Digital sovereignty has moved from rhetoric to a ministerial order

Avant de communiquer à l'extérieur du Québec un renseignement personnel, un organisme public doit procéder à une évaluation des facteurs relatifs à la vie privée. Il doit notamment tenir compte des éléments suivants: 1° la sensibilité du renseignement; 2° la finalité de son utilisation;

What it means

The structure is identical to section 17 of Law 25: assessment, adequate protection, written agreement. The second paragraph makes it a condition of lawfulness rather than a documentary formality: the disclosure may take place ONLY if the assessment shows that the information would receive adequate protection, and the written agreement must take the findings of that assessment into account. It is the THIRD paragraph, not the last, that extends the same regime to entrusting a person or a body outside Quebec with the task of collecting, using, releasing or keeping information on your behalf — which is exactly what a hosted platform is. The fourth paragraph contains nothing but exclusions. The threshold is Quebec, not Canada.

What we answer

Your instance is hosted in Canada, in the Canada Central (Toronto) region by default, so outside Quebec for the purposes of this section. Microsoft's residency commitment is to Canada, not to the province of Quebec: it expressly reserves the right to copy customer data between Canadian regions, and provides that personnel located outside Canada may access it remotely. Hosting in a Quebec region, available only under private hosting (the shared cloud has only one Canadian region), therefore moves processing closer to Quebec without contractually guaranteeing it. And the content of a request to the model does leave Canada: that belongs in your assessment, and we give you the material for it.

hard law·In force since 22 September 2023; version consulted current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Dans ce cas, l'organisme public doit: 1° confier le mandat ou le contrat par écrit; 2° indiquer, dans le mandat ou le contrat, les dispositions de la présente loi qui s'appliquent au renseignement communiqué au mandataire ou à l'exécutant du contrat

What it means

The contract must name the applicable provisions of the Access Act, set out the confidentiality measures, limit use to the mandate and prohibit retention after it ends, with a confidentiality undertaking, notice without delay of any breach and a right of audit.

What we answer

Our contract covers the structure — limited use, security measures, incident notice, right of audit, deletion after transition. What it does not do: name the provisions of the Access Act that apply, since it was drafted for the private sector. An addendum is necessary for a public body, and we will provide it to you rather than pretend the standard contract is enough.

hard law·Amended by Law 25; version consulted current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Un organisme public doit procéder à une évaluation des facteurs relatifs à la vie privée de tout projet d'acquisition, de développement et de refonte de système d'information ou de prestation électronique de services impliquant la collecte […] de renseignements personnels.

What it means

Two assessments stack up, as in the private sector: the one for the acquisition and the one for the transfer outside Quebec. The access to information and protection of personal information committee must be consulted from the outset of the project.

What we answer

We provide the inputs: description of the data flow, categories transmitted outside Quebec, regions, subprocessors by role, the model providers' published policies, security measures and contractual commitments. The assessment itself and its conclusion are yours — the law puts them on the public body.

hard law·In force since 22 September 2023; version consulted current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Le choix d'un système d'IA par un organisme public doit s'inscrire dans la recherche de la souveraineté numérique. Plus particulièrement, les organismes publics doivent tendre à diminuer leur dépendance technologique envers des fournisseurs étrangers et à conserver le plus possible un contrôle sur les modèles d'IA, leurs données et les infrastructures qui les hébergent. Ils doivent donc favoriser, lorsque possible, des fournisseurs québécois ou autrement canadien offrant des solutions hébergées au Québec.

What it means

This is a ministerial policy direction issued under the second paragraph of section 21 of the Act respecting the governance and management of the information resources of public bodies and government enterprises (chapter G-1.03). What makes it binding is section 5.1 of that Act — and not section 12.2, which sits in the chapter on information security and deals with that alone. Responsibility for compliance rests with the head of the body, which in a school service centre, a CEGEP or a university is the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, and the Minister may verify compliance (s. 22.2). Scope: the public bodies referred to in section 2 of G-1.03, namely departments, budget-funded bodies and bodies other than budget-funded ones, school service centres and school boards, the CEGEPs and universities in paragraphs 1 to 11 of section 1 of the E-14.1 Act, Santé Québec and the institutions in Schedule II to G-1.021. Municipalities and municipal bodies are NOT in it: the order does not reach them. It is not a prohibition on buying abroad, but the written standard is « hosted in Quebec », coupled with a requirement to retain control over the models themselves.

