As Lawrence Zhang argues in The Hill Times, Canada should pursue digital sovereignty through practical control over the systems Canadians depend on, rather than Canadian ownership throughout the technology stack. Sovereignty means protecting critical assets, withstanding coercion, and retaining the ability to change suppliers.
Zhang argues that ownership requirements in cloud procurement reduce competition and raise costs without adding control that well-written contracts cannot provide. Contractual safeguards and redundancy across providers address the actual vulnerabilities—foreign access, contract lock-in, and service failures—more directly.
Excluding American cloud firms as trade retaliation could also harm Canadian software firms that depend on American government contracts. Canada needs the productivity gains technology can offer, and sovereignty by control will usually serve it better than sovereignty by passport.
Read the full commentary in The Hill Times.
