October 8, 2026
Questions an AI consultant should ask you
The questions a competent AI consultant asks before quoting: the work, the systems, your Ontario headcount, personal information, and when to stop.
Sheet 41 A/9 · Southern Georgian Bay Ed. 2026
Ontario · Assessment $999
Most Ontario businesses do not have an AI problem. They have a diagnosis problem.
Statistics Canada asked businesses that skipped AI why. Cost came fourth, at 10.6%. Security came third, at 13.4%. First, at 40.0%: AI is not relevant to what they do. That is almost never true. It is what not knowing where to start sounds like on a survey.
$999 Once. In 10 business days you know the three jobs to automate, and what each one is costing you now.
Credited in full against any automation project you go ahead with.
Fixed fee, no retainerTen business days, start to reportThree jobs, with hours and dollars on eachThe fee comes off the build
Survey of the territory
The numbers this business is built on
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19.2%
of Canadian businesses used AI in Q2 2026
Up from 6.1% two years earlier. Statistics Canada.
Source: www150.statcan.gc.ca -
40.0%
of non-adopters said AI is "not relevant" to them
The top reason given, ahead of security at 13.4% and cost at 10.6%.
Source: www150.statcan.gc.ca -
9.9%
adoption among rural businesses, against 21.0% urban
An eleven point gap inside the same economy.
Source: www150.statcan.gc.ca -
$15,000
available to Ontario SMEs for a digital adoption plan
Ontario Centre of Innovation, DMAP, first come first served.
Source: oc-innovation.ca
Surveyed by www150.statcan.gc.ca, oc-innovation.ca. Every figure on this sheet links to the release it came from.
What I do
Four services, and the first one decides whether you need the others
The assessment comes first, always. It is the only one of these I will sell to somebody who has not already decided what they want, because the other three are builds and a build aimed at the wrong job is the most expensive thing on this page.
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AI Business Assessment
Ten business days. Three named jobs with hours and dollars against each. The fee comes off any build you go ahead with. Read the AI Business Assessment page $999 Fixed. Credited in full against any build -
Workflow Automation
The retyping, the copying between systems, the report somebody rebuilds every Monday. Built, tested, and handed over with the keys. Read the Workflow Automation page $2,500 to $12,000 Per build. Driven by how many systems must talk -
AI Agents and Intake
Answering, qualifying and booking, on your own documents and your own rules, at the hours you are not there. Read the AI Agents and Intake page $4,000 to $15,000 Per agent, plus running costs. Scope drives it -
AI Policy and Staff Training
Your staff are already using AI. This is the written rule for what they may put into it, and the Ontario disclosure duty that came in on January 1, 2026. Read the AI Policy and Staff Training page $1,500 to $4,000 Policy, plus a half day of training on site or remote
The one product
Four services end. This one does not.
Every service above is an engagement: scoped, quoted, delivered, finished. Windfall is the exception and it is sold by the month, because the work it does is the work that repeats. It is listed separately rather than as a fifth card, because a subscription and a project are different commitments and putting them in one grid hides that.
Marketing Automation for Small Business
The posting, the email, the follow-up on an enquiry that went quiet, and the monthly report. Running on a schedule, with your approval before anything goes out.
$3,500 then $600 to $1,500
Setup once, then monthly. Channels and volume drive it
How Windfall worksFind your job
Which of these is happening in your business?
The starting point decides the engagement, and the wrong starting point is expensive. Find the one that sounds like your week. It maps to what is causing it and to the work that actually addresses it.
- Somebody retypes the same data into two systems Integration build Now
- Quotes take three days because one person writes them all Quote automation Now
- Calls and emails go unanswered after 5pm After-hours intake agent Now
- The same forty questions arrive every week Answer agent on your own documents Soon
- Staff are pasting client data into free chatbots Use policy, urgently Now
- You post jobs and employ 25 or more people Job posting disclosure Now
- You bought an AI tool and nobody uses it Adoption and training Soon
- You know AI should help but not where Start with the assessment Planned
- Somebody quoted you five figures and you are unsure Second opinion, priced Soon
- Month end takes three people two days Reporting automation Planned
- Nobody has posted anything since the spring Windfall, monthly Soon
- Enquiries go quiet and nobody chases them Automatic follow-up Now
- You pay for marketing and cannot say what it bought Reporting you can read Soon
None of these quite right? Book the 15 minute call and describe the week instead. The pattern is usually obvious to somebody who has seen it before and invisible from inside it.
