Home | Research

Artificial Intelligence Talent in Canada

Canada has been a leader in the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) for decades. With AI becoming part of more and more business functions, cultivating AI talent is essential for advancing development and adoption of AI technologies in Canada. We are already seeing a shift in the Canadian AI job market toward more specialized, core AI skills—skills that are only and directly applicable to developing and using AI technologies. What else do Canadian businesses need to do to remain competitive? What is the core issue in advancing Canada’s lagging AI adoption? What will it take for Canada to produce best-in-class AI talent?

Key insights

There is a shift in the Canadian AI job market toward more specialized, core AI skills— skills that are only and directly applicable to developing and using AI technologies. The demand for core AI skills increased by 37.0 per cent from 2018 to 2023. In contrast, the demand for peripheral AI skills—those critical to the use of AI but may also be used in other contexts—decreased by 46.4 per cent. Both core and peripheral AI skills consist of knowledges and technical abilities.

Technical talent, usually at the PhD or MA level, is considered table stakes for businesses to be competitive in the AI market. Organizations need talent that has a deep technical background either in AI or hard sciences, and businesses highly value non-technical skills such as creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, communication, an engineering mindset, and business acumen.

Canadian start-ups and scale-ups developing AI products need senior and specialized employees. These companies face constraints in hiring more junior talent because they don’t have the time and/or capacity to develop AI talent to know how to solve the early challenges of a start-up/scale-up. They told us they are frequently losing their bid for senior and specialized workers to competitors in Canada and the U.S., often due to compensation.