By Region · Canada

GRC across Canada's two-track landscape

Canadian security teams answer to sector regulators like OSFI and the international frameworks their customers demand, while privacy runs on two tracks: a stalled federal regime and provinces that have raced ahead.

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The landscape

An ecosystem split across two tracks

For Canadian organizations, the security bar is set by regulators and customers alike. OSFI's Guideline B-13 holds federally regulated financial institutions, and the vendors that serve them, to a principles-based standard for technology and cyber risk, and most evidence it with NIST CSF and CIS Controls. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security publishes baseline controls the wider market treats as a floor. And to win business at home and abroad, Canadian firms carry the same SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports their customers everywhere expect.

OSFI B-13 SOC 2 ISO 27001 NIST CSF CIS Controls CCCS baseline Quebec Law 25 PIPEDA

Privacy is where the fragmentation shows. Federal reform has stalled twice, most recently when Bill C-27 died in early 2025, taking its privacy and AI acts with it. So the country still runs on PIPEDA, written in 2000, while Quebec's Law 25 has become the standard organizations actually follow and other provinces set their own rules. And Ottawa is now pushing data sovereignty as a priority of its own.

2000
the year Canada's federal privacy law was written, and still the law of the land today, after two failed attempts to replace it. Quebec's Law 25 has become the standard everyone actually follows.

Why it is hard

One control, many masters

A single control, say how a Canadian institution manages access or monitors its systems, has to answer to OSFI's B-13 expectations, to a customer's SOC 2 request, to Quebec's Law 25 for anyone in the province, and to PIPEDA federally, each framed a little differently, and increasingly with a question about where the data lives.

Managed as separate projects, that is the same evidence produced over and over, and a compliance map that never quite reflects the current rules, especially when those rules differ by province and the federal ones keep shifting.

How SimpleRisk fits

One control library, every obligation

SimpleRisk treats Canada's two tracks the way they should be treated: as one connected set of controls, not a stack of separate projects, mapped once and proven as often as your regulators and customers require.

  • Map once, satisfy many. Through the Secure Controls Framework, one control maps across OSFI B-13, SOC 2, ISO 27001, Quebec Law 25, and 250-plus frameworks, so you test once and satisfy many at the same time.
  • Answer the review once. Keep your controls and evidence in one place, so an OSFI review, a SOC 2 audit, or a customer assessment is a lookup, not a scramble.
  • Cross the federal-provincial line. Track federal and provincial obligations side by side against the same controls, so Quebec and Ottawa become two views of one program.
  • Keep data where it must live. Run SimpleRisk open source, on-premise, or as SaaS, so Canadian data-sovereignty requirements stay on your terms.
Compliance in SimpleRisk → Secure Controls Framework → On-Premise deployment →

Bring both tracks into one platform

Start a free trial or book a demo, and see how SimpleRisk maps your controls across every framework that matters in Canada.

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