Ottawa businesses are adopting AI tools faster than the legal system can keep up, and that gap is starting to create real risk for local employers. According to Ottawa firm Emond Harnden LLP, companies that lean on AI for customer service, hiring decisions or day to day operations can still be held legally responsible when that technology gets something wrong.
The warning follows a widely cited case involving Air Canada, where the airline's customer service chatbot gave a passenger incorrect information about bereavement fares. When the passenger tried to claim the discount the chatbot had promised, Air Canada argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions. A tribunal rejected that argument outright, ruling that a company is responsible for all the information on its website, whether it comes from a static page or an AI-powered tool.
Why This Matters for Ottawa Employers
With Kanata North's tech corridor and a growing number of downtown Ottawa startups building AI into their products and internal workflows, this isn't just a hypothetical for big national carriers. Local retailers, restaurants and professional services firms across the city increasingly use AI chatbots for bookings and customer questions, while Ottawa employers in sectors from tech to the public service are turning to AI tools to screen resumes, draft communications and even assist with performance reviews.
Emond Harnden's guidance is blunt: businesses can't treat AI as a shield from liability. If an AI tool gives a customer wrong pricing, discriminates in a hiring process, or shares inaccurate information that a client relies on, the business behind that tool is the one who answers for it, not the software vendor and not the algorithm itself.
The Legal and Ethical Risks Piling Up
The firm points to a few key risk areas Ottawa employers should be watching closely:
Employment decisions. AI tools used in hiring or performance management can introduce bias that violates human rights legislation, even unintentionally. If an algorithm screens out candidates based on patterns that correlate with protected grounds, the employer is exposed, not the software company that built the tool.
Customer-facing errors. As the Air Canada case showed, promises or information delivered by an AI chatbot are treated the same as promises made by a human employee. Ottawa businesses using AI for bookings, quotes or support need to make sure that information is accurate and regularly checked.
Data and privacy. Feeding customer or employee data into AI systems raises questions under privacy law that many small and mid-sized Ottawa businesses haven't fully worked through yet.
What Ottawa Businesses Should Do Now
Emond Harnden recommends employers put clear policies in place governing how AI tools are used, keep a human reviewing AI-generated decisions before they go out the door, and regularly audit AI systems for accuracy and bias. For an Ottawa business community that's embracing automation quickly, especially in the tech sector, the message is simple: moving fast on AI adoption shouldn't mean skipping the legal homework.
As more Ottawa companies integrate AI into hiring, sales and customer service, expect this kind of guidance to become standard reading for local HR and legal teams alike.
Source: Ottawa Business Journal
