What is Canadian eDiscovery?

Canadian eDiscovery is the identification, preservation, collection, review, and production of electronically stored information in Canadian litigation. It is shaped by the Sedona Canada Principles and by provincial rules of civil procedure that put proportionality at the centre of every discovery decision.

The mechanics of Canadian eDiscovery look familiar to anyone who has worked on a US matter, but the emphasis is different.

Proportionality is the organising principle. Canadian courts expect the effort and expense of discovery to be proportionate to what is actually in issue. Broad, unbounded collection is hard to justify.

The Sedona Canada Principles are the reference point. Developed for the Canadian context, they address preservation, the scope of production, cooperation between parties, and the use of technology in review. Several provinces direct parties to have regard to them when preparing a discovery plan.

Discovery plans come early. In Ontario, for example, parties are expected to agree on a plan covering scope, timing, and the format of production before documentary discovery proceeds. Settling format and metadata expectations at this stage prevents most downstream disputes.

Privacy law is always in the background. PIPEDA, Quebec's Law 25, and provincial equivalents govern how personal information in the collection is handled, and increasingly where it is stored and processed.

Technology-assisted review is well established in Canadian practice. Guidance consistently ties its acceptability to transparency about how it was used and validation of the results, which puts a premium on being able to explain and defend how a review was run.

Claira is a Canadian AI document review platform built around that defensibility requirement. You can see it in action.

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