The Pace of Change Has Changed

Things are moving incredibly quickly right now. We're all experiencing it. Some days it feels staggering. And the thing that's moving the fastest, and propelling the most change is AI.

AI is accelerating how we research, build, communicate, analyse, automate, and make decisions. New tools are emerging every week. Small teams can now do work that would’ve required entire departments only a few years ago, and opportunities can appear, shift, or disappear within months.

At the same time, many municipal, provincial, and federal organisations are still operating at roughly the same pace they were twenty years ago.

We’re in mid-2026, and organisations are already locking in priorities and budgets for 2027 and 2028. By the time many initiatives are approved, procured, funded, and launched, the opportunity they were designed around may have changed entirely.

These systems were built for stability, accountability, and long-range planning, and those things still matter. But stability without adaptability becomes rigidity. Which, in my opinion, is crippling our communities, provinces and our country as a whole.

If you graphed the pace of technological change against the pace of institutional adaptation, the two curves would be separating at a rate humankind has never seen before. One is climbing sharply. The other is moving almost exactly as it always has.

That gap has serious consequences.

When governments and government-funded organisations can’t respond quickly, communities miss opportunities. Businesses wait. Innovative projects lose momentum. Strong ideas get pushed into the next fiscal year, then the one after that, until someone else has already acted.

This isn’t a criticism of the people working inside these organisations. Most are operating within structures they didn’t design and don’t have the authority to change. But people are still part of systems, and systems only evolve when enough people recognise that the current model is no longer serving the outcomes we need.

We don’t need to abandon long-term planning. We need to build shorter cycles of experimentation, faster procurement pathways, flexible innovation funds, and more room to test ideas before every detail has been mapped two years in advance.

And we need to stop dumping everything that doesn't align perfectly within a prescribed budget definition, into "marketing".

Government should be able to protect public resources while still responding to an opportunity that appears next month. That kind of adaptability would be a massive competitive advantage for Canada and for every region trying to strengthen its economy, support local businesses, and keep pace with the rest of the world.

The technology has changed.
The opportunity has changed.
The pace has changed.

Our systems need to change with it, and they need to change fast.

Ready to support the sector that supports us all?
#GetRoaming and let’s build a more connected, resilient, and thriving Canada, one traveller, one town, one story at a time.

Yours in tourism, innovation and startups,

Founder and CEO, Roamlii