No federal artificial intelligence statute — the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act died with Bill C-27
Nobody, today. This row exists to record an absence rather than an obligation.
- 01Nothing. Canada has no federal artificial intelligence statute and has never had one.
- 02What binds a Canadian small business instead: the Competition Act on what you claim, Quebec's section 12.1 if you make fully automated decisions about people in Quebec, and general privacy law on the personal information your systems consume.
- 01Nothing under federal artificial intelligence law, because there is none.
- 01The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act was Part 3 of Bill C-27. It reached committee, stalled there, and died when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. It was never reinstated and never reached third reading or the Senate.
- 02Federal privacy law contains no automated-decision provision at all — no right to an explanation, no right to contest, no notice that a decision was automated, no obligation to keep a person in the loop.
- 03The 2023 joint principles on generative artificial intelligence from Canada's privacy regulators are guidance, not law. They use the word should throughout and create no new obligations.
None, because there is no statute. Bill C-36, introduced on 15 June 2026, would create the first federal automated-decision obligations and floats penalties up to $10,000,000 or 3% of global revenue. As of 6 August 2026 it sits at second reading and is not law.
We include this because a great deal of what is sold to Canadian businesses as artificial intelligence compliance refers to a statute that does not exist. If someone quotes the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act at you, it died in January 2025. Watch Bill C-36 instead — its automated-decision duties would trigger where a system assists or replaces human judgement, which is a wider test than Quebec's.
“a rules-based system, regression analysis, predictive analytics, machine learning, deep learning, a neural network or other technique”
Bill C-36, s. 2(1), definition of automated decision system