Policy

First reading in the House of Commons, 15 June 2026

Bill C-36 would enact the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act (PPCDA), amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and make related amendments to other Acts. It was tabled on 15 June 2026 by Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, and is the Carney government's successor to the private-sector privacy reforms that died with Bill C-27 (AIDA) on prorogation in January 2025. The bill recognizes privacy as a fundamental right and establishes a new Digital Safety and Data Protection Commission of Canada with enhanced enforcement powers, penalties, transparency obligations, and individual rights (including data deletion). The government frames Bill C-36 as a "cornerstone" of its National AI Strategy — AI for All: by giving Canadians more control over their personal data, it aims to build the public trust needed for higher adoption of AI tools. Its most directly AI-relevant provisions govern automated decision-making systems — tools that use AI, machine learning, or predictive analytics to assist or replace human judgment — for which organizations would owe transparency and disclosure obligations where a decision could have a significant impact on an individual, and under which unfair or discriminatory profiling may be treated as an inappropriate data practice. Notably, this bill carries forward only the privacy reforms of the former Bill C-27; it does not re-introduce AIDA, leaving Canada without dedicated AI-specific legislation. The points above summarize what the bill says; the following reaction is editorial. Commentators such as Michael Geist have noted the bill shifts private-sector privacy oversight away from the Privacy Commissioner toward a larger, multi-mandate commission, while civil-liberties groups such as the CCLA have criticized it for broad exceptions and for not going far enough on documented AI harms. As of writing the bill sits at first reading; Parliament rises for the summer on 19 June 2026, with the government expected to consult over the summer ahead of sittings resuming 21 September 2026.

Introduced: June 15, 2026

First reading in the House of Commons, 10 June 2026

The Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) would enact two new statutes — the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act — creating a federal online-safety regime aimed primarily at protecting children. It was introduced by Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, on 10 June 2026. Its headline measures are a minimum account age of 16 for social media services (with an exemption pathway for services that can demonstrate adequate child safeguards), mandated age verification, platform "duty to act responsibly" obligations, and a new Digital Safety Commission of Canada to administer and enforce the Act and support victims of online harms. The bill is notable for this tracker because it is the first Canadian legislation to directly regulate AI chatbots. It defines "chatbot services" as AI systems that communicate over the internet, are publicly accessible, use natural-language interfaces to give adaptive, human-like conversational responses, can simulate sustained human-like relationships across sessions, and generate output that is not fully predetermined by their developers or operators. Such services are brought under a chatbot-tailored duty to act responsibly, with specific obligations around crisis situations and named harmful behaviours — a legislative response to concerns about AI companions forming parasocial relationships with vulnerable users and giving harmful advice while appearing authoritative. As of writing the bill sits at first reading; Parliament rises for the summer on 19 June 2026, with sittings resuming 21 September 2026.

Introduced: June 10, 2026

Died on the Order Paper at committee stage (INDU) on prorogation, 6 January 2025

The Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 bundled three components: the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) — Canada's first proposed federal AI-specific legislation. AIDA would have regulated "high-impact" AI systems used in interprovincial and international trade, created an AI and Data Commissioner within ISED, and imposed obligations across the AI lifecycle. High-impact systems were to be defined by risk factors including potential for health/safety harm, human rights impacts, scale of use, severity of potential harms, and the extent to which users could opt out. Examples cited in the ISED companion document included hiring systems, biometric identification tools, behavioural influence systems, and autonomous vehicles. The bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) after second reading in April 2023 and remained there through the end of the 44th Parliament. The committee paused clause-by-clause consideration on 29 May 2024, met once more on 26 September 2024, and on 21 November 2024 confirmed the study would remain paused until at least February 2025. Parliament was prorogued on 6 January 2025, killing the bill before it reached report stage, third reading, or the Senate.

Introduced: June 16, 2022

The commitment instrument that Canadian organizations voluntarily sign to adopt the six outcomes defined in the Canadian Guardrails for Generative AI Code of Practice. Launched September 27, 2023 by Minister François-Philippe Champagne as an interim measure while AIDA was before Parliament. Following AIDA's death on prorogation in January 2025, the code remains the primary federal mechanism for AI accountability. As of March 2025, 51 organizations have signed, including CIBC, Cohere, IBM, CGI, Mila, Vector Institute, Mastercard, and Salesforce.

