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As organizations across Canada begin using AI more widely across day‑to‑day operations, a new study from the IBM Institute for Business Value finds that oversight and governance are failing to keep pace.
The global study, conducted with the Dubai Future Foundation, surveyed more than 1,000 senior leaders across 20 countries and 21 industries, including Canada, to examine how organizations govern AI as it moves from experimentation into systems people rely on.
The findings come as conversations around artificial intelligence and digital sovereignty accelerate in Canada, driven by expanding AI use in public services, regulated industries, and systems that shape everyday decisions. That rapid expansion places new responsibility on organizations without giving them clear visibility into how AI operates.
"You can't govern systems you can't see," said Manav Gupta, Vice President and CTO of IBM Canada. "AI systems now act as critical infrastructure, and that raises real questions about trust, accountability, and sovereignty for Canadian businesses, governments, and institutions. Governance is what makes digital sovereignty real and enforceable."
Key Findings Show Oversight Struggling to Keep Up with AI Use
The study shows that Canadian organizations want to use AI more broadly, but many lack the governance needed to stay in control.
- 63% of Canadian executives say gaps in AI governance already make it harder to deploy AI at scale.
- AI irregularities cost large Canadian enterprises an estimated $144 million per year, including errors, bias, duplication, and uncoordinated deployments.
- Half of those losses are associated with governance gaps, not failures of the AI technology itself.
Growing AI Use Raises Questions About Control and Accountability
As AI systems become embedded in daily operations, organizations face rising expectations to explain how AI supports decisions, how it behaves in practice, and who remains accountable when outcomes affect people or services.
"We see the conversation changing in Canada," Gupta said. "As organizations rely on AI more often in real‑world situations, Canadians want clearer answers about who controls these systems, how decisions get made, and who can step in when something goes wrong."
Digital Sovereignty Depends on Control, Not Isolation
Public discussion of digital sovereignty is often fixated on borders or data location, with less attention given to issues such as control and access. The study points to a more immediate challenge as AI use expands.
As AI systems influence decisions in healthcare, transportation, financial services, and public programs, organizations need the ability to see which AI tools they use, understand how decisions are produced, control access and updates, and intervene when systems behave unexpectedly.
"Digital sovereignty is about control, not isolation," Gupta said. "Organizations need governance they can enforce and demonstrate, not just policies on paper."
This approach reflects a growing consensus in Canada that sovereignty flows from transparency and operational control, not technological solitude.
Coordinated Governance Reduces Risk and Improves Outcomes
The study also examines organizations that coordinate AI governance across the full lifecycle of AI systems, referred to as orchestration-led governance.
Globally, organizations that use this approach reported stronger productivity gains, higher returns on AI investment, and significantly fewer losses tied to AI errors and misfires. Despite these advantages, only 18 percent of Canadian organizations say they currently have systems in place to coordinate and govern AI across everyday operations.
Systems Must Enable Operational Control
Organizations must balance maintaining necessary authority with the pace of innovation, while facing increasing scrutiny from regulators, auditors, and boards. Yet many technological environments struggle to provide consistent, auditable answers to these requirements, creating a gap between policy and operational reality. IBM Sovereign Core is a new software platform designed to help organizations build and operate AI-ready sovereign environments and verify their control, giving enterprises and governments an end-to-end approach to digital sovereignty.
The full IBV study, AI in motion: Orchestrating AI at scale for sovereignty and resilience, is available at, https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/ai-orchestration-layer
Media Contact
Lorraine Baldwin
IBM Canada Communications
lorraine@ca.ibm.com
SOURCE IBM
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