What we answer

Hilo Tech is a Quebec company, the contract is governed by Quebec law with the courts of Montreal having jurisdiction, and the default hosting is in the Canada Central region, in Toronto: in Canada, therefore, and not in Quebec, whereas the order says « hosted in Quebec ». A Quebec region is available only under private hosting (the shared cloud has only one Canadian region), and that is what we recommend to a public body. On the rest of the sentence, we meet nothing: the models come from foreign providers, several of them in the United States, inference runs on their infrastructure, and we retain no control over those models or over the infrastructure that hosts them. We hold no government cloud qualification and appear on no provincial supplier register. We will not present that as sovereignty.

hard law·Published in the Gazette officielle du Québec on 17 December 2025; replaces the schedule to order 2024-02·Official source

Lorsque les DNG utilisées comprennent des renseignements confidentiels, un tel organisme doit également favoriser, lorsque possible, des fournisseurs québécois ou d'ailleurs au Canada offrant des solutions hébergées au Québec ou au Canada.

What it means

Its binding force does not come from the status of a statute but from paragraph 1.1 of section 7 of G-1.03 — the Chief Information Officer issues application directives « with which they must comply » — combined with section 5.1. Section 4 goes further than the Access Act: a privacy impact assessment is required from the design phase for EVERY generative AI system, including those that, at first sight, do not appear to involve personal information. On top of that come the prior classification of the data (ss. 8 and 9) and strict rules for public generative AI systems, in which confidential information is prohibited (ss. 18 to 20). Scope: the same bodies as in section 2 of G-1.03 — municipalities are not covered. The six-month phase-in period provided for in section 23 expired on 5 June 2026, and section 24 allows the Chief Information Officer to exempt a body, in whole or in part.

What we answer

Quebec supplier: yes. Solution hosted in Canada by default and, under private hosting only, a Quebec region: yes, with that reservation. Models hosted in Quebec or in Canada: no — inference runs on the infrastructure of foreign providers, several of them in the United States. That is the part of the sentence we do not meet, and « where possible » does not excuse us from telling you plainly, so that your justification is honest.

hard law·In force 5 December 2025; full compliance expected by 5 June 2026·Official source

Un organisme public qui utilise des renseignements personnels afin que soit rendue une décision fondée exclusivement sur un traitement automatisé de ceux-ci doit en informer la personne concernée au plus tard au moment où il l'informe de cette décision.

What it means

The word « exclusively » is the trigger, and it has to be taken literally: the Act targets a decision based EXCLUSIVELY on automated processing. An admission, a dropout-risk screening, automated marking or a financial aid decision rendered that way requires that the person be informed at the latest when the decision is communicated to them (first paragraph, on the body's own initiative). The second paragraph adds, ON REQUEST only, the information used, the reasons and the principal factors and parameters, and the right to have it corrected. The third paragraph gives the opportunity to submit observations to a staff member in a position to review the decision: a right to be heard, not a right to a review.

What we answer

The platform drafts, summarizes and suggests; it does not render decisions. But it can automate, and you are the one building those automations. The contract expressly states that no generated output is to stand as a final automated decision without appropriate human validation.

hard law·In force since 22 September 2023; version consulted current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Lorsque les fins pour lesquelles un renseignement personnel a été recueilli ou utilisé sont accomplies, l'organisme public doit le détruire, ou l'anonymiser pour l'utiliser à des fins d'intérêt public, sous réserve de la Loi sur les archives (chapitre A-21.1) ou du Code des professions (chapitre C-26).

What it means

Section 73 imposes an OBLIGATION to destroy or anonymize once the purposes have been achieved: keeping information indefinitely is a breach, not prudence. But it subordinates that obligation to the Archives Act (chapter A-21.1), which requires you to maintain a retention schedule approved by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales — and it is that schedule, and it alone, that sets the moment. Destroying too early is a fault, just as keeping too long is. Application directive IA-SI-2023-001-OP, s. 5, para. 1(1)(c), points the same way in requiring that retention time be reduced to a minimum.

