Le français suit.Key findingsBased on the latest release of the Anthropic Economic Index, Canada is at the forefront of Claude adoption. Canada represents 2.6% of global Claude.ai traffic and ranks 8th overall by total volume. Usage per capita is more than four times higher than would be expected given the size of its population.Canada’s high adoption rate is generally consistent with its high-income economy, but still stands out within its peer group. Among the top ten countries that collectively represent more than half of all usage, Canada is second only to the United States in usage per capita.Within Canada, adoption is regionally concentrated. Ontario accounts for 43.9% of conversations. Together with Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta, the four largest provinces account for roughly 94% of national usage. Per capita, British Columbia leads at 1.4x more than expected based on population, followed by Ontario at 1.1x; every other province has below-parity rates of adoption, with Newfoundland and Labrador at 0.2x.In contrast to global, cross-country patterns, provincial income per capita does not appear to explain the gap. Instead, industrial composition appears more important: provinces with large professional, scientific, and technical services sectors use Claude the most. This aligns with other evidence that model capabilities matched to workforce composition determine overall adoption levels within high-income countries. Usage patterns in Canada are largely uncorrelated with adoption rates: Work accounts for 34–40% of conversations in every province, coursework for 13–18%, and personal use for 44–51%.We find evidence that specific use cases coincide with local economic characteristics. Translation requests track public administration employment shares across provinces, likely reflecting Canada's policy of official bilingualism in federal services and communications: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec have both the highest rates of public administration employment and the largest shares of conversations devoted to translation.Document translation is also the most distinctive Canadian use case relative to Anglosphere peers. More generally, Canadian usage tilts toward academic and early-career usage: academic coursework, coding assistance, and resume drafting are all overrepresented, while professional communication and everyday personal tasks are underrepresented.Canada is at the forefront of Claude adoptionAdoption of Claude is high in Canada. Based on a sample of Claude.ai conversations in February 2026, 2.6% of global traffic is in Canada. Adjusting for population, its Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI) is 4.4, which implies that usage per capita is more than four times higher than would be expected based on its working-age population. Among the top ten countries that lead in terms of overall Claude usage volume, Canada has the second-highest AUI, just behind the United States (Figure 1).Figure 1: Usage share and per capita adoption among top ten countries by global Claude.ai useBars show each country’s share (left panel) and the Anthropic AI Usage Index (right panel) based on 1M conversations sampled from Claude.ai in February 2026. Canada highlighted in blue. The Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI) measures whether Claude usage is over- or under-represented in a country relative to its working age population. Canada accounts for 2.6% of global Claude.ai consumer use, ranking eighth globally, and second by AUI. Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026; World Bank.In part, this reflects the fact that Canada is a high-income country. Among advanced economies, as defined by the IMF, there is a clear link between usage per capita and GDP per working-age capita. But Canada’s adoption exceeds what would be expected based on its income (Figure 2). In this sense, Canada appears further along on its AI adoption curve as compared to peer countries, perhaps reflecting its highly educated workforce and proximity to the US technology frontier.Figure 2: Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI) and GDP per working-age capitaThis plot shows the bivariate relationship between each country’s AUI and GDP per working-age person among IMF advanced economies with at least 200 conversations in our sample. The dashed line shows the line of best fit. Canada highlighted in blue. Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026; IMF; World Bank.Within Canada, adoption is concentrated and tracks workforce compositionJust as global adoption of Claude is disproportionately concentrated among a small number of countries, usage within Canada is unevenly distributed across provinces. Ontario accounts for 43.9% of conversations. Another 50% of usage within Canada comes from Quebec (20.8%), British Columbia (18.9%), and Alberta (10.2%). Adjusting for population, the ordering shifts: British Columbia has 1.4x more Claude usage than expected based on its working age population, followed by Ontario (1.1x). The remaining provinces have below-parity rates of adoption. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has an AUI of 0.2.Figure 3: Share of Canada’s Claude.ai use by province and territoryLeft panel: each province's share of Canadian Claude.ai conversations. Right panel: AUI by province, where 1.0 indicates usage proportional to the province's working-age population. Territories are below the reporting threshold. Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026; Statistics Canada.What explains the pattern of regional adoption? We explore this question in Figure 4. In contrast to the global relationship between income and usage, we find that provincial usage per capita is mostly uncorrelated with income. Instead, we find that the industrial composition of regional economies is a key determinant of usage intensity: regions with larger professional, scientific, and technical service sectors—as measured by the share of employment—have systematically higher usage per capita.Evidently, workforce composition—rather than income per se—is a key determinant of within-Canada patterns of adoption. This evidence is consistent with our earlier findings concerning adoption diffusion within the United States. It appears that AI adoption in high-income countries is primarily shaped by how well matched model capabilities are to the structure of the local economy.Figure 4: Anthropic AI Usage Index (AUI) and provincial economic characteristics Panels plot provincial AUI against provincial characteristics: GDP per working-age person (left) and the employment share of professional, scientific and technical services (right). Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026; Statistics Canada.Understanding the distinctive uses of Claude within CanadaDespite the large regional variation in rates of Claude usage, people across Canada tend to use Claude in broadly similar ways. In every province, personal use—looking up health information, researching products, getting help with recipes or home repairs—accounts for 44% to 51% of conversations. Work-related use, where Claude is used to troubleshoot software, draft work emails, and build business applications, accounts for around 34% to 40%. What remains is using Claude to assist with coursework-related tasks (Figure 5).Figure 5: Use-case mix across Canadian provinces Share of each province's conversations classified as work, coursework, or personal, ordered by the provincial AUI (in parentheses). Source: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026.While broad usage patterns are consistent across provinces, we nevertheless find evidence that particular use cases tend to coincide with local economic characteristics. For example, we find that use of Claude for translation and editing requests is systematically higher in parts of the country with a larger share of public administration employment—perhaps reflecting Canada’s commitment to official bilingualism in the public sector, which generates demand for English–French translation wherever government employment is concentrated. Indeed, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec each have the highest rates of public administration employment and the largest share of conversations related to translation assistance.Figure 6: Translation use by province and public administration employmentLeft panel: public administration employment as a share of total provincial employment. Right panel: translation and editing requests as a share of provincial conversations, for the seven provinces above the reporting threshold. Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026; Statistics Canada.In fact, document translation usage is the most distinctive use case in Canada as a whole as compared to peer Anglosphere countries that likewise have high volume of Claude usage—Australia, UK, and the US (Figure 7). More generally, we find that Canadian usage tilts toward education and labor-market entry: academic coursework (mathematics and STEM), coding assistance, and resume drafting are among the most overrepresented categories relative to peer countries. The categories where Canada runs below lean toward professional communication—workplace email, marketing content, legal assistance—and everyday personal tasks to assist with cooking, home maintenance, and health questions.Figure 7: Distinctive Claude use cases in Canada versus Anglosphere peers (Australia, the UK, and the US)This figure shows the net difference in the percent of conversations in Canada versus the average across Australia, the UK, and the US for various conversation groupings representing at least 1% of Canadian conversations (6 most distinctively Canadian and 6 most distinctive across peer countries). Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, February 2026.ConclusionCanada has among the highest rates of Claude adoption around the world, both in terms of overall volume (2.6% of global Claude.ai traffic) and after adjusting for the size of its population. Such intensity of adoption allows us to better understand how Claude usage reflects the structure of the Canadian economy and broader economic conditions.Across the country, adoption is greatest in provinces with a higher share of professional, scientific, and technical services workers. This is consistent with the view that model capabilities well-matched to the composition of the local economy primarily drive overall adoption rates. This stands in contrast to patterns of adoption globally, which appear more tightly linked to income per capita.Particular use cases also reflect the structure of the Canadian economy. Translation is more common in provinces with more public administration employment, consistent with the official-languages requirements that apply across much of Canada's public sector—and document translation is the single most distinctive Canadian use of Claude relative to its Anglosphere peers. More broadly, Canadian usage tilts toward education and labor-market entry, with academic coursework, coding assistance, and resume drafting all overrepresented relative to Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Citation@online{mccrory2026canadacountrybrief,