AI-related jobs have pumped as much as $52 billion into Ontario’s economy in five years, about half of the estimated value the sector has created country-wide, according to a new Deloitte Canada report commissioned by the Vector Institute and shared exclusively with The Logic. The data offers one of the clearest pictures yet of AI’s economic impact in Canada.

Between 2019 and 2024, people working in AI contributed between $42 billion and $52 billion to Ontario’s GDP, compared to $82 billion to $100 billion across Canada. According to the report, each AI job added nearly $200,000 to Canada’s economy each year, well above the economic output per average worker in 2024, based on Statistics Canada and World Bank data.

The findings partly answer the long-standing question of how much economic value AI is already creating inside Canada. The results were “pleasant surprises,” said Vector CEO Glenda Crisp. “Just the amount of economic growth that’s already happened in the last five years,” she said, “it was bigger than we thought.”

Early economic gains from AI coincide with billions of dollars in public and private investment in the technology and infrastructure to support it. From 2019 through March 2025, that includes $446 million in federal AI funding for Ontario and $9.8 billion in private investment for the province. In the same period, there was $1.1 billion in public investment and $17 billion in private investment across Canada, the report found.

Major federal bets during that period include $443 million in 2022 to renew the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. On the private side, Canadian AI firms closed some of the country’s largest tech financings, including Cohere’s August 2025 US$500-million raise backed by investors such as PSP Investments and Nvidia, Waabi’s June 2024 US$200-million Series B led by Uber and Khosla Ventures and Xanadu’s US$100 million round in 2022 led by Georgian Partners. 

The report projects that AI’s economic returns will grow dramatically over the next decade, as the technology spreads beyond early adopters and specialized teams. By 2035, AI could add $122 billion to Ontario’s GDP and $298 billion to Canada’s—growth the study’s authors describe as “net gains,” meaning it would not occur without the technology. The provincial and federal governments could see $14 billion and $62 billion in added revenue, respectively.  

Despite concerns about AI putting scores of people out of work, Vector and Deloitte expect the technology to add tens of thousands of jobs each year across Canada. In Ontario, it projects 17,600 new jobs per year and 41,500 annually across Canada. The authors expect a modest rise in pay because of AI, with Ontario workers’ average real wage increasing $1,028 by 2035 because of productivity improvements tied to AI adoption. The report noted, however, that “potential job displacement and broader impacts on the labour market” aren’t captured in its modelling.

The projected gains, meanwhile, are not evenly distributed. The Greater Toronto Area is expected to receive the largest lift, with nearly 9,000 new AI-related jobs each year, reflecting its dominance in AI talent, research institutions and corporate users. Elsewhere, the numbers thin out fast. Northern Ontario is projected to add fewer than 1,300 AI-related jobs a year, with eastern and southwestern Ontario not much further ahead. The report doesn’t extend the analysis to other provinces, but the pattern shows that even in Canada’s strongest AI hub, the gains are likely to be patchy.

Crisp said the concentration of large companies, universities and research institutions in Toronto draws the economic impacts to the city. “Not to say it’s not going to expand out. I’m sure it will,” she said, as rural-based sectors like agriculture and mining adopt AI technologies. 

While Crisp was encouraged to see just how much economic impact AI could have over the next decade, she said the onus is on companies to use the technology. “We really need to see everybody moving, and we especially need to start looking at our small and medium enterprises and really getting them going,” she said. “The risk is that we don’t step up and we leave almost $300 billion in GDP on the table.”