What we answer

Let us be exact: the platform does not apply your retention schedule, in either direction. No configurable purge applies there, which exposes you to the opposite breach — retention beyond the purposes, which section 73 prohibits. No retention period is configurable and we issue no certificate of destruction. Three timers are hard-coded, reach a record directly and cannot be turned off: transcripts at 30 days, tool-produced files at 7 days, attachments never sent at 48 hours. Full export exists precisely so that the master document stays in your document management system, where your schedule applies. Those are the timers that reach a record; other clocks exist elsewhere in the product, and the Confidentiality and compliance page publishes the full inventory.

hard law·Version consulted current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Il ne faut pas utiliser de renseignements personnels dans un système d'IAG à moins qu'une utilisation particulière ne soit approuvée par le responsable de la sécurité de l'information de l'organisme.

What it means

The Ministry's default position for the school network is prohibition, with an exception that requires a named approval: that of the body's INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER. That is not the privacy officer: the guide refers to the latter only for a distinct and purely advisory question — determining whether a piece of information IS personal information, where the risk of re-identification makes that characterization difficult. In paragraph 3.1, using sensitive or confidential information with a generative AI tool likewise requires that the system be analysed and approved by the school body's information security representative. The guide also recalls that the selection of tools and the permitted uses are matters for each school body.

What we answer

The approval comes from your information security officer, and it is a governance decision that belongs entirely to you. What the platform adds is to make it enforceable rather than declarative: the model catalogue can be restricted by group and by named user, access is managed by user and by group, the compliance analysis detects personal information in a message and offers confidentiality mode — a paid option, off by default, and itself an outbound call to a model, which your officer will have to weigh — and the audit log keeps a record of access. It replaces neither the analysis nor the approval.

regulator expectation·2026 edition (« © Gouvernement du Québec, 2026 »; official citation: Ministère de l'Éducation, 2026, 22 pp.)·Official source

Un organisme public doit appliquer les orientations, les stratégies, les politiques, les standards, les directives, les règles ou les indications d'application pris en vertu de la présente loi.

What it means

This is the provision that makes order 2025-02 and the Chief Information Officer's application directives binding. The second paragraph places responsibility for compliance on the head of the body; the third specifies that, for a school service centre, a school board, a CEGEP or a university, that head is the BOARD OF DIRECTORS — adopting an AI platform therefore engages the board, and not only the IT department. Section 22.2 allows the Minister to verify compliance. Above all, section 2 sets the perimeter: departments, budget-funded bodies and bodies other than budget-funded ones, school service centres and school boards, CEGEPs and universities (paragraphs 1 to 11 of section 1 of the E-14.1 Act), Santé Québec and the institutions in Schedule II to G-1.021. Municipalities and municipal bodies do not appear in it: they remain subject to the Access Act (ss. 3 and 5) and to their own contracting regime, but neither the order nor the directives cover them.

What we answer

Nothing here can be delegated to a supplier: it is your body, and specifically its head, that answers for the application. What we provide is the material for the file — description of the data flow, hosting regions, subprocessors by role, security measures, contractual commitments — so that the decision reaches the right level with the right facts. If you are a municipality, tell us: the order and the directives do not cover you, and a sovereignty justification modelled on a department's would have you carrying a constraint that is not yours.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Il doit prioriser, selon le contexte, le traitement et l'hébergement des données numériques gouvernementales dans les centres de traitement informatique sous le contrôle de l'État, notamment lorsque le niveau de sensibilité des données utilisées par le système le requiert et, à défaut, justifier pourquoi il ne peut s'y conformer.

What it means

The default option is therefore not « a Canadian region at a hyperscaler »: it is infrastructure under state control, with Infrastructures technologiques Québec acting as cloud broker for public bodies and drawing up a catalogue of offerings for that purpose (Act respecting Infrastructures technologiques Québec, CQLR c I-8.4, s. 5). The question of government hosting arises BEFORE that of choosing a region at a commercial provider, the requirement hardens as the data becomes more sensitive, and any departure has to be justified in writing. This illustration of implications accompanies the digital sovereignty principle in the same §12.

