In 2017, Canada was the first country to establish a national AI strategy, the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. As a result, Canada is now recognized as a world leader in AI and is the proud home to 10% of the world’s top-tier AI researchers, working on some of the most pressing challenges facing Canada and the world.1
A report from the OECD found that Canada is currently ranked 18th in productivity.2 There’s an opportunity to embrace AI and generative AI technologies to address Canada’s productivity challenges. In the next few years, the economic impact of AI is likely to grow even further, as the adoption of generative AI increases. Generative AI models can help complement the productivity of individual workers, assisting with routine or administrative tasks, and enabling them to get more done faster.
Beyond the clear economic opportunity of the technology, 59% of Canadians report feeling optimistic about the broader impact technology will have in the next 20 years, rising to 69% of those aged under 35.
On AI specifically and across early adopters3…
The shift towards embracing AI will also create new opportunities for Canadian businesses and workers. To ensure that the development and use of AI benefits everyone, Canadian businesses will need support through the transition, and Canadians will need help to learn the skills required to succeed in the workforce.
Google is committed to helping Canadians to upskill to help grow their careers and businesses. Our survey finds that the desire for skills training, particularly around AI, is strong and is growing among younger Canadians.4
In 2023, there was a 21x increase in job postings that included AI technologies.5 To ensure the benefits of AI are available to everyone, Google is committed to helping Canadians prepare for the AI-driven jobs of the future.
Cloud technologies are helping businesses operate more safely. By working with Google Cloud, organizations can identify threats, mitigate risks, respond to threats quickly, and securely transform their overall infrastructure.
AI is also dramatically improving our ability to address threats online. For example, organizations are using generative AI, including tools like Gemini in Security Operations to help new team members onboard faster, enable analysts to find answers more quickly, and improve the overall efficiency of their security operations programs6. As threats grow more sophisticated, more needs to be done to ensure consumers and businesses are better protected. Google Cloud can support this, by providing customers with tools and services to secure their data, models, applications, and infrastructure.
In 2023, Canada experienced the most destructive wildfire season in the country’s history and the country’s hottest summer on record.7 In addition, flooding caused damage in almost every region across the country, with parts of Nova Scotia experiencing more than 250 mm of rain in just 24 hours.8 These environmental changes have significant impacts on Canada’s businesses, communities and families. Google is committed to playing its part to help Canada adapt, respond and stay safe.
Over a quarter of Canadians aged 15 and older have one or more disabilities – that is over 8 million people9. This year, Google rolled out a host of new accessibility features powered by AI across its products and platforms to help reduce barriers.
Datapoint 1:
In 2023, Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Cloud and Google Advertising tools helped provide $XX billion of economic activity for Canadian businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators and developers.
Following the precedent of past Google impact reports. We first estimate the total revenue of Google Ads in Canada by combining the size of the paid search market in Canada.
Following the methodology of the US Google Economic Impact Report, we then scale this revenue by an assumed Return on Investment (ROI) factor of 8, from:
(Source: PWC GEMO 2019-28) with estimates of Google’s share of the search market in Canada (Statcounter)
In order to estimate total Adsense revenues, we combined:
In order to estimate total Google Cloud revenues in Canada, we combined:
Following In order to estimate total Android revenues, we take the size of the app market in Canada from various sources. We then combine this with:
These are used to estimate both the revenue that developers receive from Google Play and revenue received from contract work associated with Android. The total economic impact of Android is the sum of these two estimates.
To calculate the total economic impact of Google by Province we take the total economic impact in Canada, which consists of Google Ads, AdSense, Cloud, YouTube and Android, and scale using province share of national GDP. For Google Ads, we additionally adjust for province level variation in the size of businesses with regards to number of employees. This is important both because larger businesses spend a lot more on paid search advertising and because there is variation between provinces in this measure.
Datapoint 2:
In total, we estimate that Google Search and Ads are supporting $XX billion in exports for the Canadian economy.
To calculate the economic impact of Google Search in Canada resulting from export activity we start with the total economic impact of Google Search and Ads calculated above, which is essentially an estimate of the total additional revenue that businesses in Canada enjoy as a result of their use of Google Search and Ads. We then estimate the share of that revenue that is attributable to exports by applying an estimate of the share of business revenue in Canada that is due to exports. We take a conservative approach by applying the lower bound estimate obtained from Public First business surveys carried out in Canada between 2023 and 2024.
Datapoint 3:
Based on time saved, we estimate that in a given year, Google services could be producing a $XX billion improvement in productivity for the Canadian economy.
To estimate the value of these productivity improvements we first calculate the total time saved due to the use, at work, of both Google Search and the Google Workspace suite of tools and products. To estimate the average time saved for workers who use Google Search we combine survey data which estimates how much time the average worker uses Google Search in a day with third party research which tells us how many minutes are typically saved per search (Hal Varian). For Google Workspace we draw on research carried out by Forrester that estimates the hours saved per year for users. We estimate the total time saved in Canada using the share of the working population who have access to the internet and who also make use of Google at work. To convert this to a monetary productivity impact we times the hours saved by the labour rate cost provided by Statistics Canada.
Datapoint 4:
In total, we estimate that Google Maps helps save Canadians over XXX million hours in driving trips a year, which in turn prevents over XX million tons of CO2 emissions from vehicles per year.
This is based on research that provides estimates of the percentage time saved when drivers use GPS devices for unfamiliar journeys. We combine this with data points from our consumer polling and a variety of data sources to estimate the average number of km a car would travel in a year, first without using Google Maps and then with Google maps. We convert this to total km saved using average cars per adult data. Finally, this is converted to total hours saved by using the average speed on Canadian roads.
Datapoint 5:
In total, we estimate that Google Cloud is saving XXX million business hours for the Canadian economy each year. This is equivalent to at least $XX billion a year in business time savings for the Canadian economy.
We draw on research by IDC which estimates the percentage reduction in time spent on ICT related issues together with an estimate of the total time wasted by employees on ICT related issues. This estimates the total amount of time saved per employee that uses Cloud Services. We scale this up to a national level using the total number of employees in private enterprise together with survey data which tells us the share of businesses who use Google Cloud. To calculate the monetary value of the time saved we use GVA per employee data from StatCan.
Datapoint 6:
Google Cloud boosts the productivity of Canadian SMBs by X%, supporting $XXX billion of economic activity across the country.
This builds on research from the London School of Economics which estimates the productivity gains from businesses that use Cloud services. We apply this to the average GVA of SMBs in Canada taken from national data to estimate a monetary gain per business. We apply this to an estimate of the number of SMBs that use Google Cloud, taken from our survey, to estimate the total productivity gain.
Datapoint 7:
We estimate that Canadian businesses have saved $XXX million in costs and efficiency by transitioning from more costly on-premise servers to the Google Cloud.
This estimate takes research which estimates the percentage cost saving to business of using cloud computing and applies it to an estimate of the total spent on cloud computing by Canadian businesses.
We drew on the US O*Net occupation database, which contains information on 51 different types of work activity for around ~800 types of occupation.
Based upon Goldman Sachs’ identification of the types of tasks exposed to automation by generative AI, we classified the proportions of tasks in each occupation that were susceptible to automation. This includes: