For all the hype around AI, it was federal Cabinet Minister Evan Solomon’s recent visit to Volta in Halifax where his remarks landed the hardest: Canada has one of the lowest AI adoption rates in the world.
Canada’s low rate of AI adoption highlights a growing gap between the speed of technological change and how quickly our public institutions can respond.
Technology adoption has shifted from a gradual curve to a near-vertical cliff—faster than traditional policy, funding, and oversight cycles were designed to absorb.
ChatGPT reached one million users in 5 days and 100 million in 2 months, a milestone that took the internet 7 years and the telephone 75 years to achieve.
Time to 100 Million Users
75
years for the telephone
7
years for the internet
2
months for ChatGPT
The gulf between the pace of change and the pace of institutional response is a pressing strategic risk.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a leadership challenge, a digital and data literacy reality, and an operating-model risk that demands urgent shifts in mindsets and systems.
As AI reshapes decision-making and service delivery, leaders can no longer treat it as something that “sits with the CIO.”
Leadership literacy is now essential for institutional agility.
The Shift We Need
Modern public policy earns trust through delivery. People judge institutions at the point of service – when payments arrive on time, when systems don’t crash, and when processes work end to end.
Delivering at today’s speed requires strong foundations:
- human centred design
- reusable platforms
- strong data management
- modern governance and funding models
- empowered and multidisciplinary teams
These foundations, not the tools themselves, determine whether public institutions can deliver reliably, safely, and at pace.
Most public sector institutions were built to deliver large, physical infrastructure – an environment where the pace of change was relatively predictable. Today, governments deliver policy and services to people whose needs are constantly evolving. Maintaining relevance now requires organizational agility.
During my years as a public servant, I often joked that our agility felt like trying to “roll a brick” rather than steer a ball—slow, demanding, and rarely smooth. It wasn’t that people lacked commitment or care—the system itself made movement hard. Funding cycles, hiring rules, procurement processes, decision pathways, and performance measures were all built for predictability, not for the constant flux of today.
Change is our daily condition. Learning while delivering is now a leadership responsibility.
2025 Wildfire Response | Credit: NS Department of Natural Resources
What You’ll Learn Here and Why it Matters
This is the first of a series that distills what I’ve learned watching public institutions struggle to keep pace with change. The pace of change keeps accelerating, but our structures, habits, and incentives stay rooted in a different era.
Drawn from that lived experience you’ll get practical insights—how mindset, delivery, and design shape an institution’s ability to adapt, and what leaders can do right now to close the gap between intention and impact.
It matters because the distance between how quickly people’s needs evolve and how slowly our systems respond is no longer a technical issue. It’s a leadership one.
AICON Canada: A Step Toward Action
Closing Canada’s AI adoption gap requires more than awareness—it requires spaces to learn, test assumptions, and see what good looks like.
That’s where AICON Canada 2026 comes in. It brings together leaders from government, industry, academia, and the innovation ecosystem to advance AI for Public Good with real examples, delivery lessons, and clarity on what it takes to get started.
AICON is not just another conference—it’s a convening mechanism designed to build the literacy, confidence, and cross-sector relationships to move from curiosity to capability.
Natasha Clarke is an Executive Advisor at Kainos and works closely with Davis Pier. She boasts 25+ years of experience leading large-scale digital transformation across Canadian government, most recently as Nova Scotia’s first Deputy Minister of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions.
Natasha’s leadership strengthens our momentum and our shared commitment to delivering meaningful, large-scale change across Canada’s public sector and healthcare systems.
