Draft·October 12, 2026·AI Assisted

Library Card AI: A Proposal for Public AI Access in Ottawa

This proposal asks Ottawa to pilot free, metered access to leading AI models through the public library card, delivered through a gateway run by Ottawa Public Library that can later carry sovereign Canadian models to every resident.

Executive summary

Pilot year: $642,007; 12 months, phased launch
Three years: $3,065,078; pilot plus two open years
Per resident, year 3: $1.30; across all 1,017,449 residents
Revenue: $0; free to residents

This costs the City money; it does not make any. The service is free to residents and earns no revenue. In the base case the pilot year costs about $642,007 and three years cost about $3,065,078, before any provincial or federal grants. About 68% of the year 3 cost is metered model use, which is capped per card, so the library controls the total by setting the allowance. Explore the budget model to change the assumptions and see every line.

What the money buys:

Access for residents who don't have it. By year 3, about 36,630 residents a month use paid-tier AI for about $3.01 per user per month, all costs included, against roughly US$20 a month for a consumer subscription.
Practical results. Job applications, government forms, coursework and small-business paperwork, which the pilot's evaluation measures directly.
AI literacy at scale. Staff-led workshops in every branch, in a country ranked 44th of 47 for AI training.
A public channel for sovereign AI. When Canadian models arrive, every cardholder gets them the same day, with no new app or account system to build.
A cheap way to find out. If the pilot misses its targets, Council stops after year 1 at the pilot cost.

The gap

Capable AI now sits behind a monthly subscription, and the residents who would gain most from it are the least likely to pay for one. Job seekers, newcomers, students, seniors and sole proprietors get the weaker free tier, usually in exchange for their data.

Canada is behind on this. KPMG research ranks Canada 44th of 47 countries in AI literacy and training (KPMG). The federal strategy released June 4, 2026, AI for All, names public libraries as AI literacy partners, but analysts note no funding is earmarked for that role (Cultural Policy Hub).

Libraries solved this problem once already. They bought books, then internet access, then databases and e-books, and shared them through one card. AI is the next shared resource, and Ottawa Public Library already has the three things it needs: an identity system, public trust on privacy, and staff who teach people to use information tools.

Phase 1: AI on the library card

Every Ottawa Public Library cardholder gets a free monthly allowance of AI use, signed in with a card number and PIN, from home or in a branch.

A library-run chat page, not a vendor account. Residents never hand an email, phone number or payment card to an AI company.
Paid-tier models from at least two vendors, such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, bought under metered enterprise contracts.
A visible monthly allowance. Each card has a usage budget, $5 in the base case below, that resets monthly. When it runs out, the resident drops to a cheaper model until the reset.
Staff support. Branches run drop-in help and short workshops on using AI well and checking its answers.

Metered contracts are the key design choice. Consumer subscriptions are sold per person, and Toronto Public Library reports that no licensing model exists for shared public use (Urban Libraries Council). Buying by usage means the library pays only for what residents use and can cap the total.

How it works

One sign-in, two phases of models.

Every request passes through a gateway the library controls. The gateway is the only part Ottawa has to own, and it is why models can be added or swapped without residents changing anything.

Phase 2: a conduit for sovereign AI

The same gateway becomes the public distribution channel for any model a Canadian government releases or certifies. Adding a model is a configuration change, and every cardholder in Ottawa has it the same day.

Governments get three things they would otherwise have to build:

Reach. A sign-in that residents already hold, with no new app or account system.
A trusted proxy. The library sits between the resident and the model operator, so neither a vendor nor a government department sees who asked what.
A place to enforce standards. Admission to the gateway can require Canadian hosting, both official languages, audit logging, and the Canada Trusted AI Certification the federal strategy proposes.

The federal direction supports this. AI for All commits to a public supercomputer, sovereign compute under Canadian law, Canadian foundation model research, and trusted AI agents for all post-secondary students (Bennett Jones). Libraries extend that last commitment to everyone who is not a student.

No government has yet announced a sovereign model for public use. Phase 2 is an option the design keeps open, and Phase 1 does not depend on it.

Precedents

Three precedents show the demand, the delivery model and the policy backing. None yet offers remote, per-card access.

