AI Strategy for the Federal Public Service 2025-2027: Overview
Our vision to serve Canadians better through responsible AI adoption.
Overview
On this page:
Why an AI Strategy?
Artificial intelligence (AI) presents unprecedented and wide-ranging opportunities to enhance the public service and the services it offers Canadians. AI can unlock capabilities beyond human limits, opening doors to new ways of working and operating. With AI, we can create new types of services to better meet the needs of those we serve and improve the quality and efficiency of services already offered.
AI can streamline or automate routine tasks for public servants, freeing them to focus on more complex and critical work. It can increase the public service’s efficiency, effectiveness and productivity, maximizing its value to Canadians. It can improve the speed and scale of data and information analysis far beyond what was once possible, leading to faster, more informed decision making and scientific discovery. It can also create new avenues for public engagement and help us protect Canada’s interests by enhancing our ability to protect our IT and physical infrastructure.
AI is not new to the Government of Canada: departments have been using it for decades. Often developed in-house, early AI applications typically served very specific purposes and were used only by specialist staff. Over the past few years, however, AI capabilities have advanced rapidly, particularly in the field of generative AI. These capabilities are now embedded in a wide range of commercial software, making them more accessible to all public servants.
Learn more about: AI in the Government of Canada
Below are some examples of how AI is being used to improve the work of the Government of Canada.
Case processing: Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada’s Advanced Analytics Solutions Centre
The Advanced Analytics Solutions Centre at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been using AI-based models to triage applications for temporary and permanent residence and find those which can be automatically identified as eligible. These models have been used to accelerate the processing of more than 7 million routine cases, allowing case officers to focus on more complex cases, and to strengthen program integrity by identifying fraud patterns.
Serving clients: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s AgPal
AgPal helps farmers and agri-businesses find information about over 400 federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal programs and services, along with market intelligence and research. Its generative AI tool, AgPal Chat, helps users find relevant funding and resources faster, supporting the sustainable growth and competitiveness of the sector.
Supporting public servants: The Public Services and Procurement Canada Human Capital Management AI Virtual Assistant
Human Capital Management AI Virtual Assistant is designed to support Pay Centre compensation advisors in processing pay cases from the backlog. The assistant automates routine tasks, allowing advisors to focus on complex cases and expedite resolutions. By shifting from manual to digital processes, it enhances efficiency, reduces workload, and minimizes errors.
Conducting research: Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada works with provinces and territories to collect data for the Canadian Coroner and Medical Examiner Database and organize the collected data into coherent datasets. Analysts can then assess the datasets for patterns of death over time, detecting trends to understand growing hazards to public health.
Transcribing and summarizing: Innovation, Science, Economic Development Canada’s (ISED) AI Accelerator
ISED developed a tool for its Parliamentary Affairs Unit that uses AI and open data to transcribe and summarize parliamentary committee meetings. By reducing manual notetaking, it frees Parliamentary Affairs Officers to dedicate more of their skills to analysis and interpretation, improving efficiency and employee well-being by cutting down on overtime.
Increasing productivity: Shared Services Canada (SSC)
SSC is piloting its multilingual conversational chatbot CANChat as an in-house alternative to commercial generative AI tools. CANChat can support drafting, editing, researching, summarizing, and information and data management and analysis. For greater data security and privacy, CANChat ensures that all data is safeguarded and stored in Canada, and that prompts are not used to train its AI.
Securing networks: The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s Assemblyline tool
The Assemblyline tool works to defend federal and critical infrastructure systems from cyber threats involves detecting patterns in vast quantities of data—something AI tools are ideally suited to. Since 2017, its Assemblyline tool has used machine learning to analyze malicious software, scanning over 1 billion files a year for over 300 Government of Canada and critical infrastructure organizations
Securing borders: Transport Canada’s Pre-load Air Cargo Targeting (PACT) program
The PACT uses AI to screen inbound air shipments before takeoff to flag those that could contain concealed explosives or other threats. The use of AI has enabled a tenfold increase in the number of shipments screened per hour and increased coverage from 6 percent to 100 percent of flights, greatly increasing safety on both passenger and cargo flights.
These advances have also greatly increased the risks of AI and the challenges of managing them. They have heightened the potential for AI to overturn traditional ways of working in the public service and have increased public scrutiny of government use of AI. Beyond ethical and security concerns, challenges such as talent shortages, infrastructure gaps, technological sovereignty, and interdepartmental collaboration further complicate AI adoption. Existing and future AI systems must therefore be appropriately governed, with guidance, policy, and training in place to manage risk, address challenges, and uphold human rights, public trust, and national security. At the same time, there are real risks and opportunity costs if we fail to adapt to these new technologies.
The Government of Canada needs an AI strategy to ensure that its AI adoption and use:
- Is aligned with the government’s values and ethics, objectives, and mandate to serve Canadians
- Prioritizes uses that will meet the needs of and deliver the greatest benefits to public servants and those they serve
- Is developed efficiently and collaboratively with internal and external partners
- Is responsible, safe, and secure, mitigating threats, risks, and harms to people and the environment
Vision
By responsibly adopting AI, the Government of Canada can deliver world-class services to its clients, protect our people and interests, achieve a more innovative and efficient workplace, and accelerate scientific discovery for the benefit of all.
Principles
Human centred
We focus on the needs of those we serve and the public servants who serve them in deciding where we adopt AI and how we integrate it into our work.
Collaborative
We work together on AI adoption with Indigenous and Canadian partners, other Canadian and international jurisdictions, and our public service colleagues.
Ready
We have the data, infrastructure, tools, culture, talent, skills and policy we need for responsible, safe, secure, and successful AI adoption.
