06:47 AM EST, 02/13/2026 (MT Newswires) -- The Bank of Canada's Senior Deputy Governor, Carolyn Rogers, urged small- and medium-sized businesses to invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in his Thursday remarks, said Bank of Montreal (BMO).

This is an echo of her famous "break the glass, productivity emergency" speech from two years ago, noted the bank. Since that speech, some serious upward revisions to gross domestic product have left productivity in a less dismal spot.

However, at a bit less than a 0.7% annual rate since the pandemic, output per hour is still running below its long-term trend of around 1%, which was already a bit disappointing, stated BMO.

Casting even further back, the bank can use real GDP per person as a rough and ready proxy for productivity and BMO saw "quite vividly" the underlying slowdown over the decades, only briefly interrupted by the burst in productivity in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

That bump was spurred by the widespread adaptation of the internet, pointed out the bank.

The hope is that AI can generate something akin to that surge, added BMO.