Yes — there is no Canadian law that makes using AI illegal in itself; the law that applies is whatever already governed the data and the claims before AI entered the picture.
Short answer
Yes. There is no Canadian statute prohibiting the use of AI, and no dedicated Canadian AI Act exists to permit or restrict it either — Bill C-27, which would have created one, never became law. What is regulated is not “using AI” as an activity, but the same things Canadian law already governed before AI existed: what happens to personal information, and what claims a business makes to the public.
As recorded on LEGISinfo (read 27 August 2026), Bill C-27 — which would have enacted the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act — is shown against the 44th Parliament, 1st session (22 November 2021 to 6 January 2025), a session the page marks as prior, with its status listed as “At consideration in committee in the House of Commons” and its latest activity second reading and referral to committee on 24 April 2023. It never progressed further. That means Canada has never had, and does not currently have, a general AI statute of the kind some other jurisdictions have passed — there is nothing for a business's ordinary use of AI to be illegal under.
PIPEDA doesn't mention AI and doesn't need to: it applies to what an organization does with personal information, and that obligation doesn't change because a new kind of software is doing the processing. A joint principles document of Canada's federal, provincial and territorial privacy commissioners spells this out for generative AI specifically, but the underlying law it applies is the same PIPEDA that has governed customer records for two decades. The same is true of the Competition Act's rules against misleading claims, and of provincial employment standards — none of them needed to be rewritten for AI to reach a business using it.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's Voluntary Code of Conduct asks signatories to commit to outcomes like accountability, safety and transparency, but it says directly that “this code does not in any way change existing legal obligations that organizations may have”. A business is free to use AI without ever reading it. That is the honest state of Canadian AI law in 2026: legal by default, governed entirely by rules that predate AI, with a voluntary layer on top that only its signatories owe anything to.
For which specific regulator would actually investigate a complaint, see who enforces AI rules in Canada.
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