AI Enablement
The department supports teams that want to try artificial intelligence, from idea to production. Propose yours: the AI Enablement team gets back to you, and the registry keeps track of every step.
Listed in the registry, excluding archived ones.
Departmental sectors with at least one initiative.
Initiatives that have reached production.
Five families of capability, and what they concretely do. Pick one to see the matching initiatives.
Three initiatives, told through their problem, their solution and what it changes. Each one started as an idea submitted here.
Automation and Decision Support Pilot
Spotting fishing activity inside a marine protected area meant reading thousands of vessel tracks. An AI analyzes AIS tracks and flags those that look like fishing inside protected areas and coral and sponge zones. The aerial and maritime surveillance team receives the cases to check, instead of searching for them itself.
Team : Conservation and Protection
Perception and Understanding Pilot
Measuring St. Lawrence estuary belugas on drone photos was done by hand, image by image: hours of work for each flight. An AI-assisted morphometric measurement module, developed with the GREMM, takes those measurements instead of the researchers. Measurements come out faster and more consistently. The module has been in use since the agreement ended, in 2024.
Team : Marine Planning and Conservation
Automation and Decision Support Production
Formatting Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat documents for publication took hours of manual touch-ups in Word, in both languages. PolyDocs cleans, standardizes and prepares the translation of those documents in a configurable, low-code pipeline. In production: documents come out compliant with Government of Canada publishing requirements, with no manual rework.
Team : Ecosystems and Oceans Science
Adopting AI responsibly: four guiding principles, four priority areas, and an action plan whose progress can be read here.
Human-centred design
The needs of Canadians and public servants first.
Collaboration
With Indigenous, provincial, territorial and international partners.
Readiness
The data, infrastructure, talent and policies required.
Trustworthiness
Communicating transparently about the use of AI.
Governance and leadership
Aligning AI with the department's core responsibilities.
Transparency and accountability
Strengthening public trust.
Culture and people
Building employees' skills and capacity.
AI adoption and innovation
Flexible, safe and cost-effective use.
Every initiative follows the same path, and the registry keeps a record of each move from one stage to the next.
The AI Enablement team offers thirty minutes to shape your idea with you, even before the form. Write to us.
How it works
Three steps, and a team alongside you at each one. No need to know how to code: you need to know the problem.
Propose your idea
A guided form, no account needed, about twenty minutes: the problem, what you hope for, the data you have. You immediately receive a link to follow your proposal.
The team reviews it with you
The AI Enablement team reads your proposal, gets back to you if needed, and lists it in the registry. It spots similar initiatives and solutions already in place.
Moving forward together
The initiative follows a known path, from assessment to production, with its milestones and its appearances before AI governance bodies. Every step stays visible in the registry.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know how to code?
No. What matters is knowing the problem, the people it affects and the data that exists. The technical solution is built afterwards, with the team.
Who sees my proposal?
The AI Enablement team first. Once listed in the registry, the record is visible to the whole department, without email addresses or internal notes. Requests still being triaged are not published.
What if the idea already exists?
All the better: that is what the registry is for. The team matches your proposal with similar initiatives and connects you with those that could share a solution.
How long does it take?
About twenty minutes for the form. The team acknowledges receipt and gets back to you; triage time depends on volume, and the tracking link shows you where your proposal stands.
Is my data protected?
The form asks for the data classification and whether personal information is involved: that decides where the initiative can live. Nothing protected is published in the registry.
What happens to my proposal next?
It becomes a registry record, with its stage, milestones and log. It may go before the AI governance bodies, and you remain its requester throughout.