Practical planning questions for digital work connected to Canada

Questions to answer before development

• English or French requirements, including who will review and approve localized content.
• The province or territory connected to the users, organization, and project.
• Personal-information handling, vendors, hosting, access, retention, and cross-border data flows.
• GST/HST, provincial tax, invoicing, payment, accessibility, and procurement questions that require the client’s qualified reviewers.

Language and localization

Choose the working language for meetings, contracts, technical documentation, support, and final delivery. Separately define the language users will see in the product.

Localized content should be reviewed by someone who understands the audience, terminology, tone, and subject matter. Machine translation can assist drafting, but it should not be treated as certified or automatically publication-ready.

Privacy and data

Document:

• the information collected and why it is needed;
• who can access it;
• which vendors process or store it;
• where it may travel;
• how long it is retained;
• how users exercise applicable rights;
• how incidents, corrections, exports, and deletion are handled.

Faith Forge Labs can implement client-approved technical requirements and document the tests performed. Applicability and legal conclusions remain with the client and qualified advisers.

Payments and commerce

Define currency display, pricing ownership, tax inputs, invoice responsibility, payment providers, settlement, refunds, disputes, fulfilment, subscriptions, reconciliation, and support.

The application should record failed and incomplete states rather than treating payment as a simple success screen.

Accessibility and usability

Set an accessibility target before design and testing. Include keyboard use, screen-reader structure, focus states, contrast, errors, labels, mobile interaction, and representative user testing where appropriate.

• Statistics Canada Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023 Use: technology, cloud, e-commerce, and business-adoption context
• Statistics Canada Digital economy and society statistics Use: follow-up datasets and current statistical releases
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner PIPEDA requirements in brief Use: identify principles, coverage questions, provincial laws, and cross-border questions
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner Privacy Guide for Businesses Use: create a client review list for personal-information handling
• Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST for businesses Use: route registration, charging, invoice, and reporting questions to the client's tax reviewer
• Accessibility Standards Canada Procurement of goods, services, and facilities Use: identify accessibility criteria and end-user participation during procurement planning

Official sources

Use current official government, tax, privacy, accessibility, and payments sources as research starting points. Recheck them for the actual service, user, location, and launch date. Record which client owner or adviser decides what applies.

Next step

Bring the unresolved questions to discovery. They do not all need to be answered before the first conversation.