How to choose an AI consultant: four things to demand
How to choose an AI consultant in Canada: ask for a named client you can phone, a system in production, the person doing the work, and exit terms.
Angus McDonald · 20 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
written for Canada ● also for Australia, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand
Ask an AI consultant to produce four things before you pay them: a client you can phone by name, a system already in production you can watch a non-employee use, the name of the person who will do your work, and a written answer to what you keep if you stop paying. Azgard calls that the Show-Me List. Answers about methodology are free; only those four are checkable, and a consultant with none is billing you to learn.
In Canada, how you verify the business itself changes by province, because there is no single company register.
Why most AI consultant vetting checklists test the wrong thing
Most AI consultant vetting checklists test what the consultant says: methodology, change management, industry experience, certifications. Every one of those answers gets written on the spot by someone whose job that morning is to sound right.
Answers are free, and a market that selects on answers selects for whoever answers most fluently - a different skill from building software that survives contact with your staff. The questions that work are the ones whose answers existed before you asked: does a working system exist, and does anyone outside the payroll use it?
The Azgard Show-Me List: four things to ask an AI consultant to produce
The Azgard Show-Me List is four things you ask an AI consultant to produce, in order. They are demands rather than questions: each row exists or does not.
| Ask them to produce | The weak version you get offered |
|---|---|
| A client you can phone, by name | A logo wall, or "a leading manufacturer" |
| A production system, driven by someone who does not work for them | A demo the consultant drives |
| The name and calendar of whoever does your work | The account lead, or "our team" |
| A written answer to what you keep when you stop paying | "We'll sort that out at handover" |
The rule underneath it: ask for the thing, not the answer about the thing. Anything a consultant can produce only after you pay is a promise with an invoice attached.
Ask for a named client you can contact, not a logo wall
A named client on an AI consultant's website is not a contactable reference, and that distinction is the whole of item 1 of the Azgard Show-Me List: what you want is a name, a number and permission to use it.
Some firms genuinely cannot publish client names, because their clients will not allow it, which is exactly why the ask is a private contact rather than a public logo. In Canada a short delay is a good sign: handing over a referee's number discloses that person's personal information, so a consultant who checks with their client first is doing the correct thing rather than stalling.
Watch someone who is not the consultant use the system in production
Item 2 of the Azgard Show-Me List asks an AI consultant to screen-share something running in production and let a person who does not work for them drive it. Two Australian consulting firms got to the demand first and deserve the credit: Kernel Flow's rule is to work out whether a firm builds running systems or just writes roadmap plans, and Team 400 tells buyers to ask how many AI systems a vendor runs in production right now.
What the Azgard Show-Me List adds is who holds the mouse. A demo environment is built to demo; a staff member using it on a Tuesday shows you the pauses, the workaround somebody invented, the field everyone skips.
Ask what you keep the day you stop paying
Item 4 of the Azgard Show-Me List is the one buyers skip, and it belongs in writing: what do we keep the day we stop paying you? Name the categories in the contract - documents, credentials, the accounts the system runs in, and the system itself - before signing rather than at handover. You cannot buy your company brain: if it lives in the vendor's tenancy and switches off when the invoices stop, you rented a capability instead of buying an asset. Measurement is the other half of that question, and the Azgard Three-Question Vendor Filter covers it.
How to verify an AI consultant's business is real in Canada
Verifying that an AI consultant is a real business in Canada has four different answers inside one country, because there is no single Canadian company register. Ask which jurisdiction they are incorporated in, then search that register. Start at Corporations Canada: free, immediate, and it publishes the individuals with significant control behind a federally incorporated company, a filing mandatory since 22 January 2024. It excludes provincially incorporated companies, so a nil result there means provincial, not fake.
