{"id":285462,"date":"2025-11-15T21:20:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T21:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/285462\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T21:20:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T21:20:48","slug":"ontario-public-service-has-highest-copilot-use-in-canada-as-ford-government-rolls-out-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/285462\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario Public Service has highest Copilot use in Canada, as Ford government rolls out AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ontario government is dipping its toe into the rapidly growing world of artificial intelligence<\/a>, telling civil servants they can use Microsoft Copilot in their day-to-day jobs and offering some more advanced tools.<\/p>\n

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The move appears to have been embraced, according to internal metrics, which show the Ontario Public Service has the highest Copilot chat use in the country.<\/p>\n

Government presentations, obtained using freedom of information laws, show more than 15,000 civil servants use the artificial intelligence assistant every week, with more than 120,000 pageviews for the \u201cCopilot Chat InsideOPS\u201d page.<\/p>\n

That, government presentations claim, is the highest usage in Canada.<\/p>\n

Security concerns around public data and sensitive information mean government employees are banned from other chatbots like Google Gemini or ChatGPT in most cases, but are being encouraged to find ways to integrate generative artificial intelligence into their roles.<\/p>\n

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Ontario\u2019s Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, Stephen Crawford, who is in charge of the program, said the early signs were that the new system was working.<\/p>\n

He said, in addition to Copilot across government, some artificial intelligence leaders and pioneers had been chosen for more complex tasks and integrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve initiated a rollout to several hundred people of a more advanced program, which we\u2019re under review with right now,\u201d he told Global News.\u00a0\u201cFrom what I understand, at current levels, the average public servant is saving almost three hours per week.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The documents seen by Global News show the government is currently in its first phase of rolling out artificial intelligence, where it is looking to \u201cestablish AI foundations\u201d and identify \u201cuse cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Once it wraps up its pilot phase, it will look to develop purpose-built artificial intelligence, something one document suggests it hopes will increase productivity by 20 per cent.<\/p>\n

A third phase labelled \u201cindustrialize AI\u201d would see the government apply artificial intelligence \u201cat scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crawford said the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence across government wouldn\u2019t necessarily mean job losses among the civil servants, arguing it would give people time back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be job transformation, people are going to move into more productive roles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo no, I don\u2019t see job loss, I see job enhancements and productivity improvement, which companies and organizations and governments will reinvest to get further productivity gains.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the long-term implications could be major, the current examples are relatively straightforward.<\/p>\n

Examples of good use cases for artificial intelligence referenced in government documents included media monitoring and drafting news releases.<\/p>\n

Cam Vidler \u2014 the co-founder of the artificial intelligence company Authentica and former chief of staff to the finance minister \u2014 said the potential of agentic artificial intelligence meant the government could think bigger.<\/p>\n

Agentica AI is a developing area, where AI agents can be programmed with a set of criteria to perform certain tasks \u2014 combining the decision-making ability of AI with strict rules to avoid hallucinations seen in broader chatbots.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the back end of government, you\u2019re talking about automating work that is around the operations of government \u2014 sourcing and procurement, making payments that the government\u2019s obligated to make,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of efficiencies you could find.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Vidler said training agents to handle tasks at ServiceOntario or the administration of questions with programs like government rebates could save manhours and offer faster answers for members of the public.<\/p>\n

Last year, for example, the government offered $200 rebate cheques to people across the province, ahead of an early election.<\/p>\n

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In some cases, the program faced issues with out-of-date addresses, delays or cheques being sent to people who had passed away. Those issues couldn\u2019t generally be solved through existing IT systems, a situation Vidler suggested AI could be used in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cExceptions go straight into somebody\u2019s inbox and it\u2019s something somebody has to deal with,\u201d he said. \u201cSo when you look at how many call centre agents you need to deploy to roll out a program like that, the main driver of that is there\u2019s just things we can\u2019t reliably automate.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Copilot the only artificial intelligence approved for most in the civil service, the government is likely still far from those situations.<\/p>\n

Crawford said it was \u201chard to say exactly\u201d when he would ramp up the use of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if I had to speculate,\u201d he said, \u201cI would say within a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vidler said it was important to select a few situations to use the systems rather than to try and come up with an entire overarching strategy for a technology that is ever-evolving.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to go and decide to do AI on everything, right? Or come up with a huge AI policy that thinks of all the different circumstances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPick a couple low-hanging fruit examples, define processes that you know you could automate better, that you know are prone to errors right now, and that you don\u2019t want your people spending time on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ontario government is dipping its toe into the rapidly growing world of artificial intelligence, telling civil servants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,13403,13404,714,61],"class_list":["post-285462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ford-government","tag-ontario-politics","tag-politics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}