The federal government’s public consultation on artificial intelligence transparency closes Sept. 23, giving Canadians and Canadian businesses just over two weeks to weigh in on rules that Ottawa currently has no statute in place to enforce.
The consultation, opened July 23 by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, asks for views on five action areas, according to the department’s consultation document: detecting and identifying AI-generated content, letting people know when they are interacting with an AI system, improving the availability of consistent and understandable information about what AI systems can and cannot do, enabling the tracking of serious incidents involving AI systems, and additional governance measures. Submissions can be made through an anonymous online survey or by email.
Canadians need to know when they are interacting with AI systems, when content has been generated or altered by AI, and what those systems can and cannot do, the government said in announcing the consultation. The file sits with Evan Solomon, appointed Canada’s first minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation in May 2025.
What the announcement did not spell out is how little sits underneath it. Canada’s last attempt at a general AI statute, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, died on the order paper in January 2025 when Parliament was prorogued and Bill C-27 fell with it. No successor bill had been tabled as of mid-2026, a gap the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has described as leaving the country without meaningful AI regulation. Solomon has said publicly that any replacement will not simply revive AIDA in its original form.
For Canadian businesses, that means the obligations that actually apply today come from elsewhere. The federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act governs how personal data feeding an AI system is collected and used. Quebec’s Law 25 requires organizations to tell individuals when a decision about them is based exclusively on automated processing. Federally regulated financial institutions are subject to OSFI’s Guideline B-13 on technology and cyber risk. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security added an advisory on agentic AI in May 2026. None of those instruments was written as an AI transparency rule. Companies deploying AI are stitching compliance together from privacy and operational risk law that predates the technology they are applying it to.
The timing is awkward in one respect. ALL IN, the country’s largest artificial intelligence industry event, runs Sept. 16 and 17 at the Palais des congres in Montreal, roughly a week before submissions close, with speakers from Cohere, Mistral AI, Nvidia and OpenAI on the program. Firms hoping the conference will sharpen their thinking before they file will have days, not weeks, to write it up.
That compressed window matters most for the companies least likely to employ policy staff. Large AI developers will file, and so will the law firms and industry associations that represent them. Whether Canadian startups and mid-sized deployers do will help determine how much of the eventual rulebook reflects what compliance actually costs the businesses expected to carry it.