Published: September 27, 2023

The substantive principles framework underlying Canada's voluntary approach to generative AI governance. Defines six outcomes that developers and deployers of advanced generative AI systems should achieve: Safety, Fairness and Equity, Transparency, Human Oversight and Monitoring, Validity and Robustness, and Accountability. Developed as an interim measure ahead of binding regulation under AIDA; following AIDA's death on prorogation in January 2025, the code remains the primary federal framework for AI governance.

Published: August 16, 2023

"AI for All" is Canada's renewed national AI strategy, launched by Prime Minister Mark Carney in Toronto on 4 June 2026 and led by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) under Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. It emerged from the 30-day AI Sprint and AI Strategy Task Force engagement of late 2025 and the February 2026 summary of inputs. Rather than replacing the 2017 Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, the strategy builds on it. The strategy document names CIFAR and the three National AI Institutes (Amii, Mila, and Vector) — the research-and-talent foundation the earlier strategy created — as continuing Canadian strengths, and shifts the national focus from research and talent toward adoption, sovereignty, and infrastructure. It is anchored in three fundamental priorities — **building public trust**, **creating new opportunities**, and **reinforcing Canadian sovereignty** — which ISED elaborates into six pillars: protecting Canadians and safeguarding democracy; empowering Canadians; powering AI adoption for shared prosperity; building a sovereign AI foundation; scaling Canadian champions; and building trusted partnerships. Backed by roughly $2 billion in new federal investment over five years, its headline measures include: - a national public AI supercomputer and sovereign compute and cloud infrastructure; - an expanded Canadian AI Safety Institute to conduct transparent evaluations of AI models; - a National AI Literacy Initiative reaching one million entry-level post-secondary students and training more than 3,000 educators; - an AI Missions Program led by a flagship health mission; - a Canadian Tech Growth Fund to scale domestic AI companies; - a Sovereign Technology Alliance of international partners. The government projects the strategy could unlock nearly $200 billion in economic growth over five years, create 250,000 new AI-related jobs, deliver 90,000 AI-related job placements for young Canadians, and raise business AI adoption from roughly 12% to 60% by 2034.

Published: June 4, 2026

The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) runs the federal program to advance the development and adoption of standards and conformity assessment for artificial intelligence — the standards-and-certification layer of Canada's AI governance toolkit, complementing legislation and voluntary codes. The program's roots are in the **Canadian Data Governance Standardization Collaborative**, convened by SCC in 2019 with roughly 220 experts from government, industry, civil society, Indigenous organizations, academia, and standards development organizations. Its *Canadian Data Governance Standardization Roadmap* (2021) mapped gaps in data governance standardization and made recommendations that continue to guide the work. **Budget 2021** provided $8.6 million over five years (2021–22 to 2025–26) for SCC to advance AI standardization as part of Phase 2 of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, whose dedicated standards pillar supports the development and adoption of standards and conformity assessment related to AI. In 2023, SCC extended the earlier collaborative into the **AI and Data Governance (AIDG) Standardization Collaborative**, chaired by Chief Statistician of Canada Anil Arora alongside AI policy experts Philip Dawson and Ashley Casovan. It develops standardization strategies aligned with Canadian priorities — including Indigenous leadership in the digital economy and consistency between domestic and international standards — and builds on the roadmap and the Schwartz Reisman Institute white paper *Discerning signal from noise: The state of global AI standardization and what it means for Canada*. In May 2025, SCC and Statistics Canada launched the **AIDG Standardization Hub**, an online one-stop shop for standardization education that helps users — particularly micro, small, and medium enterprises — navigate AI and data governance standards, supporting interoperability and access to international markets. **Canada's National AI Strategy ("AI for All", June 2026)** committed to renew the program's funding under its first pillar (protecting Canadians and safeguarding democracy): "Canada will renew funding for the Standards Council of Canada's AI Program to support our standardization ecosystem, shape global AI standards, and grow a robust AI quality assurance ecosystem. This work will enable standards-based AI testing, certification, interoperability, and global market access."

