The Policy Profile lookup: a deeper breakdown for every Canadian municipality

The Policy Profile lookup is the fastest way to see where a Canadian municipality stands on AI policy today. Type a city or region on /grade, pick the match, and you get a clean, factual card: is there a published policy, has it been human-verified, when was it last checked, and where is the source. No account required, no letter grades, no leaderboard.

What is new — and what this post is really about — is how much deeper you can now go from that single lookup. Every Policy Profile now links straight into a detailed breakdown page that opens up the underlying analysis: coverage blocks that are present, blocks that are partial, blocks that are missing, and the exact evidence we captured. It is the same view we use internally when we review a policy, now published back to the reader who asked.

What you get from a single lookup

• AI policy found: Yes / No, drawn from the public registry
• Policy status: published, drafting, discussing, or none on record
• Human-verified: whether a real person has confirmed the source
• Last evidence captured: the most recent date we have a source for
• Direct source URL when one exists — one click to the underlying document
• A 'View full policy breakdown' button that opens the deeper analysis

The breakdown page is the star of the release. It shows the coverage blocks we track — governance, risk classification, procurement, transparency, human oversight, incident response, and dozens more — and marks each as present, present-but-weak, or missing based on the policy text and supporting evidence. When you can see the shape of a policy at a glance, you can also see the shape of the gap.

From public breakdown to private review

The public breakdown is neutral and factual. If you want the same 62-block analysis applied to your own draft — or to a competitor's policy you are benchmarking against — that lives inside /review. Upload the document, and you get a private 0–100 score, a maturity tier, the top strengths, the biggest gaps, and editable findings you can accept, dismiss, or export as CSV, PDF, XLSX, or DOCX. Only you and your team ever see it.

The same evidence corpus powers both surfaces. That means the public Policy Profile you look up on /grade and the private review you run on /review are speaking the same language — the same coverage blocks, the same rubric, the same Canadian evidence base. What changes is who sees the score.

Why 'no policy yet' is a great starting point

Most Canadian municipalities do not have a published AI policy today. That is not a scarlet letter — it is the norm, and it is exactly who the lookup is designed to help. When the Profile shows 'no policy on record,' the next step is not shame; it is a concrete starting point built from what peer municipalities have done well.

• If a policy is on record, the primary call-to-action is the full breakdown and a private review of your own draft.
• If nothing is on record, the primary call-to-action is a starting foundation drawn from published peers.
• Verification requests, source corrections, and 'we just published — please re-check us' flows are always one click away from the municipality page.

"A policy profile is a mirror. Use it to see clearly, then decide what to change."

What powers the analysis

• The Canadian evidence corpus: 139 municipal and public-sector AI policies (and growing), each parsed into structured coverage blocks.
• TBS ADM expectations: the Treasury Board Directive on Automated Decision-Making, used as an anchor for federal-adjacent governance patterns.
• International frameworks: NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, OECD AI Principles, and the EU AI Act — used to sanity-check gaps beyond the Canadian baseline.
• Human verification: an admin team confirms sources, dates, and status so a Policy Profile can be trusted in a council memo.

What you can do today

• Go to /grade and look up any Canadian municipality — you will see a Policy Profile and a link to the full breakdown.
• Click 'View full policy breakdown' to open the coverage-block view for that policy.
• If you own a policy or a draft, run a full private review inside /review to get the 0–100 score and 62-block breakdown for your own document.
• If your municipality shows 'no policy on record' but you have one, submit the source URL via the verification card on the municipality page.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the full breakdown link on the lookup page?

Once you select a municipality on /grade, the result card shows a 'View full policy breakdown' button when a published policy is on record. That takes you to /grade/municipality/<slug>, the deeper coverage-block view.

Is the lookup free?

Yes. Every visitor can search and open a Policy Profile and the full breakdown without an account. Running a private 62-block review of your own policy document lives inside /review; Starter unlocks unlimited private reviews and richer exports.

What is the difference between the public breakdown and the private review?

The public breakdown is built from registry signals and coverage-block detection on the policy already on file. The private review is a deeper AI read of any document you upload, scored 0–100 against the same evidence corpus, visible only inside /review to your account.

My municipality's Profile is out of date — can I fix it?

Yes. Every municipality page has a verification request card. Submit a corrected or updated source URL and an admin will re-check the registry entry and re-run the analysis if needed.

What does the coverage-block view actually show?

For each of the tracked policy blocks — governance, risk classification, procurement, transparency, human oversight, incident response, and more — you see whether that block is present, present-but-weak, or missing, along with the evidence we used. It is the same view a reviewer would use to draft a gap assessment.

Resources and further reading