Official pages, and nothing else.

AskCanada AI answers questions about Canadian government services in English and French. This policy explains which pages the service is allowed to read, how a sentence gets a citation, and what an answer is not allowed to be.

It applies to askcanada.ai, including the chat, the life-event pages, and the tools that sit under an answer. It describes how the service works. It is not legal advice, and it is not a promise that every answer is complete.

AskCanada AI is an independent service. It is not a department or agency of the Government of Canada, and it is not part of any province or territory. No government endorses it.

A link to a government page means we read that page. It does not mean the government wrote the answer, checked it, or agreed with it. We cannot see your government file, file a form for you, or change a decision.

Facts in an answer come from official government material, or the answer says that it does not know. That is the rule. A confident sentence is not a source. A familiar rule of thumb is not a source. Another website's summary is not a source.

The same rule applies in French and in English. If the official page does not support a claim, the claim should not appear as a fact.

We keep a closed list of domains for the federal government, the provinces, the territories, and official sites that publish with them. The list includes service pages, legislation, elections, statistics, and Crown bodies that publish on a government domain. You can read the list on the Sources page.

If a page is not on a domain in that list, it is not used. The list is the filter. It is not a ranking of which government matters more.

A source is a page, dataset, or feed published by a government, or by a body on the list. That includes program pages, guides, forms, acts and regulations, official news published by a government, and open data the government publishes.

A page that talks about a program, but is written by someone else, is not a source. A news story about a benefit is not a source. A social-media post is not a source. We cite the page a person can open and read.

Before an answer is written, pages outside the list are dropped. We do not use them as evidence, and we do not quote them as if they were official.

A question is routed to the government that handles it: federal, provincial, territorial, or more than one. A passport question goes to federal pages. A health-card question goes to the province or territory. A move can need both.

Search stays inside the domains for that government. We prefer the page that states the amount, the step, or the rule, and we cite that page. If several pages are relevant, the answer can cite more than one. It should not cite a page that does not support the sentence.

A factual sentence is written so you can see the page it came from. The citation is a link to the official page. Open it and compare. The answer is a guide to that page, not a replacement for it.

If a sentence cannot be tied to an official page, it should not be stated as a fact. Words that only introduce the page, such as a label, are not a second source.

Where the official page shows when it was modified, we show that date. It is the government's date. It tells you how old the page looks. It is not a promise that we re-checked the program this morning, and it is not a promise that the page is still the one a department would use tomorrow.

Governments change amounts, deadlines, and forms. If a date looks old, or a page and an answer disagree, trust the page and the department, and tell us about the mismatch.

Two official pages sometimes say different things. A federal page and a provincial page can both be real and still not match, because they govern different parts of the same life event. Two pages from the same government can also lag behind each other.

When that happens, the answer should show both and which one looks newer, rather than hide one of them. You still need to read the pages if a payment, a deadline, or an application depends on them.

If no official page answers the question, the service says so. It can point to the department that is most likely to help. It should not fill the gap with a guess, a news story, or a general explanation presented as the rule.

Saying we don't know is a complete answer. A longer answer that is not sourced is not a better one.

Some answers include a calculator or a card: a benefit estimate, a tax figure, a processing time, the weather, a recall, or a similar official figure. Those tools use numbers and tables published by the government, or a public feed the government provides.

What you type into a tool is part of the illustration. The result is not a decision on your file, not a filing, and not a calculation a department has approved for you. The card links to the official page so you can check the figure.

English answers use English official pages, and French answers use French official pages, when that page exists. The two languages are meant to carry the same kind of source, not a translation of an unsourced answer.

If a government publishes the page in only one language, the answer uses the page that exists and does not invent the missing one.

An answer is general information to help you find and read the official page. It is not legal advice, tax advice, immigration advice, or financial advice. It is not a determination that you are eligible. It does not submit anything to a government.

AskCanada AI does not act for you. For your own benefits, taxes, immigration file, or passport, use the department's own service. The contact page can only reach us, not a government.

A model can misread a page, miss an exception, or attach the right link to the wrong sentence. Check the linked page before you rely on an answer, especially for a deadline, a payment, or an application.

If an answer looks wrong, report it. A report helps us correct how a question is routed to a source. It does not change a government record, and it does not notify the department. You can report a wrong answer from the footer, or write to us on the contact page.

If an official site is missing from the list, you can suggest it on the Sources page. Send a government domain or a page address, and a short note if you want.

We add a site when it is an official federal, provincial, or territorial source that belongs on the list. We do not add news, commercial, or personal sites. A suggestion is stored so we can review it. The privacy notice says what that storage includes.

We update the list as governments move their sites, and we update this policy when the way we read those sites changes. The date at the top of this page is the date of the latest version.

The Sources page shows the list the service is using. If this policy and a product page ever disagree about a detail of how the service behaves today, we correct this policy.

Questions about this policy can be sent through the contact page. We read those messages so we can reply or fix the service. We cannot answer as a government, and we cannot look up your file.

How we handle the message itself is described in the privacy notice. How to use the pages is described in the accessibility statement.