Where I work
Ontario, and the work is not the same in each part of it
A Brampton logistics firm, a Waterloo software company and a Sault Ste. Marie contractor are not running the same business, and the automation that pays in one is dead weight in another. Each city page below says what the local economy actually runs on and which of the four services fits it.
- Toronto Greater Toronto Area Finance, professional services, head offices
- Ottawa Eastern Ontario Federal public service, defence, telecom engineering
- Mississauga Peel Region Head offices, pharmaceuticals, airport logistics
- Brampton Peel Region Trucking, warehousing, food and advanced manufacturing
- Hamilton Golden Horseshoe Steel, metal fabrication, health sciences
- London Southwestern Ontario Insurance, health research, food processing
- Markham York Region Information technology, electronics, professional services
- Vaughan York Region Construction, distribution, trades supply
Latest notes
What changed, and what it costs
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October 4, 2026
Preparing for an AI consultant
What to write down before you meet an AI consultant: who decides, every system you pay for, your worst hour, three counted jobs, and where personal data sits.
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October 3, 2026
Signs an AI consultant is overselling
A savings figure before anyone has watched the work, a product before a problem, nothing marked skip. The signs of an oversold AI pitch, and how to test one.
What people ask before they spend $999
What does the $999 AI assessment actually include?
Ten business days of work ending in a written document and a 60 minute walkthrough. Inside it: an inventory of every repeated task in your business that a machine could do, the three worth doing first, an hours-per-week and dollars-per-year figure against each, the specific tools each one needs with their real subscription costs, a build estimate for each, and the ones I recommend you do not do. It is written to be handed to another supplier. If you take it elsewhere and get the work done cheaper, the document did its job.
How does the $999 credit work?
If you go ahead with any automation project with me after the assessment, the full $999 comes off that project. Not a discount code and not a percentage. The whole fee. So the real choice is $999 for the diagnosis alone, or nothing extra if you also want the work done.
Why is this $999 when other firms charge $3,000?
Canadian consultancies that publish rate cards put a readiness assessment at $1,500 to $5,000, and several open at $2,000 or $3,500. Two things make $999 work. The scope is fixed rather than open, so there is no discovery phase billed by the hour. And the assessment is how I find build work, which means it does not have to carry a consulting margin on its own.
Do you actually build the automations, or just write the report?
Both, and the report is written so you can take it to somebody else. Most builds land between $2,500 and $12,000 depending on how many systems have to talk to each other. The Canadian agencies publishing numbers quote $2,000 to $8,000 for a single workflow and $2,500 to $25,000 for a project, so this is the same market rate, quoted before you have paid me anything.
My business is too small for AI. Is it?
Statistics Canada measured 19.9% adoption among businesses with one to four employees against 27.8% among businesses with 100 or more. The gap between the smallest firms and the largest is under eight points, which is a much smaller gap than most owners assume. Small businesses adopt at close to enterprise rates because one person wearing four hats has more repeated work per head, not less.
Is my data safe if I use these tools?
It depends entirely on which tools, and this is a real question rather than a formality. In May 2026 the Privacy Commissioner of Canada found that OpenAI's initial training of ChatGPT did not comply with Canadian privacy law. PIPEDA applies to personal information in prompts, in retrieval corpora and in model outputs exactly as it applies to a database. Part of the assessment is saying which of your processes can use a consumer chatbot and which need something that keeps the data inside your own systems.
Can a grant pay for this?
Possibly, and it is worth checking before you pay me. The Ontario Centre of Innovation runs a Digital Modernization and Adoption Plan worth up to $15,000 toward exactly this kind of planning work, for Ontario for-profit SMEs with one to 499 employees, on a first come first served basis while funds last. Eligibility, timing and the application are yours to run, not mine, and I will not claim an approval I cannot control. Tell me on the call if you are applying and I will write the assessment so it lines up with what that application asks for.
What if the assessment says I should not automate anything?
Then it says that, and you have saved a five figure build. It happens most often with businesses under about five people, where the repeated work is real but does not yet add up to enough hours to pay back a build, and with businesses whose actual problem is that nobody has written down how the work is done. You cannot automate a process that only exists in one person's head.
You are here
Before you spend anything
Tell me how many people work there, what the busiest hour of the week looks like, and which task everybody complains about. That is usually enough to say on a first call whether an assessment is worth your $999 or whether you have one obvious problem that needs one obvious fix.
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