Published: April 19, 2021

The Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy (PCAIS) is a federal government funding program, first announced in Budget 2017, that established Canada as an early mover in national AI strategy. The strategy is administered by CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) and funds three national AI institutes: the Vector Institute (Toronto), Mila – Quebec AI Institute (Montréal), and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii, Edmonton). Phase 1 (2017–2022) committed $125 million over five years to attract and retain world-leading AI researchers, increase the number of AI-skilled graduates, and support a national research community. The three institutes were designated as national centres under the strategy in 2017. Phase 2 was announced in Budget 2021 with a significantly larger commitment of $443.8 million over ten years. It expanded the strategy's mandate beyond research and talent to include responsible AI development and commercialisation, with CIFAR continuing as administrator.

Published: March 22, 2017

A short campaign statement, co-signed by a multipartisan group of Canadian MPs and senators and endorsed by leading AI researchers, calling for Canada to negotiate an international "trust but verify" regime to prohibit the development of superintelligent AI. The statement argues that superintelligent AI — systems that can autonomously compromise national security, escape human oversight, and upend international stability — poses an extinction risk on par with nuclear war, citing warnings from Nobel laureates, leading AI scientists, and the CEOs of leading AI companies. It holds that "protecting Canadians from the development of superintelligence, at home and abroad, must be a national security priority," and concludes that "Canada should negotiate an international 'trust but verify' regime to prohibit the development of superintelligent AI." Parliamentary signatories include Liberal MPs Judy Sgro, Jonathan Wilkinson and Steven Guilbeault; Conservative MPs William Stevenson, Joël Godin, Cathay Wagantall and Arnold Viersen; Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux (on behalf of the Bloc's MPs); Independent MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay; and senators Colin Deacon, Tony Loffreda, Kim Pate, Paulette Senior, Judy A. White, Jim Quinn and Mary Jane McCallum. Expert endorsers include Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell, Daniel Kokotajlo and David Krueger.

Published: May 28, 2026

Joint statement issued by Prime Minister Mark Carney and President of Finland Alexander Stubb following meetings in Ottawa on April 14, 2026. The statement sets out a new phase of bilateral cooperation covering sovereign technology, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, quantum research, Arctic and maritime issues, and defence. The two countries noted their existing cooperation through multilateral fora including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), and committed to deepen direct bilateral collaboration. On the technology side, Canada and Finland agreed to: expand AI compute capacity and promote sustainable digital infrastructure; explore collaboration on frontier AI models with safety and responsibility as foundational design principles; foster AI and technology adoption across industry and government; advance quantum research, innovation, commercialization, and workforce development; and cooperate on telecommunications technologies. Finland's participation in the Sovereign Technology Alliance — a partnership framework launched by Canada and Germany in February 2026 to strengthen sovereign AI capacity and reduce reliance on external technology providers — is also to be explored. A memorandum of understanding between Export Development Canada and Nokia to support AI gigafactory development was noted. The broader bilateral statement also covers: establishing a Canada–Finland Maritime Memorandum of Understanding; launching negotiations on a General Security of Information Agreement; cooperating under the ICE Pact (Icebreaker Collaboration Effort); and linking technology cooperation to critical minerals and trusted supply chains.

Published: April 14, 2026

Joint Declaration of Intent on Artificial Intelligence signed by Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, the Honourable Evan Solomon, and Germany's Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization, Karsten Wildberger, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2026. Building on the Canada-Germany Digital Alliance announced in December 2025, the declaration creates a practical framework to expand bilateral cooperation on artificial intelligence, reflecting both countries' commitment to advancing secure, resilient and sovereign AI capabilities. Cooperation under the declaration focuses on expanding secure compute infrastructure, accelerating AI research and commercialization, and strengthening talent development to address critical skills gaps — supporting researchers, startups and industry in both countries to scale and compete globally. The declaration identifies collaboration with research organizations advancing safe-by-design AI systems — including Canada's LawZero, the nonprofit founded by Turing Award winner Professor Yoshua Bengio and incubated within the Quebec AI institute Mila — as a potential area for future cooperation. Alongside the declaration, the ministers launched the Sovereign Technology Alliance: a platform through which Canada and Germany will deepen coordination with trusted partners to strengthen sovereign AI capacity and reduce strategic technology dependencies, focused on delivering real capability and shared economic benefit. Canada will also welcome Germany as Country of the Year at the All In conference in Montréal in September 2026. The Sovereign Technology Alliance is later cited in Canada's National AI Strategy and in the Canada-Finland Joint Statement, which explores Finland's participation.

