Google believes artificial intelligence could add $210 billion to the Canadian economy.
Google’s Economic Impact Report, released Tuesday, shows generative AI could add eight per cent of gross value to the country, while saving the average Canadian worker 100 hours a year, based on a third-party poll and a sample of Canadian businesses.
“Canada is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this opportunity, but we have to go after it,” Sam Sebastian, vice president and Canada country manager of Google Cloud, said during an AI press roundtable event Tuesday.
“We have to bold, we have to be responsible, but I think it’s a huge opportunity for this country.”
Sebastian added that Canada’s tech sector can take advantage of an AI boom because of its tech workforce, indicating that Toronto has the largest concentration of AI startups in the world, while Montreal has the largest concentration of AI researchers in the world.
Google, which has labelled itself as an “AI first” company since 2015, has begun ramping up its AI investment product stream, including video editing software for creators and expanding its ChatGPT rival Bard into a suite of its products. Bard is now available in 230 countries and territories, though Canada is not one them.
“We see AI as the most important way to deliver on our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible,” Sebastian said.
CANADIAN FIRMS ALREADY TAKING ADVANTAGE
David Fleet, a research scientist with Google DeepMind, said AI adoption among businesses has seen 150 times more projects using generative AI between April and July.
“It’s unprecedented,” he said during the roundtable. “We haven’t seen anything like that before.”
Though recent data from Toronto Metropolitan University found just four per cent of Canadian companies are using AI, Fleet said several major firms are making the AI shift.
CN Rail, for example, is building an AI-powered platform to offer insights into simplifying the supply chain, while Shopify is using AI to help fix “search abandonment,” where customers leave a site if they can’t easily find the item they’re looking for.
JOB IMPACTS
Even though AI can streamline business operations, Sebastian said he doesn’t necessarily believe the technology will lead to job cuts.
“With any technology innovation you’re going to see impacts on jobs and how those work, but in general … if anything it’s going to enhance, especially the more straightforward remedial tasks the typical work has to do on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
