As Canada finds its sovereignty repeatedly threatened by the United States, it’s Donald Trump who plays the villain. The president seizes the spotlight by openly proclaiming the United States must dominate its geographic “sphere” that includes all of North America.
But it is Big Tech that truly rules the world and poses its own threat to Canadian sovereignty. And nothing the Mark Carney government has proposed to date is likely to blunt its efforts.
Yes, Carney has named the battlefront by declaring that Canada must have its own, sovereign, Canadian data infrastructure. What could that mean? That Canada has control over the chips, algorithms, data centres, models and data that comprise cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
There’s good reason for Canadian data infrastructure to be a priority. We don’t want a menacing United States snooping on our private information, and we don’t want our digital systems to be vulnerable to being scrambled or unplugged by a tantrum-throwing president.
Unfortunately, there are also good reasons that establishing data sovereignty has not yet become an actual project to be supported by the Carney government’s Major Projects Office. Many obstacles stand in the way.
Most major tech companies in Canada are U.S. owned and controlled and subject to U.S. laws. Sixty per cent of cloud capacity is owned by three hyperscalers (large-scale cloud service providers that operate massive data centres to offer vast computing power, storage and networking capabilities to large customers): Amazon Web Services or AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. A third of Canada’s nearly 300 data centres are U.S. owned.
Big Tech has formed alliances with, and poured money into, leading Canadian universities and research institutes, channelling graduates and researchers into its ranks, and buying up promising companies.
Ottawa is currently using hyperscalers to house and process its data, a practice that may be hard to break. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada estimates it would take up to three years to switch its computer usage away from AWS, with the only alternative being another hyperscaler.
Carney says we need a Canadian alternative to give Canada “independent control over advanced computing power.” And the federal government should be able to procure services from Canadian companies.
He could point to the Department of National Defence, which spent $1.3 billion on cloud services provided by Microsoft — where most of the money went — and AWS and Google.
The services include “mission-critical” applications such as the systems the air force uses “for aircraft co-ordination” and situational awareness tools used by the Canadian Army.
If Trump decides to come for Canada — 51st state or vassal state — this data could be vulnerable to U.S. access because of two acts of Congress and one trade agreement.
The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or CLOUD Act, was passed during Trump’s first presidency. This act authorizes U.S. law enforcement to obtain data from U.S. companies even if that data is stored in another country, like Microsoft’s storage of Department of National Defence data in Canada.
Canada’s AI minister, Evan Solomon, downplays this threat by pointing out that U.S. law enforcement agencies would need legal warrants to obtain the data. True, but do we believe this would stop Trump? Even without Trump, the vulnerability exists.
The second act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was passed in 1978. It gives U.S. authorities the ability to monitor emails, text messages and phone calls of its citizens as well as foreign nationals outside the United States to stop terrorist attacks and criminal activity. In this case warrants are not required. This provision was recognized by the Federal Court of Canada as authorizing “the violation of foreign sovereignty.”
Then in 2018 Canada signed the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, with a chapter on digital trade that stipulates:
“No Party shall prohibit or restrict the cross-border transfer of information, including personal information, by electronic means if this activity is for the conduct of the business of a covered person” (Article 19.11).
So whatever success Carney may achieve on the sovereign cloud front, most Canadian data will remain vulnerable to these threats.
How vulnerable are Canadian universities?
A Treasury Board white paper on cloud computing confirms that Canada cannot have sovereignty over its data as long as cloud service providers are subject to the laws of another country.
This observation also applies to non-governmental data. As an example, this year Simon Fraser University (my former employer) announced it would be transitioning its learning management system from Canvas to Canvas Cloud. These services are provided by the same company, Instructure, but instead of being hosted on SFU’s own servers, in the future they will be hosted on Instructure’s cloud platform.
The notice sent to the university community assured it — several times — that the platform is “based in Canada” or the servers are “located in Canada.”
Yes. The servers are located in Canada. But this is the only thing Canadian about the venture.
AWS owns the regional data centres and Montreal computing cloud infrastructure where Instructure’s servers are located. Amazon is, of course, a U.S. company, the fifth largest in the world by market capitalization, the second largest by revenue.
Instructure’s head office is in Salt Lake City, Utah. (It was founded by two Brigham Young University graduate students.)
Even if SFU and Instructure have signed a deal to keep data securely in Canada, which they must have done, the data is still vulnerable to U.S. intrusion through the CLOUD Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and CUSMA.
If the Trump administration wanted to come after SFU faculty members, perhaps because they engaged in group discussion about Israel and Palestine, U.S. imperialism or socialist thinkers, the U.S. government might be able to access data Instructure has in its Canvas cloud.
A sovereign Canadian cloud will make little difference to the SFU community because Instructure’s data and platform are integrated with AWS, using AWS building blocks and advanced platform capabilities. In addition, Canvas’s AI features are built with AWS resources. Canvas could move to a Canadian cloud only with the greatest difficulty and expense.
Along with SFU, Instructure operates its learning management system at dozens of U.S. and Canadian universities — about 50 per cent of the total Canadian and U.S. market. It has become very profitable, with 2024 revenue of US$530 million. It was purchased in 2020 by a private equity firm for US$2 billion. Four years later it was bought by two other private equity firms for US$4.8 billion, a 140 per cent increase in four years.
Just like Canadian education data, many other kinds of data stored on U.S.-owned cloud servers fall into the same category. The health records of Canadians (physical and mental health, medications) from clinics and hospitals are mostly stored on cloud servers located in Canada but controlled by U.S. companies. So, they too are subject to the trade agreements and U.S. laws.
Americanization is becoming even more entrenched. Big Tech can outspend Canadian companies many times over. AWS is planning to spend US$18 billion over the next decade to expand its Montreal Central region and its newly established Canada West region in Calgary, to capture the rapid growth of the data centre market. Microsoft plans to spend $19 billion in Canada between 2023 and 2027. In contrast, the Canadian government put $2 billion on the table.
Always on the offensive
In its efforts to persuade Canadians to cast aside any vision for a sovereign cloud, Big Tech deploys its vast arsenal of propaganda tools and lobbying resources.
The Chamber of Progress is one such weapon. It calls itself a “centre-left tech industry policy coalition.” Actually, it’s a Big Tech front group, established during the Joe Biden administration by longtime Google policy executive Adam Kovacevich to tailor Silicon Valley messaging for centrist Democratic ears. It would back key pieces of Democratic legislation in order to fend off attempts at regulation or efforts to break up the Big Tech giants.
Several chamber board members worked with Kovacevich at Google, and a leaked email showed ongoing co-ordination between Google and the chamber.
The chamber received US$29.9 million in revenue in 2022 and US$8.7 million in 2023, the last year it submitted public returns in the United States. This funding came from a host of chamber “partners,” including Amazon, Airbnb, Apple, Google, Intuit, Nvidia and Uber. Meta and Twitter are past partners.
After it was created in 2021, the chamber led the fight against antitrust bills the Biden administration was trying to push through Congress. The bills never made it. Big Tech remains largely unregulated.
The chamber expanded its reach to Europe in 2024 when the European Union threatened to bring in strong regulation. When France and Germany renewed efforts to support European tech companies, the chamber responded that such a move could lower the quality of services or increase costs for Europeans. Instead, the chamber offered, Europe should build a business environment “where globally competitive digital companies” — think Amazon, Google and Microsoft — “can grow, scale and thrive.”
To counter European proposals to build a “EuroStack,” a set of initiatives to create independent European digital infrastructure and limit European dependence on U.S. technologies, as Carney proposes for Canada, the chamber wrote a report claiming such an effort would cost 25 times the EU’s annual budget. Better to stick with the hyperscalers, which already have all the pieces in place.
When the European Union fined Elon Musk’s X US$140 million for deceptive practices last summer, Musk proclaimed the EU should be abolished and Trump made threatening noises, saying, “Europe has to be very careful.”
Now it’s Canada’s turn.
Less than a month after Carney announced his government’s plans to build the sovereign cloud, the Chamber of Progress came to Canada. It hired Canadian IT specialist Josh Tabish as its senior director for Canada. (The other 26 chamber staff members are all American.) Tabish was director of policy and advocacy at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the .ca domain name registry. Before that he was a digital rights campaigner, the perfect spokesperson for a “centre-left policy coalition.”
Tabish immediately registered as a lobbyist to communicate with government about AI, data centres, digital sovereignty, innovation, investment and competitiveness.
In a blog post announcing his appointment, Tabish cautions Canada about its plan for digital sovereignty:
“Canada’s sovereignty isn’t up for debate. But if nationalism turns into digital protectionism, it could stifle innovation, raise consumer costs, and slow growth at a time when affordability and competitiveness matter most.”
If you Google “Chamber of Progress” and “stifle innovation,” you’ll get dozens of hits. It’s a core chamber message.
And what stifles innovation? Overly burdensome regulation, or, in fact, any regulation.
Regulation, or, as it’s properly known, the public interest, versus innovation, or, as it should be known, new activity that increases the corporate bottom line.
It's a well-rehearsed meme: don’t let the public interest stand in the way of corporate profit. Why? Because the corporate interest is the real public interest. And it’s being repeated by Silicon Valley allies. They include:
- The Information Technology Industry Council, whose CEO complains that Canada is not getting the same level of investment as the United States. Why? Red tape is the culprit, he says. Canada’s regulatory permitting process takes too long. The council, whose 85 members include the three hyperscalers and other large U.S. tech companies, boasts it “works to reduce barriers that stifle innovation.”
- The Computer and Communications Industry Association has a similar warning, proclaiming, “If signed, the bill would stifle innovation and weaken New York’s position as a tech leader.” This organization includes many of the same tech giants. It urges Ottawa to anchor its national AI strategy in international standards to foster innovation and global collaboration. Don’t go the sovereign cloud route that could exclude best-in-class global providers and lead to an exodus of top-flight researchers, it warns.
- The Ottawa-based, centre-right Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank has platformed similar arguments, with a webinar asking whether Canada should follow the European Union’s regulatory caution or the United States’ innovation-driven approach, or something in between. To answer the question, Macdonald-Laurier chose two advocates from U.S. organizations that promote innovation and profit-seeking, plus a well-known U.S. lawyer who opposes antitrust legislation. No one was on the panel to explain the importance of the public interest and the benefits of regulation.
‘Sovereignty-washers’ selling Trojan horses?
Not only is Big Tech going all out to undermine efforts to even think about a sovereign Canadian cloud, it’s peddling its own problematic versions. Shortly after Carney declared a Canadian cloud to be a priority, Google Cloud Canada announced its own sovereign cloud offering for Canadian customers, including the Canadian government, with guarantees for data residency and access controls.
That was followed by Microsoft, which vowed to spend $7.5 billion in Canada over the next two years to expand its stable of data centres. The vow? It will keep data within Canadian borders and resist any orders to discontinue services to government customers that might come from the Trump administration.
Perhaps. But when the French Senate asked a senior Microsoft France official if he could guarantee that data from French citizens would not be transmitted to the United States without the authorization of French authorities, he said Microsoft could not guarantee data sovereignty to customers in France.
There is no reason why his response would not also apply to Canada. In fact, it’s probably more likely since French privacy laws are stronger than Canada’s.
There’s a name for offers of sovereignty over Canadian data from the hyperscalers. Emily Osborne of the Canadian Shield Institute calls this “sovereignty-washing” — a strategic ploy to deepen Canada’s dependence on U.S. tech firms.
Then there are the in-house and consultant lobbyists Big Tech employs, many with government experience. They provide their companies with day-to-day monitoring of Canadian government developments.
Nicole Foster is AWS’s director of global artificial intelligence and Canadian public policy — a top lobbyist for the tech giant. She was president of the National Women’s Liberal Commission — the voice of women in the Liberal Party of Canada — during the Stephen Harper years. She now warns her fellow Liberals that Canada should not go it alone on regulation. Instead, the country should adopt the practices of other countries that turn out to be more favourable to Big Tech. Whatever Canada settles on, Foster says, its government has to be aware that it “could inadvertently stifle innovation.”
Organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce promote Big Tech messaging in presentations to the parliamentary committee on international trade.
Trump has threatened to impose additional tariffs on the exports of any country that attempts to regulate “our incredible American Tech companies.” Sounding like the Godfather, he has warned, “Show respect to America and our amazing Tech Companies or consider the consequences.”
Competing with digital Goliaths
Through all of the flak, threats and promises, Canadians are still working on digital infrastructure. These companies are degrees smaller than the tech giants. That fact led Université de Montréal computer scientist Yoshua Bengio to urge Canada to join with other democracies to avoid being dominated by the United States (and China) and their tech giants. Canada could form partnerships, particularly with Europe, which is building its own digital services and network capacity, receiving the ire of the United States and Big Tech.
AI Minister Solomon was on the same panel with Bengio. Six weeks later he co-announced the Canada-Germany Digital Alliance, which must have been in the works for some time. The two countries will collaborate on issues like AI, digital sovereignty and digital infrastructure.
Will Canada’s efforts be sufficient to thwart U.S. Big Tech’s agenda? In 2022, the Justin Trudeau government introduced the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act as part of Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, containing clear regulatory provisions for AI. The bill died when Parliament was prorogued in early 2025.
When asked if the Carney government will reintroduce the act, Solomon said that the United States regards “all forms of regulation as a constraint on national security and innovation. We haven’t landed on what legislative framework to put forward, but you can safely say we’re not trying to push the same rock up the same hill.”
Later, after the government had consulted on options, Solomon said the government remains open to working with U.S. tech companies. “There’s lots of hybrid models that may qualify as sovereign as we’re working on the definition.”
That waffling ignores how Big Tech has come to rule the world over the past 15 years. Through its propaganda and lobbying and by achieving breathtaking power through its control of data, algorithms and platforms, it has become central to the global economy while amassing unimaginable wealth. Its interests are being transformed into the U.S. national interest. What’s good for Big Tech is good for the country.
There is a different view of Big Tech’s impact on society. Imran Amed, the British chief executive of the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, lives in Washington, D.C. In December he learned the Trump administration had moved to bar him from the United States. His supposed crime? Pressuring Big Tech to censor or suppress U.S. viewpoints. Amed offered a different explanation to the Guardian, saying he was singled out for his work holding to account the harmful practices of social media and AI firms, advocacy that led to Elon Musk’s X unsuccessfully suing his organization.
Amed was unflinching in his summation of Big Tech’s nature and impact: “There is no other industry that acts with such arrogance, indifference and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people.”
Amed’s characterization gives a grim hue to the famous image of tech tycoons — Tesla, X and Space X boss Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — standing front and centre at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Combined, the companies they own or head are worth $19 trillion in Canadian dollars.
Good luck to Prime Minister Carney and Minister Solomon as they seek to forge Canadian digital sovereignty in “hybrid” tandem with that bunch.
This article is part of The Tyee’s reader-funded Reality Check project exposing and explaining the rise of digital disinformation. ![[Tyee]](https://thetyee.ca/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}