Every Canadian authority that has ruled on this lands on the same word: verify.
Short answer
Yes, every time something leaves your firm with your name attached to it. Every Canadian court and privacy regulator that has published guidance on AI so far lands on the same principle — "human in the loop" — meaning a person checks the output before it's treated as final, not after something has already gone wrong.
The Federal Court's Interim Principles and Guidelines on the Court's Use of Artificial Intelligence name "Human in the loop" as one of seven principles, and the Court itself has said it "will not use AI, and more specifically automated decision-making tools, in making its judgments and orders, without first engaging in public consultations."
The OPC's generative AI principles require that affected individuals get "an effective challenge mechanism for any administrative or otherwise significant decision made about them... allowing them the opportunity to request human review... of the decision." The review step is the answer to a problem, not a courtesy.
Ontario's Superior Court civil practice direction shows what happens when the review step is skipped: a filing built on a fabricated AI citation or fact draws sanctions ranging from a public reprimand to a Law Society referral, and responsibility sits with whoever signed the document, "regardless of whether they directly interacted with the technology."
Where AI output feeds into something that carries a professional's seal or stamp — an engineer's calculation, an architect's drawing — the person who signs it is accountable for it exactly as they would be for their own first draft; AI moving the pen doesn't move the accountability. Related: can AI write our safety documents, can AI notes replace our meeting minutes and AI policy for a trades business.
Name a reviewer for each category of AI-assisted output before you start using the tool, not after the first mistake. A quote or an internal memo might only need a quick read from whoever sent it; a safety document, a contract comparison or anything with a professional's name on it needs that specific person's sign-off, logged somewhere, every time.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether AI pays for itself here.
