Updated July 27, 2026. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada has opened a public consultation on AI transparency from July 23 to September 23. This is not a finished law or regulation. It is an invitation for Canadian citizens and residents, businesses, researchers, Indigenous groups and civil-society organizations to help shape what comes next.
The useful part is that the consultation does not ask the abstract question “Is AI good?” It separates five situations Canadians increasingly encounter: synthetic content, interactions with AI, information about a system’s capabilities and limits, serious incidents, and AI agents that take actions for a user.
The discussion paper also says transparency is not a complete safety solution. A label does not make content true or stop a determined bad actor. Too many notices can produce disclosure fatigue and encourage people to assume that unlabelled material is authentic. The questions therefore cover not only whether disclosure is needed, but when it matters, who should provide it, and whether visible notices, hidden watermarks, provenance metadata or other measures are appropriate.
| Consultation area | Everyday example | What people can address |
|---|---|---|
| AI-generated content | Images, video, audio or text made or heavily altered with AI | Which material needs a label and how detailed that label should be. |
| AI interaction | Customer-service bots, voice assistants, hiring or claims processes | When people must be told they are dealing with AI or that AI affected a decision. |
| System information | Descriptions of purpose, limitations, testing and data | What consumers, business buyers and regulators each need to know. |
| AI incidents | Failures, bias, cybersecurity or safety events | What counts as serious, who reports it and what should be public. |
| AI agents | Systems that schedule, shop or complete multi-step tasks | How actions, authority and responsibility should be recorded. |
Statistics Canada helps explain the timing. In the second quarter of 2026, 19.2% of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services during the preceding 12 months, up from 12.2% a year earlier and 6.1% in 2024. Among AI-using businesses, data analytics, text analytics, and virtual agents or chatbots were the most frequently reported applications. The survey measures specific business uses, not every casual encounter with AI, but it shows that this is no longer an internal issue for a small group of technology firms.
The same survey found a practical tension: 13.4% of businesses identified cybersecurity or privacy concerns as a barrier to AI use, ahead of cost at 10.6%. Businesses want clarity on safe adoption, while consumers want to know when AI has entered an interaction or decision. Those needs do not necessarily call for the same notice, which is why the paper distinguishes developers, deployers and users.
People can respond through an anonymous online survey or send written comments to the consultation email address published by ISED. The participation page says not to include personal or confidential information. After the consultation, the government plans to publish a What We Heard report and says AI tools may help process submissions if the volume is large. That is itself a useful test case: if AI helps summarize feedback about AI transparency, what should be disclosed and what human review should remain visible?
For more Canadian context, start with our Canada life hub, see the Canadian tech-career guide for workplace context, and compare the consultation’s data questions with our own privacy policy.
The ISED release confirms the dates, audience and policy background; the official participation page provides the survey, email route and privacy caution; the discussion paper explains the five areas and the limitations of different measures; and the Statistics Canada analysis supplies the adoption and barrier baseline. This article contains no affiliate links.
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