Ottawa spent greater than $800M on AI contracts over 3 years, knowledge exhibits - Nationwide

By Anja Karadeglija

The Canadian Press

Posted Might 13, 2026 1:44 pm

1 min learn

Ottawa has spent greater than $800 million on synthetic intelligence know-how since 2023, based on knowledge offered by the federal authorities.

The sum contains two beforehand introduced offers: a $350 million public service contract with Dayforce to exchange the troubled Phoenix pay system and a $240 million funding within the AI firm Cohere.

It additionally contains a whole bunch of entries that vary from a number of hundred {dollars} for a ChatGPT subscription to multimillion-dollar contracts with numerous corporations.

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Conservative MP Jagsharan Singh Mahal had requested all authorities departments, businesses and Crown companies to offer details about AI-related contracts, subscriptions and licences, however not all complied with the request.

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Due to the Dayforce and Cohere agreements, Public Providers and Procurement Canada and Innovation Canada had been the highest spending departments, adopted by Nationwide Defence at $83.7 million and the Canada Income Company at $29.9 million.

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The Communications Safety Institution and the Canadian Safety Intelligence Service declined to offer the requested info, whereas the RCMP stated it didn’t have the knowledge out there in a centralized database.