Responsible
We inform clients and public servants when and how we use AI so that they trust that our use of AI respects privacy and is justified, responsible, fair, safe, and secure.
Scope
Many different definitions for AI exist, including the definition in the Government of Canada’s Directive on Automated Decision-Making. One of the most widely accepted definitions comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which defines an AI system as:
a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments. Different AI systems vary in their levels of autonomy and adaptiveness after deployment.
AI includes:
- Both knowledge-based systems that use a combination of domain knowledge, rules, facts, and relationships curated by human experts and machine learning systems that that can learn from data and generalize to perform tasks without explicit instructions.
- Application areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, intelligent decision support systems, and intelligent robotic systems.
This current strategy applies to all types of AI technologies with adaptive capabilities after initial training:
- At any stage of the AI lifecycle, from design, development, deployment, and operation to system decommissioning.
- In use for any purpose in any department or agency covered by the Policy on Service and Digital, including those used by external subcontractors. Organizations that are partially or wholly exempt from the Policy on Service and Digital, including those that fall under the national security exemption, are encouraged to comply with the AI Strategy as far as possible as a matter of good practice.
- Whether they are developed within the Government of Canada, open source, commercial off-the-shelf products, or custom vendor solutions.
The AI Strategy excludes:
- Systems that only use software-based solutions without adaptive capabilities after initial training
- The adoption of AI by organizations outside the Government of Canada.
Learn more about: How we used AI in developing this Strategy
The team responsible for the development of the AI Strategy used an approved generative AI tool (Microsoft Copilot) and some Microsoft Teams AI capabilities to support the work of its members.
AI was used during development to:
- Automatically transcribe some discussions
- Summarize and group comments and feedback
- Generate meeting invitation text
- Scan and summarize research
- Translate small pieces of text
- Draft and edit reports and discussion papers
All uses of AI were consistent with TBS policy and guidance. Any personal identifiers, such as individual or organization names, were removed before AI use. Products generated by AI were reviewed by human analysts and were labelled to indicate that AI had been used in their development.
In total, these uses of AI saved analysts approximately three weeks’ work during the development process, enabling the team to allow more time for engagement and consultation.
For more information, please see Guide on the use of generative artificial intelligence - Canada.ca
Foreword from the President, Chief Information Officer and Chief Data Officer
Message from the President
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the way Canadians interact with the Government of Canada. By using AI responsibly to modernize government operations, we can unlock new ways to increase productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, while reducing response and wait times. We can make it easier for Canadians and Canadian businesses to access all of the services, information, and opportunities the Government of Canada has to offer.
While the adoption of AI for its innovative applications is becoming the emerging norm worldwide, we must ensure its responsible use by assessing and mitigating the risks. This means addressing bias and preventing misinformation, protecting the privacy and security of Canadians, and ensuring that the benefits of AI do not come at the expense of our environment or our workforce. AI is simply a tool, not a replacement for public servants, as we look to modernize government operations to meet the needs of Canadians in the digital 21st century.
The Government of Canada’s first-ever AI Strategy for the federal public service will allow us to seize the opportunities of innovative technology while establishing guardrails to protect our systems. In developing this Strategy, we engaged the public, partners and stakeholders. Participation from citizens was central to ensuring a Strategy for the public service that reflects the very democratic values we prioritize today.
As we implement the Strategy across the public service, our work will continue to focus on the needs and expectations of those we serve. This means making sure Canadians are involved in the design of services that use AI. This is especially important for those who may face barriers to access, such as persons with disabilities and members of equity-deserving groups. We will also rely on the expertise of Canadian innovators and businesses that are already global leaders in AI.
The AI Strategy for the federal public service establishes a robust AI governance framework to ensure the transparent and responsible use of AI. Ultimately, Canadians need to have confidence in how government uses this technology. Trust is built by being upfront and open about the use of AI, and that is central to the success of the AI Strategy.
To learn more about how the Government of Canada plans to harness the potential of AI responsibly and for the benefit of all Canadians, I invite you to read the full Strategy.
The Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P.
President of the Treasury Board
Message from the Chief Information Officer and Chief Data Officer
We are pleased to present the AI Strategy for the Federal Public Service 2025–2027, our plan for the responsible, secure, and accelerated adoption of AI in the public service.
AI is a transformative force. It can enhance the capabilities of public servants and change how we work and what we do. Adopting it in the workplace can improve our operational efficiency by automating certain repetitive manual processes and allowing employees to focus on more complex and strategic work, such as supporting decision-making and improving collaboration.
The AI Strategy lays out a plan for how we move forward with AI. It highlights the importance of coordinating approaches across federal organizations, learning from our collective experiences, and supporting organizations of all sizes and maturity as they explore this technology. It sets out the role of public service leaders in adapting AI to their organizations’ mandates, ensuring strong data foundations for future AI projects, and adopting more agile practices for development and procurement.
The responsible adoption of AI will require culture change within our organizations. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat will encourage departments to give employees the time, space, support, and tools to explore its use, grow from setbacks, and collaborate with partners, both internal and external to government.
Implemented together with the Government of Canada’s Data Strategy, the AI Strategy will help maximize the effectiveness and value of data and AI investments across government, delivering benefits for service delivery, science and research, security, and corporate processes.
We encourage all federal organizations to embrace AI responsibly to meet the expectations of all Canadians for secure and modern government operations in the digital age.
Dominic Rochon
Chief Information Officer of Canada
Stephen Burt
Chief Data Officer of Canada
© His Majesty the King in Right of Canada, as represented by the President of the Treasury Board, 2025,
ISBN: 978-0-660-76811-3
Page details
- Date modified: