{"id":107138,"date":"2026-01-19T15:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=107138"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:41:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T22:41:31","slug":"opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-canadas-digital-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2026\/01\/opinion-blayne-haggart-discusses-canadas-digital-sovereignty\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Blayne Haggart discusses Canada’s digital sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Blayne Haggart, Professor of Political Science at Brock University<\/em>, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the past year, few words have been abused as much as \u201csovereignty,\u201d particularly in relation to Canadian digital policy and artificial intelligence. In early December, Microsoft\u00a0promised to invest\u00a0more than $7.5 billion over the next two years to build \u201cnew digital and AI infrastructure\u201d in Canada. This investment is\u00a0backed by a pledge\u00a0that it will \u201cstand up to defend\u201d Canadian digital sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Framing the investment in terms of protecting Canadian sovereignty isn\u2019t incidental. Politically,\u00a0countries are increasingly worried\u00a0that tech companies based in the United States are vulnerable to pressure from the increasingly authoritarian government of President Donald Trump to turn over foreign citizens\u2019 data, trade secrets, emails and any activity or metadata produced on their systems to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering how investments in essential digital infrastructure from a U.S. company can help protect Canadian sovereignty, you\u2019re not alone. It can\u2019t and it won\u2019t, for the simple reason that Microsoft \u2014 and other tech companies based in or that do business in the United States \u2014 are promising something that\u2019s beyond their control to deliver.<\/p>\n

Data sovereignty<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sovereignty, in its simplest terms, refers to the ability of a state to control what happens within its borders and what crosses those borders. It has other aspects, such as whether a state is recognized by other states, but at heart it\u2019s about control.<\/p>\n

In June 2025 testimony before a French Senate committee\u00a0examining the issue of government procurement and digital sovereignty, Microsoft France\u2019s director of public and legal affairs, Anton Carniaux, was asked if he could guarantee under oath that data could not be transmitted to the U.S. government without the French government\u2019s approval. He replied: \u201cNo, I cannot guarantee that, but, again, it has never happened before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carniaux\u2019s response reminds us that the U.S., through its\u00a02018 CLOUD Act, has claimed the right to exercise control over data collected by U.S. companies, even if it\u2019s stored outside the country. In other words, American law explicitly requires that U.S. law takes precedence over other countries\u2019 laws.<\/p>\n

This is a clear infringement of any definition of sovereignty in terms of control. In response,\u00a0Microsoft has promised to\u00a0write \u201cinto contracts that Microsoft will challenge any government demand for Canadian data where it has legal grounds to.\u201d<\/p>\n

While meant to sound reassuring, Microsoft\u2019s promise is less than it appears. Not only does their commitment leave it up to Microsoft and U.S. courts to determine the validity of any demand, but the law itself is only half of the problem.<\/p>\n

Mass surveillance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mass illegal surveillance of global communications by U.S. intelligence agencies,\u00a0revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, was abetted by American tech companies. The U.S. National Security Agency collected vast amounts of data on people around the world, including non-American citizens, by tapping into internet firm servers.<\/p>\n

American companies are\u00a0uniquely beholden to pressure from the U.S. government. They depend on the government to negotiate favourable international agreements, and also as a major purchaser of their goods and services.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0research by York University criminology professor Natasha Tusikov has shown, the U.S. also engages in \u201cshadow regulation,\u201d putting pressure on private companies to fulfil government objectives that go beyond what\u2019s required by law \u2014 even, as Tusikov discusses, pursuing policies that have been explicitly rejected by democratically elected legislatures.<\/p>\n

All that happened before the Trump era. And given his clear\u00a0contempt for the principle of sovereignty\u00a0and American tech companies\u2019 close ties with the government, U.S. abuse of the non-American data held by its tech companies is certainly a possibility.<\/p>\n

Carney government vague about sovereignty<\/strong><\/p>\n

As misleading as Microsoft\u2019s promises may be, it\u2019s the Canadian government that\u2019s playing the loosest with digital sovereignty talk. Prime Minister Mark Carney arguably won the federal election on his promise to\u00a0protect Canadian sovereignty against a rapacious United States.<\/p>\n

While the prime minister has promised a \u201cCanadian sovereign cloud,\u201d it is unclear what exactly this means. Evan Solomon, Canada\u2019s minister in charge of promoting AI, has expressed openness to including U.S. companies like OpenAI (a Microsoft partner) in Canada\u2019s sovereign cloud, indicating that it could include\u00a0\u201chybrid models\u201d with \u201cmultiple players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon\u00a0has also argued that\u00a0\u201csovereignty does not mean solitude \u2026 we can\u2019t look at AI as a walled-off garden. Like, \u201bOh, we cannot ever take money from X or Y.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that sovereignty is never absolute. The real world is much messier than a world divided into neat, discrete packages that the principle of territorial sovereignty implies. No community or state is fully self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

We live in a global world of economic and social connections. Global governance involves a mix of domestic laws, international agreements and formal and informal cross-border working relationships. Countries benefit when they can draw on expertise and resources they lack at home.<\/p>\n

But Microsoft\u2019s and Solomon\u2019s comments elide the deeper issue that come from focusing too much on abstract notions like \u201csovereignty.\u201d Canada\u2019s problem isn\u2019t a loss of Canadian sovereignty in the abstract. It\u2019s a U.S. that has\u00a0violated Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty, threatened others (including Canada)\u00a0with annexation and is led by a president who has\u00a0declared himself above international law.<\/p>\n

Reasserting control<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sovereignty is about control. In the digital era, power lies with those who control the software and the data. Canada\u2019s problem is that American companies control enormous swaths of Canada\u2019s essential digital infrastructure, including emerging AI technologies and cloud services, but also email and the increasingly networked office software that underpin our entire society.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason why\u00a0France and Germany are collaborating\u00a0on an alternative to Google Docs.<\/p>\n

So long as the U.S cannot be trusted to respect domestic and international laws, companies based or working in the U.S are vulnerable to political pressure. This could potentially include capturing Canadians\u2019 data for political and economic reasons, and cutting off our access to their products or limiting their functionality.<\/p>\n

These hard facts about control, rather than abstract musings about sovereignty, should be our starting points for discussions about Canadian digital policy.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blayne Haggart, Professor of Political Science at Brock University, recently published a piece in The Conversation about Microsoft’s promises to protect Canada’s digital sovereignty as part of its plans to invest in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure in the country. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[3445,4104,522,42,31,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107138"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107149,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107138\/revisions\/107149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}