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Helpful Places

Government of Canada – DTPR AI Register

AI Assistant for Employment Insurance Policy Research

Inform · Research & Development

What it collects

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Employment Insurance Acts and Regulations — the statutory and regulatory text governing the EI program in Canada. This is publicly available legislative data, not personal information.
Run by
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Accountable organization

What it is for

InformResearch & Development

This tool uses AI to help government business analysts quickly look up and understand Employment Insurance laws and regulations by answering plain-language questions with cited references. It is designed to support internal staff — not members of the public — in drafting policy requirements and technical specifications. No personal information is collected or processed by this system.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Employment Insurance Acts and Regulations — the statutory and regulatory text governing the EI program in Canada. This is publicly available legislative data, not personal information.

Processing

Language Models
  • Natural language processing and information retrieval techniques underpin the system's ability to interpret analyst questions and match them to relevant legislative text, producing summarized and cited responses.
Search & Retrieval
  • Information retrieval over the corpus of EI Acts and Regulations, surfacing relevant provisions in response to analyst queries with citation links back to source text.

What it does

Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • The system interprets natural language questions from analysts, retrieves and understands relevant passages from EI legislation, and surfaces matching provisions with citations. Analysts review and decide how to apply the results.
Deciding (Analytical AI)
Human decides
  • The system produces summaries and explanations of legislative requirements, and generates pseudo logic to support technical specification drafting. Human analysts decide whether and how to use these outputs.

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • The system produces citation-backed textual responses, summaries, and explanations of EI legislative requirements, as well as pseudo logic artifacts to assist technical teams. No personal information is included in outputs.

Run by

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
  • The federal department responsible for deploying the EI Research Companion to support business analysts working with Employment Insurance legislation.

GC AI Register — EI Research Companion

Built by

Accenture
  • The technology vendor that developed the EI Research Companion on behalf of Employment and Social Development Canada.

GC AI Register — EI Research Companion

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Available to the accountable organization
  • Outputs (responses, summaries, pseudo logic) are available to ESDC business analysts and technical teams as the primary users. The system is an internal government tool not accessible to the public.

Stored

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the Helpful Places, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyAs an internal tool used only by Government of Canada employees, the system is disclosed through the Government of Canada Algorithmic Impact Assessment registry. Members of the public may consult the published register entry for information about how this system operates.

Risks and safeguards

  • Civil liberties harmAI-generated summaries or pseudo logic could contain errors that propagate into policy requirements or technical specifications, potentially affecting downstream EI program rules.Safeguard: the system is advisory only — business analysts and technical teams review all outputs before use. Citation-backed responses allow human verification against source legislation.