| Incorporated in | Where you search | What it discloses | Cost, Canadian dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal | Corporations Canada | Directors, registered office, filings, individuals with significant control | Free |
| Ontario (Toronto, Ottawa) | Ontario Business Registry | Basic search free; directors come with the profile report | Profile report $8, documents $3, status certificate $26 |
| British Columbia (Vancouver) | OrgBook BC, then BC Registries | OrgBook: status, names, business number. Paid summary adds directors and officers, never shareholders | $7.00 plus a $1.50 service charge |
| Alberta (Calgary) | A registry agent; no free government search | Registration date, owners, directors, addresses | Government fee plus an unregulated agent service fee |
| Quebec | Registraire des entreprises | Directors, officers, shareholders, beneficiaries; searchable by a person's name | Free |
Vancouver requires every organization doing business in or from the city to hold a business licence and publishes the issued ones free - decisive there, meaningless in Toronto or Calgary, neither of which requires one for consulting. No register shows competence. Ontario lists consulting among the occupations it does not regulate, and Azgard found no province that licenses "AI consultant" as a title. Public Services and Procurement Canada's AI Supplier Source List is worth knowing in Ottawa, but it qualifies a supplier to sell to government rather than marking quality.
What PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25 require of your consultant
Canadian privacy law turns item 4 of the Azgard Show-Me List from good practice into an obligation. Statistics Canada found cybersecurity and privacy concerns were the leading barrier to AI adoption in the second quarter of 2026, at 13.4 per cent against 10.6 per cent for cost. Under PIPEDA, the federal privacy law covering commercial handling of personal information, accountability follows the file: you stay responsible for personal information you hand to a processor, and must use contractual means to give it comparable protection. Sending it abroad is a use rather than a disclosure, provided you tell people it happens.
Quebec has its own statute, and the scope matters: Law 25 binds enterprises handling personal information collected in Quebec, not every Canadian buyer. Where it applies, section 18.3 requires the written contract to specify that the provider does not keep the information after the mandate or contract expires, and section 17 requires a privacy impact assessment before that information goes outside Quebec. For that buyer, item 4 is a clause you are required to have, not a negotiating position.
AI consultant red flags, and the ones that are not red flags
AI consultant red flags are mostly refusals to produce: case studies with no client you may contact, a demo when you asked for production, refusing to name the individual who writes the code, no written answer on what you keep when you leave. In Canada, add any claim of accreditation as a "digital advisor" under the Canada Digital Adoption Program, which stopped taking new applications in February 2024: a 2026 claim points at something that no longer exists.
Not red flags: no municipal licence in Toronto or Calgary; no GST/HST number from a foreign supplier selling to registered Canadian businesses; absence from the AI Supplier Source List.
In Canada the contract is the whole of the recourse, because consumer protection is written for individuals. Ontario's Consumer Protection Act, 2023 excludes anyone acting for business purposes, so an Ontario company hiring a consultant has no consumer remedy - check your own province's act rather than assuming one covers you. Small claims limits in Canadian dollars run from $15,000 in Quebec to $35,000 in British Columbia, $50,000 in Ontario and $100,000 in Alberta, and Quebec bars businesses with more than 10 employees from small claims entirely - so an eleven-person Quebec company with a $40,000 dispute has no cheap forum, while in Calgary it is a small claim.
How Azgard answers its own four questions
Azgard is one engineer in Sydney, delivering remotely: no Canadian entity, no office, nobody on the ground, and an invoice from an Australian business. Item 1 of the Azgard Show-Me List is three clients by name - Apex Signage, Home Grown Electrical and Inner Game Basketball - three, not thirty, all Australian, so a Canadian buyer phoning a reference is phoning Australia. Item 2: at Apex, quoting time went from about 3.5 hours to just over 2 per quote, and the people using that system are Apex staff. Item 3 always answers Angus McDonald, a capacity ceiling rather than a feature; if you need a team, or someone who can be in the room, hire a Canadian firm. Item 4 is published: every build is owned and documented so it runs without us.
No Canadian corporate register will confirm Azgard, which is not incorporated in Canada: the federal, Ontario, BC and Quebec registers all return nothing, so the check this page tells you to run is one Azgard cannot pass on Canadian ground. If you handle personal information collected in Quebec, Azgard is the foreign recipient your privacy impact assessment has to assess. The Apex number fails two fields of Azgard's own Baseline Card; what an AI consultant costs in Canada and the Canadian hub cover the rest.
FAQ
tags: vendor-evaluation ● hiring ● due-diligence ● procurement
Angus McDonald
Founder, Azgard
Builds and operates production AI systems for organisations that need results, not slide decks.