What we answer

We have nothing to offer on this front and it is better said right away: the platform runs on Azure, in the Canada Central (Toronto) region by default and a Quebec region only under private hosting, never in a data centre under state control. We hold no government cloud qualification and appear in no public cloud broker's catalogue. If the sensitivity of your data calls for state infrastructure, the honest answer is that we cannot provide it. If you conclude otherwise, it is your written justification that will have to carry it, and we will supply the technical inputs for it.

hard law·Published in the Gazette officielle du Québec on 17 December 2025, Part 2, No. 51, p. 7092·Official source

L'encadrement visé à l'article 18 doit interdire au personnel d'utiliser des renseignements de nature confidentielle dans un système d'IAG public. […] Un organisme public doit, afin de protéger la confidentialité et l'intégrité de ses données, prioriser l'utilisation des systèmes d'IAG privés sécurisés plutôt que des systèmes d'IAG publics.

What it means

The ellipsis above marks the move from section 19 to section 20. Everything turns on a word defined in a footnote: a public generative AI system is defined there as any « general public » version, free or not, of a generative AI system — such as the online versions of Copilot (including Copilot Chat) and ChatGPT — accessible over the Web from outside the organization. In such a system, confidential information is quite simply prohibited, and section 18 limits use to the use cases authorized and identified by the body. Section 20 sets the reverse priority: secure private generative AI systems first. The directive does not, however, define « secure private », and no authority certifies it — it is a characterization your own body has to make, with the evidence in hand.

What we answer

Let us put both sides. A dedicated, isolated instance, installed and operated for you by Hilo Tech — access by user and by group, encryption in transit and at rest, an audit log, full export, and a contract whose section 14 covers confidentiality, purposes, subprocessors, incident notice and an annual right of audit — is not a general-public version accessible over the Web from outside your organization: it does not fall within the definition of a « public generative AI system ». A self-serve sign-up to our multi-tenant cloud offering from the Web, on the other hand, has those features, and we do not recommend it to a public body. What we will not do: declare ourselves a « secure private generative AI system » within the meaning of the directive. Nobody issues that characterization, inference runs on the infrastructure of foreign providers, several of them in the United States, and the conclusion is for your chief information officer.

hard law·In force 5 December 2025; maximum six-month phase-in expired on 5 June 2026·Official source

L'organisme public doit privilégier un modèle d'IAG ouvert […] lorsque le contexte nécessite une traçabilité complète et une reproductibilité des résultats notamment s'il touche des services destinés aux citoyens ou aux entreprises quand les cas d'usage impliquent des données confidentielles.

What it means

The ellipsis above is a footnote marker, and that note defines an open model as one at least some of whose components (code, final parameters, documentation) are made publicly available under a licence permitting its use, study, modification or redistribution. Section 15 repeats that preference for systems that have an impact on decisions, predictions or actions concerning citizens or businesses, and section 16 adds a preference for a specialized model where one is available and economically viable. This is a requirement that runs directly against a catalogue made up of foreign proprietary models, and it applies independently of sovereignty.

What we answer

Our catalogue is made up mostly of foreign proprietary models, several of them hosted in the United States: that is a weakness against this section, and not only against sovereignty. What we do offer: the catalogue can be restricted by group and by named user, which lets you expose only open models to your users for the use cases that require traceability and reproducibility, and the audit log records which model answered. One reservation that counts here more than elsewhere: this restriction binds what the user picks, not the models the server keeps for certain internal steps. Several of them carry real content — the extraction of the text of a document added to a knowledge base, which goes through a proprietary model fixed in the code, and the Law 25 detector are two examples; the Confidentiality and compliance page enumerates them all. Restricting the catalogue to open models therefore does not make the extraction path open, and that is exactly the traceability the section asks of you. What we do not offer: any guarantee that results are reproducible, since model versions change at the providers. The choice of permitted models remains yours, and it will have to be justified with the section in hand.

