The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) was the AI component of Canada's Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act 2022, introduced 16 June 2022. Had it passed, it would have been Canada's first horizontal AI statute, imposing risk-mitigation, documentation, and transparency duties on operators of "high-impact" AI systems and, after November 2023 amendments, on general-purpose AI systems. The bill died on the order paper on 6 January 2025 with parliament's dissolution and has not been reintroduced. This page summarizes a secondary-source compilation on the act; the primary text is at LEGISinfo (Parliament of Canada), and the legislation page is Canada AIDA (Bill C-27, Part 3) — Source Summary.
Legislative status
AIDA was Part 3 of Bill C-27, alongside privacy reforms in Parts 1–2. The proposed enacting body was the Government of Canada, through the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. The bill was referred to committee in April 2023 and debated for 36 or more meetings through September 2024 before the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) without reaching report stage. It died when Prime Minister Trudeau prorogued parliament in early January 2025 ahead of the April 2025 federal election. The Carney government, a Liberal minority elected in April 2025, had not reintroduced AIDA or a successor bill as of April 2026; this rests on secondary analysis, as primary legislative-record confirmation was limited in open sources.
Scope and structure
AIDA was built on the federal trade-and-commerce power, applying to private-sector interprovincial and international commerce. Much of the operative detail was delegated to future Governor-in-Council regulations.
The bill's principal regulatory objects were:
- "High-impact" AI systems. A list was added via the November 2023 amendments, covering employment, services, biometrics, content moderation, healthcare, judicial or administrative decisions, and law enforcement.
- General-purpose AI systems (GPAI), added in November 2023 and tracking the EU AI Act structure.
- Machine-learning models intended for high-impact use, carrying developer-side obligations.
Core obligations
As amended, AIDA would have required operators to identify and mitigate risks of harm and biased output, monitor compliance with mitigation measures, keep records, publish plain-language descriptions, and notify the Minister of material harms. For general-purpose AI systems, it would have required technical documentation and the provision of downstream-user information.
Enforcement
The proposed enforcement scheme combined administrative monetary penalties, with amounts deferred to regulation, and criminal offences for knowingly causing serious harm or using unlawfully obtained personal data, carrying fines up to CAD 25 million or 5 percent of global revenue. The bill provided no private right of action.
Institutionally, AIDA proposed an "AI and Data Commissioner," a senior official within Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) rather than an independent officer of Parliament.
Canada's current AI regime
In the absence of a binding horizontal AI law, Canada's de facto AI regime consists of the 2023 Voluntary Code of Conduct on Advanced Generative AI Systems together with the Treasury Board's Directive on Automated Decision-Making for federal agencies. The Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI), announced in 2024, operates without statutory footing.
Reception and positions
The November 2023 government amendments added the "high-impact" list, GPAI obligations, and certain transparency provisions in response to committee criticism. Among stakeholders, industry groups including the Council of Canadian Innovators and CanadaAI favour sector-specific rather than horizontal AI regulation, while civil-society groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and Canadian scholars adjacent to the Ada Lovelace Institute, favour reintroduction with an independent commissioner and fewer delegated provisions.
AIDA's stall has been cited as a data point in discussions of how difficult comprehensive horizontal AI legislation is even in advanced democracies, a pattern consistent with Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race, the member-state implementation lag observed under the EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689), and the United Kingdom's deferral of a dedicated AI bill. The jurisdictional questions raised by AIDA's federal-provincial design and its open-source exclusions connect to AI Sovereignty, Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race, and Open-Source AI / Open-Weight Models. Canada's path parallels that of the United Kingdom under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 — Source Summary, where both jurisdictions chose, or defaulted to, data-protection rules plus a voluntary AI safety institute over a comprehensive AI statute. It contrasts with South Korea AI Basic Act — Source Summary, enacted the same month AIDA died. The absence of domestic AI-specific regulation is also relevant to the Canadian frontier lab Cohere.
Confidence
Reported with high confidence: that Bill C-27 died with parliament's dissolution in early January 2025 without reaching report stage; that the bill was referred to committee in April 2023 and debated for 36 or more meetings through September 2024 without progressing; that the November 2023 amendments added the high-impact list, GPAI obligations, and transparency provisions; and that Canada's current de facto AI regime is the Voluntary Code of Conduct plus the Treasury Board Directive on ADM with no binding horizontal AI law. Reported with medium confidence: that the Carney government had not reintroduced AIDA or a successor as of April 2026; the characterization of industry and civil-society positions; and that CAISI operates without statutory footing.
No PII, credentials, or sensitive identifiers appear in the source material.
Relationships
- supports: Canada AIDA (legislation page)
- related: EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689) — the model AIDA's Nov 2023 amendments increasingly tracked
- related: Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 — Source Summary — parallel deferred-AI-law dynamic
- related: South Korea AI Basic Act — Source Summary, Japan AI Promotion Act — Source Summary, Brazil AI Bill (PL 2338/2023) — Source Summary, Australia Voluntary AI Safety Standard — Source Summary — the international-completeness cohort
- related: AI Sovereignty, Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race
Sources
- LEGISinfo (Parliament of Canada) Bill C-27:
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-27 - Charter Statement Bill C-27 (Department of Justice Canada):
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c27_1.html - ISED AIDA Companion Document (2023):
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/innovation-better-canada/en/artificial-intelligence-and-data-act-aida-companion-document - BABL AI, "Canadian AI Bill Stalls as Bill C-27 Terminates in Parliament" (2025)
- White & Case, AI Watch: Global Regulatory Tracker — Canada
- Chambers AI 2025: Canada Trends and Developments
- Fasken, "Bill C-27: Federal Government Releases Amendments to Canada's Proposed AI Law" (Dec 2023)
- IAPP, "Canadian Parliament's Bill C-27 hearing delves deeper into AIDA"