Opinion: Canada Post should be given a mandate to protect our digital sovereignty

Canada has faced moments before when the country’s economic security could not safely be left entirely to market forces or foreign capital. In those moments, governments built institutions capable of promoting and developing essential national interests and capabilities while allowing private enterprise to flourish around them.

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The Trump administration has demonstrated its determination to try to bend Canada to its will using all the tools of economic statecraft in the toolkit — tariffs, making market access contingent on aligning with U.S. policies and unbridled (even unhinged) threats, such as bans on imports of some Canadian products and attacks on major Canadian companies like Bombardier.

While much of the headline action is about traditional manufacturing sectors, Washington has unceasingly challenged Canadian policies governing digital services, data and technology. In an economy increasingly built on intangible assets, national power will depend on three things: who controls the data, who sets the standards and who owns the intellectual property. Canada is dangerously exposed on all three, since U.S. policy characterizes any Canadian initiative in this area as a trade irritant to be attacked.

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This is not the first time Canada has confronted an environment in which its sovereign interests and capabilities in the essential infrastructure of the age were at stake. The bankruptcies of several private rail carriers in 1918 led to the creation of what would become the Canadian National Railway, a Crown corporation formed through the amalgamation of the bankrupt carriers to preserve essential services.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was created in 1936, while Trans-Canada Air Lines, which later became Air Canada, was created in 1937 as a subsidiary of CN, which also operated the constitutionally required ferry service between Newfoundland and the Canadian mainland. The latter was spun off as Marine Atlantic in 1986, following the spin-off of Via Rail in 1978 to handle CN’s passenger business.

Today’s challenge lies not in transportation or basic communications infrastructure, but in the digital infrastructure that mediates an increasingly large share of Canadian communications, social intercourse, political discussion and commerce.

This digital infrastructure captures and controls the use of almost all of Canadians’ private data — every step that you take (Fitbit), every move that you make (Google geolocation), everything that you buy (Mastercard, etc.), everything that you “like” (Facebook), whose cellphone sleeps with your cellphone. We could go on.

Our digital economy is heavily reliant on foreign-controlled cloud platforms and software infrastructure. Even when Canadian data is stored in Canada, that does not mean the systems governing it are beyond the reach of foreign corporations or governments. Canada’s new AI strategy acknowledges that current cloud and AI infrastructure is largely foreign-owned and that a sovereign alternative is necessary.

Ottawa, which ceded Canada’s independence on data policy in the original CUSMA negotiations, has at least started to notice. The Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy is investing billions in domestic compute capacity, including “public supercomputing infrastructure.” Yet it is still woefully underfunded.

Moreover, a modicum of sovereign compute contributes exactly zero to national sovereignty if the data used to train models, generate insights and create intellectual property remains governed through infrastructure that Canada does not control.

Canada therefore needs a sovereign digital spine, and our history tells us how this can be done: empower a Crown corporation to build it. This will ensure that the spine is sovereign because a Crown corporation answers only to the Crown.

The good news is that Canada does not face any machinery of government issues in moving expeditiously on this file — it already has a Crown corporation with a legislative mandate squarely focused on providing the services that are bundled in that digital spine: Canada Post.

Postal service is a constitutional responsibility of the federal government, and for generations Canada Post has provided secure communications across an enormous country, including to communities where purely commercial incentives would never have produced universal service. It already helps sustain the connective tissue of Canadian democracy.

In the digital age, Canada Post should be given a new public-purpose function to build and hold the foundational infrastructure through which Canadian public institutions, and eventually businesses and citizens, securely store and exchange data under Canadian governance, reflecting Canadian values and norms, and under Canadian law enacted by a democratically elected Canadian Parliament.

Canada Post does not answer to Washington, to its lobbyists or those who populate Silicon Valley and fancy themselves to be philosopher kings.

This proposal does not require Canada Post to become a software company, to build data centres itself or to employ thousands of programmers. Canada Post would hold the infrastructure and contracting authority as a national public asset. Private firms would competitively supply cloud services, software, cybersecurity, AI tools and other technical capabilities. An independent governance structure would establish rules governing access, interoperability, privacy and use.

Universities provide an everyday analogy. A university owns and governs its campus, but it does not manufacture the elevators, operate every coffee shop or perform every electrical repair itself. It establishes the rules and standards under which private providers operate. Digital sovereignty should work similarly.

For highly sensitive assets, with public health data being the obvious example, neither a technology company nor the government of the day should enjoy unfettered discretion over how citizens’ data is used. A multilayered governance model should place ultimate stewardship under transparent and democratically accountable principles.

Provincial health data could provide an ideal first use case. The data would not need to be centralized, nor would existing hospital systems need to be replaced. Institutions could retain their systems while connecting through trusted standards governing secure, authorized exchange. That would allow Canada to test the model in one of the most demanding data environments before scaling it more broadly.

As governments, universities, hospitals and businesses already pay substantial recurring fees to foreign cloud and platform providers, this test case would not entail out-of-pocket costs, beyond any charges associated with switching services.

Existing server capacity could be leased initially, private software application suppliers selected competitively and the system expanded as customers join it. This test case consequently anticipates a model that could approach cost neutrality as usage grows.

While we cannot retrieve all the economic value that has already leaked from Canada through decades of dependence on foreign platforms, we can start to stem the bleeding. As existing contracts come up for renewal, governments, universities, hospitals and Canadian firms should have a sovereign alternative. Data portability should mean that organizations can take usable copies of their data with them rather than remain locked indefinitely into a foreign platform.

Canada once built national institutions because sovereignty required infrastructure that Canadians could depend upon. This infrastructure was tangible and came with a maple leaf decal. Today, much of our most strategically important infrastructure — data, compute, standards, digital credentials and the networks through which economic value is created — is invisible.

Canada now needs to pin a Canadian decal on this invisible elephant in the room. Canada Post carries the country’s physical communications infrastructure into every community. It is a Crown corporation that answers only to Parliament and it has the right mandate. Its next national mission should be to help carry Canadian sovereignty into the digital age.

National Post

Ann Fitz-Gerald is the director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA); Dan Ciuriak is a fellow at the BSIA; Jim Hinton is a fellow at the BSIA; and Keith Jansa is the chief executive officer of the Digital Governance Council.

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