There is no single national rule yet, only a fast-growing, court-by-court patchwork.
Short answer
It depends which court. The Federal Court, the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba and the Supreme Court of Yukon require you to say when AI was used in preparing a document. Alberta’s courts ask only for caution and reliance on authoritative sources — not a declaration. There is no single Canada-wide rule; each court has issued its own practice direction.
The Federal Court’s May 2024 notice asks for a Declaration in the first paragraph of a litigation document whenever it contains content “created or generated by artificial intelligence”, naming the paragraphs involved. Manitoba got there first: the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba’s June 2023 Practice Direction required parties to reveal “how artificial intelligence was used” in the preparation of any materials filed with the court. Within days, the Supreme Court of Yukon issued its own direction requiring any lawyer or party who “relies on artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT or any other artificial intelligence platform) for their legal research or submissions in any matter and in any form before the Court, [to] advise the Court of the tool used and for what purpose”.
Alberta’s tri-court notice, issued October 2023 by the Court of Appeal, the Court of King’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Justice, took a different approach: it urged caution and reliance on authoritative sources but stopped short of requiring disclosure. As the Law Society of Alberta’s own survey records it, unlike Yukon and Manitoba, Alberta did not require lawyers or litigants to disclose which tools they used to prepare court filings.
Ontario takes yet a third route — no declaration requirement, but a mandatory certification of citation authenticity instead, with real consequences: “public reprimand… cost orders… adjourning a hearing or dismissing the matter… contempt proceedings… and… referral to the Law Society of Ontario”.
Check the specific court’s own practice direction before you file — there is no default answer that holds across Canada. See can I use AI to write a court document and does Canada have an AI law for the two questions this one usually travels with.
A court-by-court patchwork is exactly the kind of jurisdiction-specific detail a diligence review has to track before relying on any filing.