hard law·In force 5 December 2025·Official source

indiquer les configurations de sécurité à être appliquées à de telles données, notamment les chiffrer avec un algorithme de chiffrement répondant à une norme reconnue et adéquate considérant leur degré de sensibilité;

What it means

This directive covers EVERY technological solution, not only AI, and the generative AI directive expressly names it as a related directive. The same section 5 requires minimization of collection and a reduction of retention time to a minimum (para. 1(1)(c)), logging of access and of its use, including downloads (para. 2), a preference for anonymization (para. 4) and procedures for complete and permanent destruction and erasure (para. 8). Upstream, section 4 requires at least an annual review of access rights and privileges, verification of the integrity of privilege holders, and accountability to the delegated chief and to the government chief information security officer. This is the grid against which a chief information officer will assess the platform.

What we answer

What we tick: encryption in transit and at rest, access by user and by group, full export, and a contract (section 14) covering confidentiality, purposes, subprocessors, incident notice and an annual right of audit. The journaling in subparagraph 2 is only half ticked: the log records changes, shares, administrator access, impersonation, external views and knowledge-base retrieval, but not a document read by a member who already has the right to it, nor its download — and the subparagraph names downloads expressly. What we do not tick, and you should know it before signing: the reduction of retention time, because no retention period is configurable — three timers that cannot be turned off (30 days, 7 days, 48 hours) and they are not the product's only clocks — and complete and permanent erasure, for which we issue no certificate of destruction. The annual review of rights, the integrity verification and the accountability reporting remain entirely on your side. Those are the timers that reach a record; other clocks exist elsewhere in the product, and the Confidentiality and compliance page publishes the full inventory.

hard law·Issued and in force on 1 February 2023; status « In force », unrestricted distribution·Official source

Un organisme public doit prendre les mesures de sécurité propres à assurer la protection des renseignements personnels collectés, utilisés, communiqués, conservés ou détruits et qui sont raisonnables compte tenu, notamment, de leur sensibilité, de la finalité de leur utilisation, de leur quantité, de leur répartition et de leur support.

What it means

This is the substantive security obligation of the public sector, the equivalent of section 10 of the private-sector Act, and it is against this that the Commission d'accès à l'information will assess an incident. The standard is reasonableness weighted by sensitivity, purpose, quantity, distribution and medium — not a closed list of controls. Directive IA-SI-2023-001-OP itself presents its measures as contributing to compliance with this section, and the government information security directive (Order in Council 1514-2021) recalls that responsibility for security remains the body's « même lorsque la conservation de l'information est assurée par un tiers » — even where the information is kept by a third party.

What we answer

Entrusting your data to a supplier does not shift this obligation: it remains yours. What we put up against it: a dedicated instance, encryption in transit and at rest, access by user and by group, an audit log, full export, and the contractual commitments of section 14 — confidentiality, purposes, subprocessors, incident notice, annual right of audit. What is missing from the inventory: no configurable retention, no certificate of destruction, and inference that runs on the infrastructure of foreign providers, several of them in the United States. Those three points belong in your reasonableness analysis, not in an appendix.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Un renseignement personnel ne peut être utilisé au sein d'un organisme public qu'aux fins pour lesquelles il a été recueilli, à moins du consentement de la personne concernée. Ce consentement doit être manifesté de façon expresse dès qu'il s'agit d'un renseignement personnel sensible.

What it means

The typical use of an AI platform in a public body consists in loading existing documents into a knowledge base in order to query them. That is a REUSE, and section 65.1 limits it to the purposes of the original collection, unless the person concerned consents — expressly where the information is sensitive — or one of the exceptions the Act lists applies, in which case the use must be entered in the register under section 67.3. It is the question that most often stops a project in the access committee, before the hosting question even comes up.

What we answer

The purpose is something we cannot verify for you: the platform does not know why a document was collected. What it does allow is compartmentalization — separate knowledge bases, access by user and by group, an audit log — so that a corpus collected for one purpose does not become queryable by the whole body. The judgement call on purposes, consent where applicable and the entry in the register remain yours.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Sous réserve de ce que prévoit le calendrier de conservation, nul ne peut aliéner ou éliminer un document actif ou semi-actif d'un organisme public.

