By Susan Jones, Co-Founder, WebMax Canada

On July 7 the federal government announced $10.2 million through PrairiesCan for six Manitoba businesses. First money out the door under the AI for All strategy from June. I read the announcement twice, because the interesting part wasn’t the dollar figure. All six of those businesses already had AI projects underway before the program existed. The funding didn’t create anything. It backed work that was already happening.

If you’ve ever chased public work, you know this movie. The bonding, the WCB clearance, the insurance certs, the safety stats, the reference list. You assemble all of it months before any tender you actually want shows up, because once the RFP is posted you’re out of runway. The companies that win were ready before the opportunity had a name.

The AI money is behaving the same way. And there’s more coming. The regional AI program is getting a $500 million expansion, delivered through PacifiCan in BC, PrairiesCan on the Prairies, and their equivalents heading east. BDC opened a $500 million loan program in the spring called LIFT for smaller businesses adopting AI. The strategy’s stated goal is to push business AI adoption from around 12 percent to 60 percent by 2034, and the priority sectors read like a ConstructionLinks subscriber list. Manufacturing. Energy. Transportation. Infrastructure.

Now the part nobody selling you something will say out loud: the eligibility rules for the expanded regional money haven’t been published. Anyone who tells you today that your company would qualify is guessing. Treat that the way you’d treat a sub quoting a firm number off a napkin.

Our team has spent over ten years doing this work for contractors and trades companies, and I spent a stretch of this spring driving through BC and Alberta visiting the kinds of businesses we serve, shops and yards and job sites, writing about it as I went. Different provinces, same pattern. The work is excellent. The paperwork about the work is a mess.

I mean specifics. A phone number from two office moves ago still sitting on a directory nobody remembers signing up for. A website that says “serving Victoria” while the Google profile says a different city entirely. Hours showing closed Saturdays when the trucks roll every Saturday. One company we audited had four different versions of its own name floating around online, and two of them were fighting each other in Google’s eyes.

Earlier this year one of our clients, a home services company, had its Google Business Profile suspended. Nothing shady on their end. Google’s systems flagged something, and getting it back meant weeks of documentation: proof of address, photos of the trucks and the signage, a utility bill, the works. During those weeks the phone still worked, the crews still ran, and the business was effectively invisible to anyone searching for what they do. That’s what a paperwork problem costs now.

And just last week, the same days the funding news broke, we were fielding worried calls about Google reviews vanishing off client profiles. Google confirmed on July 3 it’s a bug and says legitimate reviews will be restored. Fine. But the owners who noticed within a day were the ones who track their profiles. Most owners would never have known.

Here’s why any of this connects to a funding announcement. More buyers now ask AI assistants to name a contractor or supplier instead of scrolling results. Those systems behave like a procurement officer going through a prequal package. They look for information they can read, check, and trust. Same name everywhere. Services in plain language. Real reviews. Answers to the questions a buyer actually asks.

Nobody can promise you a spot in those results, any more than a complete prequal package promises you the contract. What it does is put you in the running. And it’s the same package twice. The company whose information is clean and consistent is the one that can move fast when program rules drop, and it’s the one an AI system can confidently mention to a customer in the meantime. One set of boring paperwork, two payoffs.

The first cheque under this strategy went to businesses that moved before the money existed. BC’s turn comes through PacifiCan, details pending. Whether you ever apply or not, do what you already do for public work. Get the package together early, keep it current, and stop assuming someone would tell you if something broke. Nobody told the company with the suspended profile. They found out when the phone went quiet.

Susan Jones is Co-Founder of WebMax Canada, a 100% Canadian-owned digital marketing company based in Victoria, BC, and Google Certified, working with contractors and trades businesses across the country for over 10 years. Read more from the team on the WebMax Canada blog.

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