Canada's Federal AI Register — 409 Systems Disclosed, but Only 4% With Public Impact Assessments

On 28 November 2025, Canada's Treasury Board published the Government of Canada AI Register, the country's first public inventory of federal AI use, listing 409 AI systems across 42 federal institutions, drawing on data validated by departments.

Each entry records a system's purpose, intended use, and whether it was built in-house or by a vendor, with a companion open-data release for researchers; the government describes this first release as a minimum viable product, with public consultations planned for 2026.

An independent academic analysis published shortly after launch found only 4% of 303 automated tools it examined had a publicly available Algorithmic Impact Assessment, despite that being formally required under Canada's 2019 Directive on Automated Decision-Making; the same analysis found 86% of listed systems serve internal government operations rather than citizen-facing services, and a single vendor (Microsoft) accounts for 46 of the listed systems.

The register and its independent critique together illustrate both the value and the limits of self-reported federal AI inventories: 409 systems is a genuinely large disclosure by international standards, but the gap between the register's existence and the underlying Directive's impact-assessment requirement shows disclosure alone does not guarantee accountability.