Published: February 14, 2026

Joint statement issued by Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, the Honourable Evan Solomon, and Germany's Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization, Karsten Wildberger, following their meeting on the margins of the G7 Industry, Digital and Technology Ministers' Meeting in Montréal, Quebec, on December 8, 2025. The ministers reaffirmed the longstanding partnership between Canada and Germany — including collaboration through multilateral fora such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), and the G7 — and agreed to advance a Canada-Germany Digital Alliance, a joint partnership focused on concrete collaboration in areas of mutual interest: artificial intelligence, digital sovereignty, digital infrastructure, quantum, and cooperation on startups and the digital economy. Among the Alliance's first deliverables, both sides agreed to finalize a Joint Declaration of Intent (JDoI) on AI in the coming months. Potential areas of cooperation identified under the JDoI include: building and deploying compute infrastructure; exchange on policy development and interoperability; research and commercialization; AI adoption with a focus on physical and industrial AI; AI safety; development and adoption of generative and frontier AI; talent attraction and mobility; and business engagement and entrepreneurship. Both sides agreed to assign key contacts to develop a workplan under the Alliance. The Digital Alliance is the foundation on which Canada and Germany subsequently signed the Joint Declaration of Intent on AI and launched the Sovereign Technology Alliance at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026.

Published: December 8, 2025

Summary report from the AI National Security Scenarios Workshop co-hosted by the Global AI Risks Initiative at CIGI and the Privy Council Office of Canada. Contains policy recommendations intended to stimulate discussion among policy makers and the broader public on national security implications of next-generation AI systems. The report covers five possible future AI scenarios (to 2030), an executive summary of key messages drawn from workshop discussions and background literature, and an appendix summarizing key points from the workshop discussion.

Published: February 6, 2026

Synthesizes feedback from Canada's largest public consultation on AI policy. The report draws on over 11,300 responses from a 30-day online consultation (October 1–31, 2025), 28 thematic reports from the AI Strategy Task Force, and nearly 300 supplementary policy submissions from businesses, government organizations, and NGOs. Eight priority areas emerged: talent attraction and retention, industry and government AI adoption, commercialization, scaling domestic champions, building public trust, education and skills development, infrastructure sovereignty, and cybersecurity. ISED used these inputs to inform a renewed national AI strategy expected in 2026.

Published: February 5, 2026

Comprehensive international assessment of AI safety, led by Yoshua Bengio and produced by over 100 independent experts from more than 30 countries. Commissioned by the UK government (DSIT 2026/001). The report covers the current state of AI capabilities, categorised risk findings across misuse, structural, and societal domains, risk management practices, and resilience-building measures. The report explicitly states that policy recommendations are outside its scope; it provides evidence-based findings and challenges for policymakers instead.

Published: February 1, 2026

White paper by AI Governance and Safety Canada (AIGS) warning that leading AI labs may develop smarter-than-human AI within 18 months and urging urgent federal action to prepare for the resulting crises. The paper offers a concise overview of where AI is headed, the likely crisis points, and why Canada is well placed to lead a global solution. Argues that Canada's best contribution is leadership — to spearhead global talks while building resilience at home.

Published: October 21, 2025

Updated white paper by AI Governance and Safety Canada (AIGS) outlining five high-impact actions for the Canadian government to significantly advance AI governance by end of Q2 2025. The paper updates the 2023 edition with the latest developments in AI capabilities and governance, including Canada's $2.4B budget investment in compute access and the creation of the AI Safety Institute (AISI). Recommends a Ministry of AI, improved legislation, and increased safety research investment.

Published: June 26, 2024

White paper by AI Governance and Safety Canada (AIGS) outlining five high-impact actions for the Canadian government to significantly advance AI governance by end of Q2 2024. The paper covers the evolving AI risk landscape from narrow AI through to potential AGI, key considerations for AI governance, and concrete recommendations for Canada.

Published: October 18, 2023