Federal Government Releases Proposed Amendments To Artificial Intelligence And Data Act

On November 28, 2023, the Government of Canada published the text of proposed amendments to Part 3 of Bill C-27, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA).

The proposed amendments to AIDA correspond with the areas of interest identified in the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry’s (the Minister’s) first letter to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (as previously reported by the E-TIPS® Newsletter here).  The amendments correspond to the following key areas of the AIDA:

1. High-impact systems
2. International alignment;
3. Clarifying obligations across the AI value chain;
4. Obligations for general-purpose systems; and
5. Clarifying and strengthening the role of the AI and Data Commissioner.

Along with the text of the proposed amendments, the Minister provided “Annex B: Guide to Proposed Amendments to AIDA” (Annex B), which sets out the Minister’s rationale on how the proposed amendments align with the objective of Bill C-27 and feedback received from stakeholders. In Annex B, the Minister stresses that the proposed amendments will build on the core framework of AIDA and bring more clarity to the application, requirements, and administration of the Bill – an issue that was consistently posed to the Minister in the feedback it received from both stakeholders and parliamentarians.

Deeth Williams Wall LLP has prepared a document comparing the Minister’s proposed amendments against the original text of AIDA. This comparison document can be accessed here.

Summary By: Steffi Tran