Precedent	What it did	What it leaves open
Toronto Public Library AI Upskilling Initiative (April 2025 to December 2026)	Free generative AI tools at 40 sites, plus training. Funded by $2.8 million from Google.org. 95% of surveyed participants reported more confidence with AI.	In-branch only, funded by one vendor's charity, ends December 2026.
Public AI Libraries Project (US, 2025 to 2026)	A cloud AI kiosk on an existing library computer, with a private account per patron. Libraries pay $1,000 per kiosk per year. Six active partner libraries; partners include the Library of Congress.	In-branch kiosk only, no home access by card.
AI for All, Canada's national AI strategy (June 4, 2026)	Names public libraries as AI literacy partners and commits to sovereign compute and Canadian foundation models.	No library funding earmarked; no public channel for sovereign models.

This proposal adds what is missing: access from anywhere on the card, a budget per resident, several vendors, and a route for sovereign models.

Cost

Model cost is capped by design: it can never exceed active users × monthly allowance. The library sets the allowance to fit the budget, so spending cannot pass the ceiling.

The base case assumes 407,000 cardholders (an estimate from Ottawa's population), 5% of them active each month in the open phase and rising 2 points a year, a $5 monthly allowance, and 40% of it used. The pilot phases in: three months of preparation, six months for a capped first cohort, then three months open to every cardholder. The figures are planning estimates, not vendor quotes.

Cost	Year 1 (pilot)	Year 2	Year 3
Model usage	$162,053	$700,854	$901,098
Gateway and technology	$126,000	$60,500	$60,500
Staff and program	$190,590	$229,920	$229,920
Setup and compliance	$105,000	$10,000	$10,000
Contingency	$58,364	$100,127	$120,152
Total	$642,007	$1,101,401	$1,321,670
Ceiling on model usage	$395,250	$1,709,400	$2,197,800

Costs outside model usage need quotes from the library: gateway build and hosting, a privacy impact assessment, staff training, and a program coordinator. The gateway itself need not be built from scratch; the US Public AI Libraries Project publishes its kiosk software as open source. The budget model breaks every line down and lets you change the assumptions.

Candidate funding: the library operating budget, Ontario library grants, the federal National AI Literacy Initiative once funded, and vendor credits accepted only under a multi-vendor rule.

Privacy, safety and governance

The gateway applies library privacy practice to AI: the library knows a card was used, and no one keeps a record of what the resident asked.

Identity stays at the library. Requests reach the model without the card number or name attached.
No training on resident data. Contracts prohibit vendors from training on prompts and require minimal retention.
Counts, not content. The library stores usage totals per card for metering and does not store conversations by default.
Canadian data residency where a vendor offers it, and mandatory for sovereign models in Phase 2.
Age rules follow the library's existing internet-use policy, with guardian consent for children's cards.
Acceptable use relies on the vendors' built-in safety systems and the library's code of conduct.
Public reporting. The library publishes the model list, costs and usage statistics, and completes a privacy impact assessment before launch.

The library board owns the policy. In Ontario, the board's handling of personal information falls under MFIPPA, and legal review should confirm the fit in Ottawa.

Pilot

A 12-month pilot in three stages tests demand and cost before any permanent commitment.

Stage	Months	What happens	Gate to continue
Prepare	1 to 3	Privacy impact assessment, two-vendor procurement, gateway set-up, staff training	Board approves the assessment and acceptable-use policy
Limited launch	4 to 9	Two or three branches plus home access for a capped first cohort of cardholders	Cost per active user within budget; no serious privacy incident
Open access	10 to 12	All cardholders, with the allowance sized to the budget	Evaluation report to Ottawa Council with a continue, change or stop recommendation

What success looks like

The pilot succeeds if it answers one question clearly: does AI on the library card reach residents who lacked it, help them get real things done, and do so at a cost and risk the library can carry? A clear "stop" is a useful result too. A pilot that ends without an answer is the only real failure.

The library and an independent evaluator fix the targets before launch. The figures below are suggested starting points, drawn from the base case and from the Toronto precedent.

