Building Canada's AI Policy Hub, in public
Why this exists, what counts as a policy, how the registry gets to procurement grade, and what we learn cataloguing every Canadian municipality.
TL;DR
- Provincial and federal AI legislation is arriving in waves — orgs need to show they have a policy, not just claim one.
- Got AI Policy is a Canada-first registry of public AI governance evidence: who has a policy, what type, where the proof lives, and when it was last verified.
- We started with municipalities because that's where regulators, auditors, vendors, consultants, and the public all converge on the same question.
- The destination is a procurement-grade registry — the place a buyer, an auditor, or a journalist can cite without flinching.
- Founders fund the runway and shape the roadmap. Everyone else benefits from a public good that didn't exist yesterday.
This started with a small, almost embarrassing question: who actually has an internal AI policy in Canada, and who doesn't?
Not a thought-leadership question. A compliance question. The kind a regulator asks before a hearing. The kind an auditor asks before signing off. The kind a consultant asks before pitching. The kind a journalist asks the week a story breaks. The kind a parent asks at a school board meeting.
When we went looking for the answer, we found press releases, dead links, vendor blog posts, and a lot of polite silence. What we did not find was a registry. So we built one.
The wave that's already breaking
Quebec's Law 25 is in force. Ontario is moving. The federal AIDA conversation is still alive even as it morphs. Provincial procurement teams are quietly adding AI clauses to RFPs. School boards, hospitals, libraries, and municipalities are being asked — sometimes in writing, sometimes by a councillor on the dais — whether they have an AI policy at all.
Most of them do not. Some of them do but cannot find the document. A growing minority have published one and want credit for it. All three groups need the same thing: a neutral, public, dated source of truth.
What we solve, in plain language
1. The 'do they or don't they?' question
For every Canadian municipality in our directory, we answer: do they have an AI policy, what type is it (standalone, embedded, draft, none found), where is it published, and when did a human last verify the link still works.
2. The 'show me the receipt' problem
Every entry links to the original source — a council agenda, a posted policy PDF, a staff report. We are not the source of truth. We are the index that points to it. That distinction matters when an auditor asks where a number came from.
3. The 'I don't have time to read 200 PDFs' tax
Consultants, vendors, and policy staff are spending hours doing the same lookups in parallel. Centralizing the lookup once, publicly, with a freshness date, gives everyone their afternoons back.
Who this is for
Municipal staff drafting their first policy. Consultants scoping a governance engagement. AI vendors qualifying public-sector deals. Journalists writing the next story. Auditors, board members, and citizens who want to know what their institutions actually committed to.
Why municipalities first
Municipalities are the perfect first slice of the registry because every group above already converges on them. They publish in public. They are accountable to elected officials. They serve every Canadian. And they are, right now, the layer of government most exposed to AI procurement decisions with the least centralized governance support.
If we can make the municipal layer legible, the rest of the public sector — and eventually the broader regulated economy — becomes a tractable expansion, not a moonshot.
Where this is going: a procurement-grade registry
Today, Got AI Policy is a directory with verified links and freshness dates. That is already useful. But it is not the destination.
The destination is a registry a procurement officer can cite in a memo. A registry a vendor can attach to an RFP response without an asterisk. A registry an auditor will accept as a primary index. That means deeper schema, machine-readable exports, dispute-resolution workflows, vendor-attestation flows, and bilingual coverage that respects how this country actually works.
Getting there is a runway problem more than a research problem. The research is grindy but knowable. The runway is what decides whether the registry is built by people who care about Canadian institutions, or by a vendor who wants to flip it.
Beg, borrow, build
We are unapologetic that part of the funding model is founders — practitioners who put a small amount of capital in, get early access and a seat at the table, and in exchange help us pressure-test the schema, the workflows, and the priorities. That is how a public good gets built without a venture fund's exit timeline distorting the roadmap.
If the registry your sector needs does not exist yet, the cheapest way to get one is to fund the people already building it and tell them what's missing.
What you can do today
- Search the directory for your municipality, your client's municipality, or your competitor's customers.
- If we got something wrong, tell us — every entry has a 'report an issue' path.
- If you have a policy we haven't catalogued yet, send us the link. We'll verify and credit it.
- If you want to shape the procurement-grade roadmap, look at the Founder page.
The next twelve months in Canadian AI governance will reward the people who can answer simple questions with sourced evidence. We are building the place those answers live.
Frequently asked questions
Is the registry free to use?
Yes. Browsing the tracker, opening Policy Profiles at /grade, and reading policy summaries requires no account. Starter unlocks unlimited private reviews, richer exports, and higher Studio quotas — the public evidence layer stays free.
How accurate are the registry entries?
Every entry is source-first — the primary link is a policy or artifact the organization published itself. AI is used to summarize and detect coverage blocks; humans verify. Confidence signals and 'last verified' timestamps are shown on each Profile so you can judge before quoting.
What if our organization's entry is wrong or out of date?
Every municipality page has a verification request card. Submit a corrected or updated source URL and an admin will re-check the entry and re-run the analysis. Corrections typically land within a few business days.
Do you cover only municipalities?
Municipalities are the deepest coverage today, but the corpus is expanding into nonprofits, libraries, recreation and cultural organizations, associations, and other community-serving bodies. Suggest an organization to scout via the suggestion form linked from /organizations.
How is this funded?
Paid tiers (Starter, Pro, Founding Member) and CivicPlay.ai advisory work. Founding Members put in early capital in exchange for a lifetime price lock and a seat at the roadmap table. No advertising, no data resale, no sponsored placements in the registry.