Courtready co-founder Tom Macintosh Zheng argues in The Hill Times that Canada’s national AI strategy, AI for All, reaches almost every corner of public life but skips the one place where AI failures already carry legal consequences: the courtroom.

On July 1, 2026, The Hill Times published an opinion piece by Courtready co-founder Tom Macintosh Zheng, titled “Canada’s national AI strategy leaves out the justice system.” The main argument is that Canada’s national AI strategy, AI for All, says almost nothing about the justice system, where AI is already causing harm.

Courtready’s tracking of published decisions has documented at least 176 instances across 54 Canadian courts and tribunals in which someone filed fictitious case law and/or AI-hallucinated citations. In 81 percent of those cases, the person found to have done so was a self-represented litigant. These are the Canadians least able to afford a lawyer, and the least equipped to recognize a case that an AI chatbot invented.

The fix does not require reopening the strategy. It requires extending the literacy effort the strategy already promises to the people filing their own cases. Free public databases and verification tools already make that check possible. What is missing is the effort to put them in front of the people who need them, when they need them.

AI literacy has to reach self-represented litigants in order to stem the tide of AI misuse in Canadian courts.