What it means

Section 7 requires every public body to establish and keep up to date a retention schedule. Section 8 varies the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales approval according to the paragraph of the schedule you fall under: a department (para. 1) submits its schedule and each amendment to it; a municipality (para. 4) or a school body (para. 6) submits it in accordance with the regulation. The prohibition in section 13 is then absolute outside the schedule, and it covers disposal as well as alienation — including for a document loaded into an AI tool. This is the exception that section 73 of the Access Act refers to.

What we answer

The platform is not an archiving system and we will not pretend otherwise: it applies no retention schedule, offers no configurable retention and issues no certificate of destruction. The warning even has to be turned around: its three of the product's timers that cannot be turned off — transcripts at 30 days, tool-produced files at 7 days, attachments never sent at 48 hours — dispose of content without regard to your schedule, which is exactly what section 13 prohibits if that content constitutes an active or semi-active document. Full export is there so that the master document lives in your document management system, and not with us. Those are the timers that reach a record; other clocks exist elsewhere in the product, and the Confidentiality and compliance page publishes the full inventory.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Un organisme public doit recourir à la procédure d'appel d'offres public pour la conclusion des contrats suivants: […] tout contrat d'approvisionnement, de services ou de travaux de construction comportant une dépense […] égale ou supérieure au seuil minimal prévu dans tout accord intergouvernemental applicable

What it means

A department, a school service centre, a CEGEP, a university or a health institution covered by section 4 cannot simply negotiate: above the threshold set by the applicable intergovernmental agreements, the acquisition goes through a public call for tenders. Your data residency, sovereignty and Access Act compliance requirements must therefore be written into the tender documents, and not obtained afterwards by addendum or on the purchase order. Municipalities are not covered by this Act: they fall under the Cities and Towns Act and the Municipal Code. The first ellipsis above is the paragraph number, the second a detail on how the expenditure is calculated.

What we answer

This is a constraint that falls on you, and it changes the conversation. Below the threshold, a purchase order and an addendum are enough. Above it, everything we commit to must first appear in your specifications: hosting region, encryption, access by user and by group, audit log, full export, and clauses on confidentiality, purposes, subprocessors, incident notice and annual audit. So we would rather give you the technical material early, so that your requirements can be drafted and verified by every bidder, than have them tailored to us.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Une entreprise qui souhaite conclure avec un organisme public tout contrat comportant une dépense, incluant la dépense découlant de toute option prévue au contrat, qui est égale ou supérieure au montant déterminé par le gouvernement doit obtenir à cet effet une autorisation de l'Autorité des marchés publics.

What it means

This requirement falls on the SUPPLIER, not on you, which is why it gets forgotten. Above the amount determined by the Government, an enterprise without an authorization to contract from the Autorité des marchés publics can enter into neither the contract nor a subcontract related to it; section 21.18 further requires that the authorization exist as of the date the tender is submitted and be maintained throughout performance. It is the question to ask a supplier before all the others, because a negative answer makes the rest moot.

What we answer

A direct answer: Hilo Tech does not hold an authorization to contract from the Autorité des marchés publics, and appears on no provincial supplier register. Below the amount determined by the Government, that blocks nothing. Above it, it makes us ineligible until the authorization is obtained — a process to undertake before your call for tenders, not during it. Check the amount in force at the time of your project rather than taking our word for it, and rule us out if the timeline does not work.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Les contrats conclus par l'Administration, y compris ceux qui s'y rattachent en sous-traitance, sont rédigés exclusivement dans la langue officielle. Les contrats d'emprunt peuvent néanmoins être rédigés à la fois en français et dans une autre langue.

What it means

The Administration, within the meaning of the Charter, comprises government departments and agencies, municipal bodies, school bodies and health and social services institutions — that perimeter, unlike the order's, does include municipalities. The rule covers the contract AND the subcontracts related to it, which is exactly the friction point for a hosted AI platform: the cloud provider's terms, the data protection addenda and the model providers' terms are typically drafted in English and incorporated by reference.

