Overview
- Ottawa can only maintain full legal control of government data if it delivers services itself or uses providers operating entirely under Canadian jurisdiction.
- Vendors subject to foreign statutes can face cross‑border legal demands even when information is stored in Canada, with the U.S. Cloud Act cited as an example.
- The Treasury Board found no documented cases of foreign governments accessing Canadian data held by service providers.
- Prime Minister Mark Carney has directed the Major Projects Office to pursue a sovereign cloud, with key details and scope still to be defined by ministers.
- BCE and Telus have launched sovereign AI data centres and firms such as Google and OpenAI are pitching Canadian‑focused controls, after Ottawa spent about $1.3 billion on U.S. cloud services since 2021.