies, they want to scale, and they need the confidence to scale, but they also, for some of them, need to understand how to responsibly adopt AI,” said Antaki.

He said expanding the pan-Canadian AI strategy with more investment in compute and commercialization pathways would support growth.

He also pointed to the importance of the federal government’s recent $1.7 billion research and talent attraction initiative, highlighted in Budget 2025, called Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative.

The program is designed to attract more than 1,000 international research talent professionals to Canada.

“I think that’s a really important item,” said Antaki. “You can see that the government is working as fast as it can on this.”

Looking ahead to 2027

Looking further ahead, Antaki said the growing use of AI agents will be a major theme.

“As AI becomes better and better at what it does, we need to really keep focus on what we are good at as humans,” he said.

“We need to be able to understand not only its strengths, but also its weaknesses,” said Antaki.

He added that the technology will keep accelerating, and the most important thing to keep in mind is human “productivity and trust.”