What we answer

Our master agreement exists in French and the applicable law is that of Quebec. What we do not control: Azure's terms and those of the model providers, which are authoritative in English and which our contract incorporates by reference. Before signing, demand the full list of those documents and a French version of each; we will tell you which ones already exist in French and which do not, rather than leaving you to discover the English chain after the award.

hard law·Current to 1 April 2026 (amended by 2022, c. 14)·Official source

Un organisme public qui a des motifs de croire que s'est produit un incident de confidentialité impliquant un renseignement personnel qu'il détient doit prendre les mesures raisonnables pour diminuer les risques qu'un préjudice soit causé et éviter que de nouveaux incidents de même nature ne se produisent. Si l'incident présente un risque qu'un préjudice sérieux soit causé, l'organisme doit, avec diligence, aviser la Commission. Il doit également aviser toute personne dont un renseignement personnel est concerné par l'incident, à défaut de quoi la Commission peut lui ordonner de le faire.

What it means

The trigger is reasonable SUSPICION, not certainty: “cause to believe” is enough, and the duty to mitigate arises at that moment. If the risk of injury is serious, TWO notices are due, not one: to the Commission d'accès à l'information, and to every person whose information is involved in the incident — and if you omit the second, the Commission can order you to give it. Notice to individuals may be deferred for as long as it would hinder an investigation, but deferred is not excused. Section 63.11 adds a register of incidents, whose contents the regulation sets and a copy of which the Commission may require on request.

What we answer

What we owe you sits upstream of your two notices: the contract provides for notice without delay to your person in charge, with the nature of the incident, the people affected, the period and the measures taken, so that you can decide quickly whether the injury is serious and identify who has to be told. What we do not do: we notify neither the Commission nor your users on your behalf — both obligations are yours — and we do not keep your register. Nor do we have a deadline in hours in the contract, a gap we name elsewhere on this site and one that counts for more here, since your own obligation is “with diligence”.

hard law·2021, c. 25, s. 15; current to 1 April 2026·Official source

Indications d'application liées (s'il y a lieu) : − IA-SI-2025-001-OP « Interdictions d'utilisation au regard des assistants virtuels DeepSeek »; − IA-SI-2023-001-OP « Mesures minimales de sécurité au regard des données lors de l'utilisation de solutions technologiques »; − IA-RI-2025-002-OP « Interdiction d'utilisation de la fonctionnalité « Inscription vocale et faciale » de l'application Microsoft Teams ».

What it means

The Chief Information Officer does not stop at setting a framework: he prohibits by name. Three related directives are listed by the December 2025 directive, and two of them are pure prohibitions — DeepSeek virtual assistants, and the « Inscription vocale et faciale » feature of Microsoft Teams. To be read with section 25 of the same directive, which repeals directive IA-RI-2025-001-OP: the general suspension of generative AI virtual assistants is therefore no longer in force, and has been replaced by this regime of conditions and targeted prohibitions. We cite this list from the directive itself, the only document in the corpus that the publisher publishes at a stable address; the full text of IA-SI-2025-001-OP is not publicly indexed.

What we answer

What concerns you directly on our side: DeepSeek is among the labs whose models can appear in the catalogue. If you are a covered public body, those models must be excluded, and the catalogue can be restricted by group, by named user, to administrators only or globally, with a kill switch that binds administrators too. Two honest clarifications. First, the reservation that holds everywhere on this page: that kill switch binds the models a user picks, not the calls the server makes on its own. Second, a reading that works in your favour: no DeepSeek execution provider is on our allowlist, so a DeepSeek model in the catalogue would be served by another provider, and not by DeepSeek. The prohibition targets the virtual assistant; the prudent reading, for a public body, is still to disable those models and to write it down. As for the Teams feature covered by IA-RI-2025-002-OP, it is Microsoft's and not ours: our meeting recording does not rely on it.

droit dur·Indication datée du 2025-12-05, signée par le sous-ministre et dirigeant principal de l'information ; texte lu le 12 août 2026·Official source