Question	Measure	Success looks like	Rethink if
Do people use it?	Monthly active cards, by stage	60% of the first cohort active each month (about 3,000 people); about 20,350 a month once open	Under half the planned users after three months
Does it reach the right people?	Share of users with no paid AI access before, from a one-question sign-up survey; use by branch and neighbourhood	At least 60% had no paid access; use spread across branches, including lower-income neighbourhoods	Most users already pay for a subscription, or use clusters in a few well-off branches
Do they keep using it?	Share of the first cohort still active three months after sign-up	At least 40%	Under 20%: a novelty, not a tool
Does it help them get things done?	Opt-in survey of tasks completed: job applications, government forms, coursework, business paperwork	At least half of surveyed users name a concrete task they finished, backed by a set of resident stories	Few users can name a practical result
Do they use it well?	Workshop exit survey on confidence and on checking AI answers	At least 80% report more confidence and can name a way to check an answer (Toronto reported 95%)	Confidence rises but checking habits do not
Is the cost under control?	Model cost per active user per month; total spend against the ceiling	Model cost at or under $2.00 per user per month; spending never passes the ceiling	The allowance would have to shrink below a useful level to stay within budget
Is the allowance the right size?	Share of active cards that hit the monthly cap	Between 5% and 15%	Over 30% (too small to be useful) or under 2% (larger than needed)
Can staff carry it?	Staff hours on AI support per branch per week; staff survey	Within the hours budgeted, and most trained staff feel able to help	Support crowds out other branch services
Does it work?	Gateway uptime and card sign-in success rate	At least 99% uptime and 95% of sign-ins succeed first time	Repeated outages or sign-in failures drive users away
Is it safe and private?	Privacy and safety incidents; vendor contract compliance; security audit	No serious privacy incident; no conversation content stored; vendors pass audit	Any serious privacy breach pauses the pilot until the board reviews it
Does it bring people to the library?	New card sign-ups attributed to the service; workshop attendance	A measurable rise in new cards, read as a bonus rather than a core target	Not a stop signal on its own

Every measure respects the privacy design. The gateway counts sign-ins, usage and cap hits per card and keeps no conversations, so the evaluation never reads what residents asked. Who uses the service and what it helped them do come from short, voluntary surveys and interviews, not from logs. The library takes a baseline before launch, including card sign-up rates and how many residents report access to paid AI, so the pilot has something to measure against.

The evaluation report then points to one of three decisions:

Continue if most targets are met, cost is within the ceiling and there has been no serious privacy incident.
Change if demand is real but the reach or cost is off: resize the allowance, focus outreach on the branches and groups the pilot missed, or shift effort from home access to in-branch help.
Stop if few residents use it, if users mostly had paid access already, or if privacy cannot be protected. Council's exposure is then limited to the pilot year.

Objections

The strongest objection is that free AI tiers already exist, and the pilot is designed to test it.

Objection	Response
Free tiers already exist.	They are weaker, rate-limited, tied to a personal account, and often paid for with user data. If free tiers close the gap, the pilot's survey of prior access will show it and Council can stop.
Costs will run away.	Spending is capped per card and in total. The allowance shrinks before the budget grows.
Public money goes to foreign tech firms.	So do database and e-book licences. The gateway keeps the library free to switch vendors and to move to Canadian models as they arrive.
AI gives wrong answers.	It does, and residents are using it anyway. The library is the one provider that pairs access with teaching people to check it.
The sovereign model may never come.	Phase 1 stands alone. Phase 2 costs nothing until a model exists.
Cards will be shared or abused.	The loss is limited to one card's monthly allowance, and the existing code of conduct applies.

The ask

Ottawa Council and the Ottawa Public Library Board are asked to approve four steps:

Direct library and IT staff to scope the 12-month pilot and report back within 90 days with a budget.
Authorise a privacy impact assessment and a two-vendor procurement for metered AI access.
Set a pilot budget of $642,007, within which model usage is capped at $395,250, with the per-card allowance sized to fit it.
Write to the Ontario and federal ministers responsible for AI, offering Ottawa Public Library as a pilot channel for sovereign models and requesting funding under the National AI Literacy Initiative.

A shared gateway specification, adopted by libraries neighbouring Ottawa, would turn one city's pilot into a national distribution layer.

Sources

Take this to your own city

This proposal is written for Ottawa. Copy a prompt with the full text and paste it into an AI assistant with web search, such as Claude or ChatGPT. It asks for your city and rewrites the proposal around that city's by-laws, programs, figures and sources.